Statues Removed
When the novel Confederate Gold: A Modern-day Romp through the Civil War History of Richmond, Virginia was published in 2018, Chapter 3 depicted a ride down Monument Avenue by the book’s main characters, showcasing the statues of Arthur Ashe and five Confederate generals. Three years later in 2021 all the Confederates were gone.
It had been a long time coming. Many would say it was amazing the Confederate statues were allowed to stay up as long as they did. It had been 131 years since the first monument to a Confederate went up on Monument Avenue. The Robert E. Lee Monument was unveiled on May 29, 1890, as part of the Lost Cause narrative to portray the Confederacy's fight as just, heroic, and not about slavery.
Through the years, there had been periodic protests and vandalism of the Confederate statues in Richmond. Reinterpretation of the statues with appropriate signage and presentation was proposed, but no action was taken. Perhaps a preemptive campaign to recontextualize the statues would have saved them, but the political climate did not seem conducive to comprise. It was either keep the statues up the way they were or take them down.
Rumblings that the Confederate statues in Richmond would eventually be taken down started after the Charleston church shooting in 2015 and the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville in 2017. On Apr 12, 2020, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed into law the ability for Virginia localities to remove or alter Confederate monuments in their communities, starting on Jul 1, 2020. Before the passage of the law, state approval was needed to remove Confederate monuments.
Hidebound Richmonders where hoping, if they could just lay low, no one would notice the largest trove of Confederate statues in the United States resided in their city. But on May 26, 2020, a Minneapolis white policeman was filmed killing George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck while Floyd was lying on the ground in handcuffs being restrained by other police officers. The nation watched this nine-minute, public "snuff film" in horror with Floyd pleading for his life. The reaction was visceral, sparking an explosion of protests and riots against racial inequity that had been simmering in America for generations. The George Floyd murder was the catalyst that brought down the Confederate statues in Richmond after their 130-year reign. In the end, it was just a hard sell to Richmond, a modern, cosmopolitan city, that statues of defenders of slavery needed to stay up. Time was taking the old capital of the Confederacy onward, whether it wanted to go or not.
Nine days after the killing of George Floyd and in reaction to the protests that followed, on June 4, 2020, Governor Northam ordered that the statue of Robert E. Lee be removed. The state of Virginia had legal jurisdiction over the the Lee monument because it stood on state-owned land inside the city of Richmond. This kicked off a legal battle that ended 15 months later when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 7-0 to reject the appeals to reverse Northam’s order by five property owners living near the statue and a descendant of those who donated the land for the statue. The Lee statue was taken down on September 8, 2021. But lesser Confederate statues fell during the litigation of Lee. What follows is a story of statues torn down or taken down in chronological order of removal in Richmond, and the statues that remain.
The empty pedestal for the statue of Confederate cavalry general Williams Carter Wickham by Edward Virginius Valentine in Richmond's Monroe Park, adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University's main campus. The statue was installed in 1891, a year after the Lee statue was erected, but was the first Richmond Confederate statue to be toppled on June 7, 2020, 12 days after the killing of George Floyd. Protesters did not wait for July 1, 2020, so the City of Richmond could act on removing the statue legally. They took the matter into their own hands, and with the statue only ten feet off the ground, Wickham was low-hanging fruit to pull down with ropes.
The wrath of protesters was not reserved for just Confederates statues in Richmond. Two days later on June 9, 2020, the statue of Columbus in Byrd Park was ripped from its pedestal and thrown into nearby Fountain Lake. Columbus, the pride of Italian-Americans, had become a controversial figure for his near extermination of the Caribbean’s indigenous people.
The Jefferson Davis Memorial on Monument Avenue was unveiled in 1907, featuring a bronze figure of Davis in an oratory pose. Jefferson Davis was the one and only President of the Confederate States of America. In 2018, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s Monument Avenue Commission recommended the removal of the Davis statue because it was the "most unabashedly Lost Cause in its design and sentiment." For Confederate apologists, the Davis statue was an easy compromise, a sacrificial target for removal, since Davis was the only non-Virginian on Monument Avenue. Davis was viewed more as an inept politician who had lead the Confederacy to ruin rather than as a battlefield hero. The attitude was you can have Davis, but we get to keep Lee and Jackson on the street.
After spattered in pink paint and given a blackface, the statue of Jefferson Davis was toppled by protesters on June 10, 2020.
