Last week, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia decided to have a magnificent piece of artwork destroyed. A statue of Robert E. Lee was melted down after being cut into pieces. The statue had presided over downtown Charlottesville for nearly a century. It was destroyed at an unidentified foundry “somewhere in the U.S. south,” per the Washington Post, which reported organizers are withholding the exact location for safety reasons. A community initiative dubbed “Swords Into Plowshares” plans to use the bronze ingots to create a new work of public art it intends to gift to the city.
“Now we embark upon an opportunity to create something beautiful and positive,” Jalane Schmidt, one of the project’s lead organizers, said in a statement.
I can only imagine what that will be.
One of my friends, Miss Teresa Roane, who was a curator at the Museum of the Confederacy before it was shut down, phrased it eloquently:
Friends contacted me today (Saturday) because they were upset about the melting down of the Lee memorial in Charlottesville. I thought I would share the end of my presentation “Robert E. Lee from Engineer to President.” I hope that this will give you some comfort and strength.
In conclusion, we are now living in difficult times. There are organizations that want to eradicate Confederate history and heritage. However, no matter how they may try, one cannot eliminate the memory of Robert E. Lee.
His presence is everywhere especially if one visits Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Pulaski in Georgia or views the mighty Mississippi River. His brilliant military leadership is still part of the curriculum in schools around the world. Washington College now known as Washington and Lee University was saved by Lee’s leadership. Most of all, he lives on in the hearts of the Southern people. I want to conclude with a prayer of Lee’s: “Help me to be, to think, to act what is right because it is right; make me truthful, honest and honorable in all things; make me intellectually honest for the sake of right and honor and without thought of reward to me.”
It was announced last week that over 1,000 military installations will have their names changed. This is because the current defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, believes the names “honor” the Confederacy. Austin has concurred with all of the naming commission’s recommendations “and is committed to implementing them as soon as possible.” Once implemented, the commission’s plan “will give proud new names that are rooted in their local communities and that honor American heroes whose valor, courage, and patriotism exemplify the very best of the United States military,” Austin wrote. Proud new names? What does that even mean? And here’s the kicker: it will cost the Pentagon an estimated $62.5 million to implement the recommendations from the final report, according to the commission. So is that taxpayers’ money implementing the name changes? If so, then why aren’t we allowed to vote on this?
It seems Austin has taken this political correctness thing way too far. Changes will include new names for two Navy ships and several streets and buildings on bases. Congress has mandated that the defense secretary implement the changes by Jan. 1, 2024. One thing they fail to remember: erasing history only guarantees that it will be repeated.
Zoe Strozewski – 1/6/2022 The same company that took down the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia, was hired to dismantle the city’s last major Confederate statue and the pedestals where other Civil War-linked monuments used to stand.
The monument of Confederate General A.P. Hill and his remains, which are buried beneath the statue, will be removed, according to procurement documents.
The city announced on Wednesday that Newport News-based Team Henry Enterprises bid $1.5 million on the project and was awarded the contract, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. The upcoming removal of the final major Confederate statue stemmed from efforts that began in the summer of 2020, when the U.S. erupted in mass protests calling for racial justice after the killing of George Floyd. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney ordered their removal that summer and set the process in motion.
Last week, Northam and Stoney announced a tentative plan to transfer ownership of the dismantled monuments to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. Under the proposal, the Black History Museum would then be able to work with The Valentine museum and local community members to decide the fate of the monuments.
Another company, Stratified Inc., said it could complete the work for $1 million. But as Richmond was preparing to award it the contract, the city found that the Washington-based company didn’t have a necessary state contractor’s license. A city official familiar with the process told the Times-Dispatch that Team Henry protested plans to award the contract to the other company. Stratified Inc. CEO Clive Diaz said Wednesday that he intended to get the license immediately, but lawyers he consulted told him that the city had the right to reject the bid without it.
In 2020, Richmond awarded a $1.8 million contract to a shell company associated with Team Henry to remove the city’s Confederate statues. Henry later said he formed the shell company for safety reasons, as contractors taking down Confederate monuments in other places had been threatened or subject to violence.
