The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, and the promotion of the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.

Established in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1894, the group venerated the Ku Klux Klan during the Jim Crow era, and in 1926, a local chapter funded the construction of a monument to the Klan. According to the Institute for Southern Studies, the UDC "elevated [the Klan] to a nearly mythical status. It dealt in and preserved Klan artifacts and symbology. It even served as a sort of public relations agency for the terrorist group." The organization restricted membership to whites at one time, but later lifted the requirement. As of 2011, there were 23 so-called "Real Daughters" (that is, actual children of Confederate veterans) still living, one of whom, Mattie Clyburn Rice, was black. There are no longer any living children of Civil War veterans. The last, Irene Triplett, died in 2020.

The group's headquarters are in the Memorial to the Women of the Confederacy building in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital city of the Confederate States. In May 2020, the building was damaged by fire during the George Floyd protests.

The group was founded on September 10, 1894, by Caroline Meriwether Goodlett and Anna Davenport Raines as the National Association of the Daughters of the Confederacy. The first chapter was formed in Nashville. The name was soon changed to United Daughters of the Confederacy. Their stated intention was to "tell of the glorious fight against the greatest odds a nation ever faced, that their hallowed memory should never die." Their primary activity was to support the construction of Confederate memorials. The UDC has said that its members also support U.S. troops and honor veterans of all U.S. wars.

In 1896, the organization established the Children of the Confederacy to impart similar values to younger generations through a mythical depiction of the Civil War and Confederacy. According to historian Kristina DuRocher, "Like the KKK's children's groups, the UDC utilized the Children of the Confederacy to impart to the rising generations their own white-supremacist vision of the future." The UDC denies assertions that it promotes white supremacy.

The communications studies scholar W. Stuart Towns notes the UDC's role "in demanding textbooks for public schools that told the story of the war and the Confederacy from a definite southern point of view." He adds that their work is one of the "essential elements [of] perpetuating Confederate mythology."

The UDC was incorporated on July 18, 1919. Its headquarters is in the Memorial Building to the Women of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, built in the 1950s.

Across the Southern United States, associations were founded after the Civil War, chiefly by women, to organize burials of Confederate soldiers, establish and care for permanent cemeteries, organize commemorative ceremonies, and sponsor impressive monuments as a permanent way of remembering the Confederate cause and tradition.