In 1892 the Howitzer Monument was erected to commemorate the Richmond Howitzers, a Confederate artillery unit on what is now the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU students fondly referred to this statue as the “Tampon Man,” but on June 16, 2020, the Howitzer Monument was torn down by protesters.
The First Virginia Regiment formed in 1754 before the American Revolution and was memorialized in 1930 with a statue in Meadow Park in Richmond’s Fan District. The monument commemorated the regiment for fighting in seven wars, starting with the French and Indian War and including the Civil War when it served in the Confederate Army. During the French and Indian War, it was the only colonial regiment incorporated into the British line and had Colonel George Washington as its commander. On the night of June 20, 2020, the bronze was pulled down. The tumbling of this statue came as a surprise to many. After all, it was a sculpture of a colonial infantryman before the Revolutionary War, but the statue did celebrate a regiment that had also fought for the Confederacy. But most likely, the vandals that tore down this statue weren't thinking about the nuances of history.
In 1919 the Stonewall Jackson Monument was unveiled on Monument Avenue, depicting the Confederate general on his horse Little Sorrel. Jackson was the best-known Confederate commander after Robert E. Lee. Military historians regard Jackson as one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U.S. history. On July 1, 2020, the Virginia law went into effect that allowed localities to remove or alter Confederate monuments in their communities. However, it required a 60-day administrative process with public input before any action could be taken. But Richmond mayor Levar Stoney wasted no time. He issued an order to remove the four Monument Avenue statues sitting on city-owned land, citing “emergency powers” to protect public safety because of the recent civil unrest, sparked by the killing of George Floyd. The Stonewall Jackson statue was the first go on July 1, 2020.
In 1929 the Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument was the last Confederate memorial to be erected on Monument Avenue. The monument was an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the South rather than an attempt to convince the people of the South that their treason during the American Civil War had been a noble cause. It highlighted Maury's achievements as an oceanographer, which were extensive. Alas, Maury also owned the dubious distinction of fleeing to Mexico after the Civil War, where Maximilian, the Austrian emperor of Mexico, appointed him as "Imperial Commissioner of Colonization". Maury and Maximilian's plan was to entice former Confederates to immigrate to Mexico. Once this scheme fell apart, Maury went to England then returned to the U.S in 1868 after pardoned by the federal government and accepted a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute.
The statue of Maury sitting was removed on July 2, 2020 by the City of Richmond. The allegorical globe behind and above Maury would remain in place for another week.
In 1907 the J. E. B. Stuart Monument, the most dramatic of the equestrian statues on Monument Avenue, was dedicated. James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, called the “eyes and ears of the Army of Northern Virginia,” became the most celebrated cavalryman of the Civil War. He was most renowned for this ride around McClellan’s army. The exploit turned out to be of little military value but boosted Southern morale to see one of their generals ride a circle around the Federals. It didn’t hurt Stuart’s reputation to be young, dashing, and dapper in a red silk-lined, gray cape and with an ostrich plume in his hat. Or that he did his work in the attention-getting Eastern Theater, serving directly under the master Lee. Capping off his career, Stuart was fatally shot in combat, becoming a martyr and a legend.
In response to the Stuart statue and other Confederate statues, the artist Kehinde Wiley produced Rumors of War. On December 10, 2019, it was unveiled at the entrance of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts about a third of a mile away from Monument Avenue. Wiley’s work features African Americans in classical poses. Rumors of War is a statue of a young Black man, sporting dreadlocks in a ponytail, jeans ripped at the knees, and Nike high-top sneakers, riding a horse.
On July 7, 2020, the J. E. B. Stuart statue was removed by the City of Richmond.
Finished in 1894, the Confederate Soldiers And Sailors Monument perched on Libby Hill with a commanding view of the James River, where the Confederate Navy Yard had sat on the near bank and the Manchester Slave Docks had sat on the far bank. The Robert E. Lee Monument was originally planned to be positioned on this site before it was decided to place Lee on Monument Avenue. This soldiers And sailors memorial was modeled after "Pompey's Pillar" in Alexandria, Egypt, with a 73-foot pillar composed of 13 granite blocks to symbolize each of the Confederate state and a bronze Confederate private standing on top of the pillar. The memorial stood out as a city landmark on the hill at the end of East Main Street. On July 08, 2020, the 17-foot high statue of the Confederate private was taken down from its pedestal by the City of Richmond.