The Virginia State Police investigated the deal after former Councilwoman Kim Gray raised concerns that company owner Devon Henry had previously donated to the mayor’s election campaign and political action committee. A prosecutor didn’t find evidence of public corruption and ended the investigation last summer.
Richmond’s chief administrative officer, Lincoln Saunders, told the Times-Dispatch on Wednesday that state officials had suggested Henry for this last job after already engaging him to remove the Lee statue.
(Article courtesy of The Southern Comfort, Private Samuel A. Hughey Camp 1452, Sons of Confederate Veterans and President Jefferson Davis Chapter, Military Order of the Stars and Bars, Volume 46, Issue No. 2, February 2022)
Virginia has definitely gone mad. The latest heinousness is erasing any reminder of Stonewall Jackson from the Virginia Military Institute. General Jackson served as a professor there prior to the Civil War. For decades, a statue of Stonewall stood at the entrance, but was recently taken down. Now they (presumably Northam and Stoney) want to sandblast his name from the front of Jackson Memorial Hall and rename the building. Apparently, Stonewall’s famous horse, Little Sorrel, is still buried in front of where his statue used to be. No one knows what will happen to the remains.
In Fredericksburg, the name of Jefferson Davis Highway has been changed. The process was completed last week. The new name of the highway is Emancipation Highway. City leaders chose the new name because it “promotes our shared values of unity, equality, and a commitment to a better future for all Americans.” But does it really? I seriously doubt that.
The Charlottesville, Virginia city council has given the Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which plans to melt it down. That will most likely be the precedent for the disposal of the Richmond statues.
From Civil War Talk, Florida Rebel posted this:
“Speaking of monuments and historical landmarks, has anyone been to Washington and Lee Univ. in Lexington recently? Yes, the school’s name has not been changed but it’s all a mirage now. I have been told the Lee Chapel name is no more and many other numerous references to Lee in the chapel have disappeared too. And remember the beautiful marble statue of the great General sleeping on the field? I have been told it is now hidden behind a wall of some kind…. Have been told the museum and main bookstore that used to sell numerous Lee books and other items has changed drastically too. And the school employees, many of the students and faculty, so many have been brain washed on Lee and what a terrible man, slave owner and leader he was. My God, how did this happen in OUR lifetime? Has the entire state of VA and the ‘cancel culture’ gone freaking mad? I sincerely hope someone can visit the school soon and confirm or deny.”
In Richmond, the city council also passed legislation to remove two other monuments: a statue of General William Carter Wickham, and the 1st Virginia Regiment monument. I wonder how the descendants of these people who are witnessing the shameful, disrespectful abolishment of their ancestors feel.
And apparently, the marker in front of Lee’s boyhood home has been removed. General Robert E. Lee lived there when he was four years old. But now, that particular piece of history in relation to the house is being swept under the rug. An article on Yahoo! even mentioned that the house had a connection to a slave owner who fought for slavery, which is a complete lie. To me, this is tragic, because it is just another example of erasing and/or changing history. When a marker is removed denoting an event or a person who was there, etc., history is being removed from public view. Out of sight, out of mind. But once this is done, that priceless piece of history is gone forever, just like it never existed.
So how is erasing one part of American history, specifically, Confederate history, and replacing it with another, specifically black history, going to make our country better? How will it unify us? Will taking the monuments down really make an impact on people’s lives? Or is it merely being done to satisfy the political left and the woke cancel culture? They are coming after our history with a vengeance, and I shiver to think about what they will attack next.
“Any society which suppresses the heritage of its conquered minorities, prevents their history or denies them their symbols, has sown the seeds of their own destruction.”
Sir William Wallace, 1281 A.D.
There has been an assault going on for quite some time on Confederate monuments and markers. The most alarming is what’s taking place in Virginia. Governor Ralph Northam and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney have taken it upon themselves to aggressively go after and do away with any reminder of the Confederacy, even though Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America for nearly all of the Civil War. I find this alarming because, even though the political climate has changed over the past century and a half, history should never be erased. It stands as a reminder to what happened in the past, and whether interpreted as good or bad, it is still a valuable part of American history. Germany intentionally has left what remains of old stalags as reminders of the terrible history it experienced under Nazism. I think America should do the same.
