More Horrendous Desecration of Our American Veterans
It goes beyond words how despicable this is. I really wish the destruction of our history would end, but unfortunately, I don’t see any end in sight.
Ghoulish Virginia Democrats Planning to Dig Up Confederate General’s Grave Without Relocation Plan
By Cassandra Fairbanks
In one of the most disturbing tales to come from Richmond, Virginia’s moves to erase history, they are now planning to dig up the grave of Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill, according to a new report.
To make the matter even more ghoulish, the city has not actually come up with a plan yet on what to do with his remains that have been in the location since 1892.
General Hill had requested he be buried under the memorial in his will, ABC 8 reports.
“He had left in his will that he wanted to be buried in Richmond. I’m not sure why Richmond because he wasn’t from Richmond and didn’t have any particularly strong Richmond roots that I’m aware of,” Bob Balster, president of the Hermitage Road Historic District Association told 8News.
To ensure his wishes were carried out, Confederate veterans who served under Hill raised money for the monument and the land was donated by Lewis Ginter.
The National File reports that an effort “led by Mayor Levar Stoney and backed by Governor Ralph Northam, anti-history Democrats in Richmond, Virginia are finalizing plans to dig up the remains of Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill, who lies beneath a towering statue dedicated in his honor and now marked for removal amidst efforts to erase all traces of the Confederacy from its former capital.”
Though the city removed nearly all of their Confederate statues during the terroristic Black Lives Matter riots last year, the general’s statue and grave had remained.
To circumvent laws against desecrating graves, the Democrats are reportedly designating the grave a threat to traffic safety, giving them the power to remove it.
According to the National File, under the removal plans, “workers will remove the bronze statue of the General before destroying its stone pedestal and removing the sarcophagus containing his remains. Details of what the city plans to do with Hill’s remains are unclear, and the project is estimated to carry a taxpayer-funded price tag of over $33,000.”
(Article courtesy of the Southern Comfort, Private Samuel A. Hughey Camp 1452 Sons of Confederate Veterans, Military Order of the Stars and Bars, President Jefferson Davis Chapter, Volume 45, Issue No. 6, June 2021 ed.)
J.D.R. Hawkins 
The histrionics are unnecessary and deceitful. Removing monuments is not erasing or destroying history. These statues serve only to honor traitors to the Union and the men who supported and/or engaged in the institution of slavery.
Despite the Daughters of the Confederacy’s well-tended gloss that the Lost Cause was about state rights, such as tariffs, it is fundamentally a lie. The only significant states’ right at stake was the right of white slave owners to continue treating black humans as chattel and their right to advance slavery to the west.
For proof, you need only to read reasons plainly stated by the seceding states themselves. They weren’t shy about the central importance of slavery.
Every state in the Confederacy issued an Article of Secession. Four states went further: Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina all issued “Declarations of Causes,” explaining their decision to leave the Union.
All four states strongly defend slavery. Other grievances, such as economic exploitation and the role of the military, receive limited attention in some of the documents.
Texas
The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free,…
Mississippi
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…
Georgia
That reason was [the North’s] fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. …
South Carolina
Those [Union] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery…
The fact remains that these men supported a system that favored slavery and chose to secede from the Union to uphold their RIGHT to preserve the institution of slavery.
You folks have had 156 years to mourn the fall of the treasonous confederacy. It’s time to stop whitewashing the brutality of slavery. It was never like Gone with The Wind. It was a time of rape, abuse, torture, and the murder of black infants, children, and adults. It is also time to remove these relics – installed during the height of the Jim Crow, and civil rights eras – which were raised as a reminder to black folks that white supremacy was still the law of land.
In one of your earlier blog posts, you say something to the effect that these monuments were never a problem. That’s a lie. Minorities have been fighting for decades to have these monstrosities removed but they had no voice loud enough or political power strong enough.
These monuments belong in museums and the graves belong in cemeteries. Quite honestly, I care not a wit where they toss Hill’s bones. A landfill works for me. If life were fair, a monument to Corporal John W. Mauk would replace Hill’s.
Thank you so much for your comment. I appreciate your opinion. However, I’m sure you understand that I don’t agree with it.
There are many flaws in what you wrote, Calistress. Removing monuments IS erasing and/or destroying history. Look at other countries for examples. Confederates were not traitors to the Union, and had every right to secede under our Constitution. Only 6% of Southerners owned slaves. There were blacks who owned slaves, and several Northern states at that time allowed slavery. The Morrill Tariff was, in fact, a huge contributor to the Southern states’ desire to leave the Union. Slavery at that time was on the way out. If the U.S. would have paid slave owners for their slaves and required for them to be set them free, just as Britain did, the Civil War could have been avoided. Instead, Lincoln took over Ft. Sumter and seized the cotton within to avoid its being sold overseas. He then called for 75,000 troops. Over the course of four years, 640,000 soldiers died. That is why the statues were erected, to honor the dead, most of which never returned home. It’s heart wrenching to see so many headstones in Civil War cemeteries marked as “unknown.”
You gave examples of four states’ reasons to secede. However, you must understand that slavery was legal at that time. Lincoln had no intention of setting slaves free until he was pressured by Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists. He then proclaimed the Emancipation Proclamation halfway through the war, which only set slaves free in Southern states, not Northern states, including Lincoln’s home state of Illinois.
Most Southerners did not fight to preserve slavery, and the same goes for Northerners. The Irish rioted in New York after Gettysburg in protest to the slaves being freed. So what you wrote is a gloss over of what actually took place.
Monuments were erected when the people who erected them could save up enough money. If they were “raised as a reminder to black folks that white supremacy was still the law of the land,” as you put it, then how do you explain all the blacks who fought under the Confederacy and honored those monuments? I think it’s ludicrous that you would imply such a ridiculous notion. This idea hasn’t been brought up until recently. Monuments weren’t erected to intimidate people. They were erected to honor people, and many blacks back then would have agreed. However, since the end of the Civil Rights movement, the NAACP has struggled to find relevance, so they have twisted the truth into what you have been sucked in to believe. Previous to that, minorities had no problem with the monuments.
It’s alarming that you would be so callous as to state that Hill’s bones should be thrown in a landfill. How disrespectful of the dead and of Hill’s descendants. Hill is an American war veteran, as are all Confederates, which the U.S. declared years ago. And not every Confederate fought for slavery. Robert E. Lee had no slaves when the Civil War began, but Ulysses S. Grant kept his slaves until after the war ended. It’s not as cut and dry as you seem to want to make it.