Crews began removing the final three Confederate-linked statues from the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol on Friday after Democrats buried a provision in the budget that set up the removal.
The statues depict Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate General and two-time Virginia Governor William “Extra Billy” Smith, and Confederate Army surgeon Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire. Capitol Square has displayed Jackson’s statue since 1875, McGuire’s since 1904, and Smith’s since 1906.
Former state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) introduced legislation earlier this year directing the state to remove the statues. It passed the Senate but died in a House committee before lawmakers resurrected the plan during state budget negotiations, WTVR Richmond reported.
Virginia gifted the Confederate statues to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, according to the Department of General Services.
“Stonewall” Jackson is one of the Confederacy’s most iconic generals. His actions at the First Battle of Bull Run helped lead the Confederates to a major victory early in the Civil War. A separate monument to Jackson that had stood on Richmond’s Monument Avenue since 1919 was removed in July 2020 during the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s death.
Smith took over as a commander of Confederate troops after their commander died, despite acknowledging that he had little knowledge of battlefield tactics.
McGuire served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army who worked to save numerous lives. After the war, he served as the president of the American Medical Association, as pointed out by Fox News Digital columnist and West Virginia resident David Marcus.
“I guess Woke 1.0 is still with us, after all,” Marcus said of the statue removal, referencing a comment made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) when she was pressed about radical leftist priorities like defunding the police. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” AOC said.
Marcus added, “It’s interesting that the people who tore down statues, renamed schools, and banned mascots, are furious that the inviolable name of Lake Ontario could ever be altered.”
The Left has aggressively pushed for the removal of statues depicting Confederate figures — and sometimes even Founding Fathers — since 2015. The movement to remove depictions of American history gained steam in 2017 after the deadly Charlottesville rally and in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd and the ensuing riots. Public polls during that time showed that a plurality of Americans favored keeping the statues in place despite the Left’s campaign to tear down historic monuments.
Despite the public opposition to taking down the monuments, around 90 Confederate statues were removed in 2020 alone. Ten monuments were torn down by rioters that year. From 2020 to 2024, a total of 123 Confederate monuments have been taken down across the country, including 38 in Virginia.
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