This brings to mind the recent desecration of Monument Avenue in Richmond. What used to be a beautiful area in the heart of the city, with its magnificent monuments, has utterly been destroyed. I visited Richmond when I attended the UDC Convention back in (I believe) 2011, and I thought the avenue was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, last year, Black Lives Matter was given free rein to desecrate the monuments, as well as buildings around them, by any and all means possible. They covered the monument bases with graffiti and were even allowed to chisel away at some of them. As far as I know, no arrests were ever made. What an atrocity, and shameful for the city of Richmond. I, for one, will never visit Richmond again.
It’s my understanding that Monument Avenue was on the National Historic Sites Register, and because of that, it should have been protected. But apparently not, since all of the magnificent statues have been taken down. The last one to be removed was that of General Robert E. Lee. The statue was even cut in half. They are considering giving the Robert E. Lee monument to the Black History Museum, which has said that they will melt the statue down and make it into something else. I can only imagine what that might be.
The Richmond City Council recently allocated $1.3 million to build a national slavery museum.
“The response can’t be to build back up Monument Avenue,” Hones said. “It must be to build back the antithesis of what was torn down. And the best thing to do is to become serious as a council and administration to tell the true story … of what’s in place in Virginia.”
The city of Richmond has received numerous offers for the monuments, which are being stored in a sewage facility. The matter will be decided on January 18, 2022.
The following is a list of groups who wish to obtain the monuments: 1. Liberty Hall Fife & Drums 2. Ratcliffe Foundation/Ellenbrook 3. Shenandoah Valley Battlefield Foundation 4. VA Division – Sons of Confederate Veterans 5. Valentine Museum 6. United States of America Naval History & Heritage Command 7. Fontaine/Maury Society 8. JEB Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust 9. CSA II: The New Confederate States of America Inc. – Monument Establishment & Preservation Fund 10. Belmead on the James 11. Shannon Pritchard/Hickory Hill/Wickham Family 12. Sumter County SC Sons of Confederate Veterans 13. LAXArt Museum 14. Spotsylvania Historical Association 15. DARNstudio 16 Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation 17. Preserve America’s Battlefields 18. Private individual 1 – David Hinton 19. Private individual 2 – Michael Boccicchio 20. Private individual 3 – Olivia Tautkus 21. Private individual 4 – James Cochrane, Jr. 22. Private individual 5 – Austin Wylam 23. Liberty Hall Plantation
There is no submission from the Black History Museum, but it seems that they will receive legal ownership of most of the monuments and their bases. It also seems that the Valentine Museum will “partner” with the Black History Museum in gaining ownership of the monuments. However, the Valentine Museum has only submitted a request for the Valentine sculptured statue of Jefferson Davis.
I subscribe to Civil War Talk, and wanted to share some entries.
From Viper 21:
“City and state officials have reached an agreement to transfer ownership of the statue and pedestal of Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, which has also agreed to take possession of all the other Confederate memorials removed from Richmond since last year.
“Under this arrangement, Richmond’s Black History Museum would work in partnership with the Valentine museum — which has chronicled the city’s history for more than a century — and local community members to determine the fates of the stone and bronze symbols of the Confederacy.
“The deal requires approval by Richmond’s City Council. Mayor Levar Stoney — who hammered out some of the details with Gov. Ralph Northam (D) — said in a written statement that the arrangement enables the community to take a deliberate approach in reckoning with such divisive symbols.
“‘Entrusting the future of these monuments and pedestals to two of our most respected institutions is the right thing to do,’ Stoney said in the statement, obtained by The Washington Post … ‘They will take the time that is necessary to properly engage the public and ensure the thoughtful disposition of these artifacts.’”
Sgt. Cycom from L.A. summed it up: “The people that are loudest in calling for ‘unity’ and ‘inclusion’ are almost always projecting their own intolerance and inability to compromise. I hope these monuments remain so that I can take my family to see them in a few years. I pray history is preserved and not destroyed. Giving these monuments to people who will continue to desecrate them is disgusting, infuriating and despicable.”
As a side note, the majority of Richmond residents voted for the monuments to remain intact on Monument Avenue.
