Richmond’s Last Confederate Statue Is Removed

[David Lockmiller]

The last Confederate statue in Richmond, Va., was removed on Monday, and the remains beneath it of Ambrose P. Hill, the Confederate lieutenant general who was memorialized, were set to be transferred to a cemetery, an official said. Ambrose P. Hill, the Confederate lieutenant general served under the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia. He was killed outside of Petersburg, Va., a week before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865.

The removal followed a series of court rulings, in which the indirect descendants of Hill opposed the city’s plans to take the statue down. Near the end of the court proceedings, the two sides agreed that the general’s remains should be interred in a cemetery in Culpeper, Va., but the indirect descendants wanted a say on where the statue would go, hoping to move it to Cedar Mountain Battlefield nearby.

In October, Judge D. Eugene Cheek Sr., of the Circuit Court of the City of Richmond said that the city had the right to dismantle the Hill statue and donate it to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. The City Council had decided that the statue is going to the Black History Museum.

“Over two years ago, Richmond was home to more confederate statues than any city in the United States,” Mayor Stoney said in a statement on Twitter after the statue was gone. “Collectively, we have closed that chapter. We now continue the work of being a more inclusive and welcoming place where ALL belong.”