In 1907, Vindicatrix, also known as "Miss Confederacy," crowned the 60-foot shaft of the Jefferson Davis Monument. This symbol of Southern womanhood reached for heaven. Beneath her, wrapped around the apex of the pillar was the Confederate motto Deo vindice. Roughly translated, it was Latin for “God will vindicate” and Confederate for “The South was right." On July 8, 2020, "Miss Confederacy" was pulled off her perch by the City of Richmond, along with plaques and finials on the Jefferson Davis Monument.
In this 2012 photograph, the Jefferson Davis Monument was intact with the outreaching Jeff Davis Statue, “Miss Confederacy” on top of the pillar, the two bronze plaques honoring the army and navy of the Confederacy attached to the side columns, and the two bronze finials sitting on top of the columns above the plaques.
July 8, 2020: The partially deconstructed Jefferson Davis Monument, graffitied and stripped of its statuary, plaques, and finials.
1929: The Maury Monument globe sat on the upper pedestal above the statue of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The earth is tilted on its axis with allegorical figures at its base, caught in a storm on land and sea but projecting hope for the future. The sculptor said it symbolized the "sphere of Maury's mind" to highlight his scientific achievements. On July 9, 2020, the globe was removed by the City of Richmond from the upper pedestal of the Maury monument a week after the Maury statue had been removed from the lower pedestal.
1911: Joseph Bryan statue installed in Richmond's Monroe Park, which is now adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University's main campus. In recent years the statue had been hardly noticeable under trees and off path. Bryan was best known as the first owner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other Richmond newspapers. Bryan was also an unreconstructed Southerner and a "Lost Cause" enabler who served with Mosby's Rangers during the Civil War. On July 9, 2020, the Joseph Bryan statue was removed by the City of Richmond.
1976: The Harry F. Byrd Sr.’s statue was the most controversial of all the statues placed in Virginia’s Capitol Square, most likely because it involved more recent history. Byrd was one of the South's most prominent segregationists in the 1950s and '60s. After the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954, Byrd, a former Virginia governor and at the time one of its U.S. Senators, hatched a campaign of “massive resistance” against desegregation resulting in the closing of many Virginia schools rather than integrating them. Ironically, the Byrd statue stood just three statues down from the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, a monument commemorating protests to bring about school desegregation, erected in 2008. The Virginia legislature and Gov. Northam decided they had had enough and approved the removal of the statue. The 10-foot-tall bronze of Byrd was removed along with his pedestal on July 7, 2021.
On December 5, 2021, Virginia’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam announced the 40-foot-tall pedestal that had held the Lee Statue on Monument Avenue would be removed and the state land it sat on would be transferred to the City of Richmond. Many thought it was a preemptive strike to prevent Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin, who would be sworn into office on January 15, 2022, from taking any delaying or restorative actions concerning the pedestal, the statue, or the ground they occupied. Youngkin had been elected in part because of the backlash from the statue removals. By December 31, 2021, the pedestal had been dismantled and hauled away with a tentative agreement for the all the Monument Avenue Confederate statues and pedestals to be given to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia based in Richmond.
What’s next? There is one other Confederate statue that the City of Richmond has its eyes on. A statue of General A. P. Hill stands on top of a pedestal without a horse. Hill had the tendency to arrive on battlefields in the nick of time to sway the fight for the Confederates. He was shot dead from his mount during the Petersburg evacuation. In 1891 as part of a real estate promotion, Hill was reburied from Hollywood Cemetery to the middle of the intersection of Hermitage Road and Laburnum Avenue. The monument was placed over his remains, eternally exposed to the exhaust of the busy roadways. This interment has posed a special challenge to the city to remove the monument and because of it, the removal is on hold.
Confederate Statues remaining on the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol
General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson
Governor William "Extra Billy" Smith was the oldest Confederate general to hold a field command at age 65. During the Civil War he was elected Governor of Virginia for a second time. After Richmond fell to Union forces on April 3, 1865, Smith fled. He was captured on May 9 and paroled on June 8.
Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire was best known as the guy that sawed off Stonewall Jackson’s left arm after Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire at Chancellorsville. After the war in 1893 McGuire founded the College of Physicians and Surgeons that eventually merged with the Medical College of Virginia, which today is VCU Medical Center. McGuire remained a pro-slavery advocate until his death in 1900.