This is such exciting news that I just had to share. Last week, I wrote about the reinternment of General Forrest and his wife to the new National Confederate Museum in Elm Springs, Tennessee. Now the Sons of Confederate Veterans are raising funds to recreate what was destroyed a few weeks ago by Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam. This is the guy who, by the way, posed in black face in his college yearbook photo. Anyway, Northam, along with Richmond’s Mayor Levar Stoney, have taken it upon themselves to utterly destroy Richmond’s beautiful Monument Avenue. The last monument to go was that of General Robert E. Lee. But it seems the South, or at least the Confederacy, shall rise again.
It looks like, no matter how hard they try, Memphis and Richmond politicians just can’t get rid of reminders of their past, and they never will. Here’s a lesson to all the folks out there who are trying to erase our history: you can’t and you won’t! You never will.
This was taken from a Facebook post by the Gordonsville Grays SCV Camp #2301.
“After dropping some hints in the last few weeks, we’re excited to announce that we’re commissioning a new Lee equestrian monument. Location has yet to be determined. We have open offers in our area but if a position in a more prominent location became available we’d consider it.
***Now accepting donations via PayPal to GordonsvilleGrays@gmail.com.”
Last Monday night, the Charlottesville City Council unanamously voted to remove two Confederate statues from the city’s public parks. Now citizens have thirty days to come up with new plans for the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. “According to city documents, Charlottesville is requesting proposals for any museum, historical society, government or military battlefield interested in acquiring the Statues, or either of them, for relocation and placement.”
PUSH TO REMOVE CONFEDERATE STATUES IN CHARLOTTESVILLE BEFORE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF DEADLY RALLY
By: Jessie Cohen
Jun 22, 2021
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia — Advocates in Charlottesville, Virginia are working to remove the city’s Confederate statues before the four-year anniversary of the deadly rally later this summer. This comes after the City Council unanimously voted to remove the statues.
Zyahna Bryant, a young activist and change maker, has been trying to make this happen for the last five years. She authored the original petition to take down the Robert E. Lee Statue in 2016.
“These statues are a part of a physical landscape that reinforces some of these underlying notions of slavery, bondage and what it means to be deserving of humanity,” Bryant said. “When I see those statues, it reminds me of an incomplete history.”
Kristin Szakos, a former City Council member says this time, the vote is even more important.
”We’ve been here before. When I was on council, we also voted to remove the statues. Having been here before, I’ll celebrate when the statues are down,” Szakos said. “In Charlottesville, at this moment, it’s particularly important because we have had violence around these statues. We’ve had hundreds of white supremacists and Nazis come into town to defend those statues.”
This year, both a Virginia Supreme Court ruling and a law passed in the legislature cleared the way for the city of Charlottesville to remove the Confederate statues.
“Folks in Charlottesville worked really hard with folks from all over the commonwealth to change that law,” Szakos said.
Bryant is one of those people.
“The August 11th and 12th rallies happened and I recognize that a lot of people were trying to protect this image of Charlottesville that did not exist,” Bryant said. “People are starting to see why they need to come down and it’s sad, in my opinion, that it took a rally where someone lost their life for people to come to that realization.”
Szakos says she first brought the statues up in council in 2012 and says even then, it was long overdue.
“It’s actually been 100 years because there were people when the Jackson statue first went up in 1921 who said it shouldn’t be there,” Szakos said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center started tracking how many symbols of the Confederacy were located in public spaces following the Charleston shooting in 2015. That’s when a white man killed nine Black people during a church bible study. After the Charlottesville rally, they started gathering input from the community.
“We have over 2,000 now, so we started at 1,500 but community member have uncovered even more,” said Lecia Brooks, the SPLC Chief of Staff.
Brooks says in 2020, 94 of the 168 symbols that were removed were confederate monuments; 71 were in Virginia, 24 in North Carolina, and 12 each in Texas and Alabama.
“So, as we make great strides in removing some of these symbols from public space, we’re finding that there are more and more,” Brooks said. But Lecia does recognize the change seen in states rooted in the confederacy.
“Virginia has done, I mean, a complete 360 post the unite the right rally,” Brooks said.
Bryant doesn’t want this momentum to stop at the statues.
“I don’t think that it should stop once the statues are down because again the statues are only the tip of the iceberg,” Bryant said. “We also have the opportunity to rewrite the textbooks. We have the opportunity to create new resources for people to learn from.”
From housing to healthcare to education and more, she says there is so much to tackle. “I feel very confident that this is the turn to a new Charlottesville and to a new central Virginia and to a new country overall, but I think that there will be no real progress and no real healing reconciliation until there is the redistribution of resources an until there is true equity,” Bryant said.
I wanted to share this article, showing how disrespectful all the anti-Confederate sentiment has become. It’s nothing less than shameful, in my opinion, and I hope you agree. These are works of art erected to honor dead war vets. Reading more into them than that is just plain ludicrous.
Judges for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments … in the latest effort to counter the University of Texas’ removal of several Confederate statues.
We reported back in 2017 when UT President Gregory L. Fenves authorized the removal of statues of Confederate figures – Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston and John Reagan – along with Gov. James Stephen Hogg from the UT South Mall. The statues of Lee, Johnston and Reagan were placed in storage; Hogg was later relocated to another spot on campus.
Days after the statues’ removal, members of the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit against Fenves. The organization’s named plaintiffs, David McMahon and Steven Littlefield, argued that the removal of the statues was an illegal restriction of political speech and a breach of agreement with the estate of Maj. George Washington Littlefield, who donated the statues in 1921. The lawsuit argued the university agreed at that time the statues would remain as promotion of a “Southern understanding of the Civil War” on UT’s campus.
“In removing the statues, Pres. Fenves has breached the University’s long-standing promotion of American history from the Southern perspective that it promised to its generous donor, Maj. George Washington Littlefield,” the lawsuit said.
Western District U.S. Court Judge Lee Yeakel dismissed the case in late June 2018, stating that the Sons of Confederate Veterans lacked standing, but he did not comment on whether the plaintiffs had a valid argument under the First Amendment.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans appealed Yeakel’s decision to the 5th Circuit, where they presented oral arguments for why the removal was a violation of federal free speech laws. The case was consolidated with a similar lawsuit that originated in San Antonio where two residents and the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued city leaders for making plans to remove a Confederate monument in Travis Park.
Kirk Lyons, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in both cases, told the American-Statesman on Tuesday he was arguing for standing, which lower courts had denied, saying the Sons of Confederate Veterans couldn’t prove any injury from the statues’ removal. He said his clients do have standing because the removal of Confederate monuments injures their rights to free speech. The effort is part of what Lyons believes is a national agenda to dishonor Confederate history and quiet conservatives.
“If you took every offensive monument out of Europe, their tourist industry would collapse,” Lyons said. “These people are mentally unstable.”
After Tuesday’s oral arguments, Texas Attorney General and closet liberal RINO scalywag Ken Paxton who fast-tracked the removal of other Confederate monuments issued a statement saying the court should dismiss the suit.
(Article courtesy of Dixie Heritage Newsletter, Oct. 11, 2019 ed.)
Earlier today, I received an email from the American Battlefield Trust with wonderful news. Because of donations, 143 acres at the Plank Farm on the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania battlefield has been preserved.
According to the American Battlefield Trust,
“On all three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, and for many weeks after Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia made its retreat, this farm (owned by J. Edward Plank at the time of battle) served as one of the largest hospitals in all of Gettysburg. Soldiers on each side traversed these 143 acres, and more than 1,500 soldiers were treated on this land, including Confederate General John Bell Hood. There were more than 60 documented burials on the property. The soldiers buried there were later reinterred in proper cemeteries.
“Now … this sacred land and the stories that it holds will be preserved, forever! This transaction was truly a team effort, with the Trust and other partners raising funds to enable the Land Conservancy of Adams County to protect the farm with a conservation easement. Because (investors) have secured this land now, (they) are proactively protecting this part of the battlefield from commercial or residential development while further securing the integrity of nearby hallowed ground, like the 18 acres Trust members … preserved at Seminary Ridge earlier this year and the preserved and restored Lee’s Headquarters site we saved in 2014.”
I think this is an awesome accomplishment! If you would like to support the American Battlefield Trust, here is a link to their website:
Beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first, the Confederate Memorial Association in California established more than a dozen monuments and place-names to the Confederacy. They dedicated highways to Jefferson Davis, named schools for Robert E. Lee, and erected large memorials to the common Confederate soldier.
While one would not ordinarily associate California, far removed from the major military theaters of The War, with anything Confederate when The War erupted between North and South in 1861, a wave of secessionist scares swept across the West. Los Angeles County was the epicenter of California disunionism. Hundreds of Southern-sympathizing Angelenos fled east to join Confederate armies, while an even larger number remained to menace federal control over the region. They openly bullied and brawled with Union soldiers, joined secessionist secret societies, hurrahed Jefferson Davis and his generals, and voted into office the avowed enemies of the Lincoln administration. The threat became so dire that Union authorities constructed a large military garrison outside Los Angeles, and arrested a number of local secessionists, to prevent the region from joining the Confederacy.
The War was lost in 1865, but California’s leaders continued to nurture a nostalgia for the Old South. The editor of the leading Democratic newspaper in the state unapologetically lamented the South’s loss. California refused to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, California was the only “free” state to reject both amendments during the Reconstruction era. In a belated, token gesture, the state “ratified” them in 1959 and 1962, respectively.
Attracted by California’s climate and its reactionary political orientation, thousands of Southerners migrated west in the decades after The War. There, they continued to honor the memory of their ancestors. Through hereditary organizations, reunions, and eventually the landscape itself, some hoped that the Old South would rise again in California.
Some of the most active memorial associations could be found in Los Angeles County. In 1925, the UDC erected the first major monument in the West, a six-foot stone tribute in what is now Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The monument saluted the wartime service of some 30 Confederate veterans, who migrated to Southern California after The War and took their final rest in the surrounding cemetery plot.
Many of those veterans had passed their last days in Dixie Manor, a Confederate rest home in San Gabriel, just outside L.A. Five hundred people gathered for the dedication of the home in April 1929. Until 1936, when the last of the residents died, the caretakers of Dixie Manor housed and fed these veterans, hosted reunions, and bestowed new medals for old service. It was the only such facility beyond the former Confederacy itself.
The UDC followed its Hollywood memorial with several smaller monuments to Jefferson Davis scattered across the state. Those tributes marked portions of the Jefferson Davis Highway, a transcontinental road system named for the former chieftain, stretching from Virginia to the Pacific coast. The Daughters erected the first of the tributes in San Diego in 1926. They even placed a large obelisk to Davis directly opposite the Ulysses S. Grant Hotel. Although opposition from Union army veterans resulted in the removal of the monument that same year, a plaque to Davis was restored to the San Diego plaza in 1956.
Several place-names literally put the Confederacy on the map in California. The town of Confederate Corners (née Springtown) was christened by a group of Southerners who settled in the area after The War. In San Diego and Long Beach, the name of Robert E. Lee graced two schools, while a school in East Los Angeles was named for filmmaker D.W. Griffith. Although not a Confederate veteran himself, Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation did more than any other production to rekindle the Confederate fire among a new generation of Americans.
Several giant sequoias were named for Robert E. Lee, including the fifth-largest tree in the world, located in Kings Canyon National Park. Jefferson Davis and Confederate general George E. Pickett each had a peak named in their honor in Alpine County.
Most of these memorialization efforts took place when The War was still a living memory. But California chapters of the UDC and Sons of Confederate Veterans remain active today. A recent register of the UDC listed 18 chapters in California-more than five times as many as could be found in any other “free state,” and even more than some former Southern states, including Missouri, Kentucky, and Arkansas.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans were erecting major memorials in California as recently as 2004. That’s when the newly-removed Orange County pillar went up, amid much fanfare from its patrons and supporters, proudly clad in Confederate attire for the occasion. Inscribed on the pedestal: “to honor the sacred memory of the pioneers who built Orange County after their valiant effort to defend the Cause of Southern Independence.”
Earlier this month, that monument, the last one standing in California, was taken down.
(Article courtesy of Dixie Heritage Newsletter, August 30, 2019 ed.)
