[guest post by Dana]

After a two-year effort, the city of Richmond, Virginia, chosen capital of the Confederacy, removed its last remaining city-owned Confederate monument:

After receiving a favorable court ruling last week, workers made quick work to remove the A.P. Hill statue on the intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road. Team Henry Enterprises, the Newport News-based contractor that dismantled the Robert E. Lee monuments and others, were contracted to remove the Hill statue.

“I’m just proud to see my city start a project and finish a project,” said Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. “This is something that we committed to years ago, when we sought out to turn the page on our Confederate history and start running a new chapter for the city of Richmond.”

“Richmond had more Confederate monuments than any other city in the United States of America, so this wasn’t just two years of work, this was 100 years of difficulty,” said Stoney. “I’m proud that we’ve now arrived at this moment in our history.”

The report says that the city officials confirm that the statue will be donated to the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia.

The removal of Hill’s statue, however, was not without complications:

Several indirect descendants of the Confederate general opposed the city’s plans and made their case in court following the city’s petition in May 2022. Their dispute centered on who is the rightful owner of the 130-year-old monument…“To us this is his headstone,” said John Hill, one of the Confederate general’s collateral descendants. “I feel like anyone else with a headstone with their family name on it, you don’t want to see it come down.”

After multiple court proceedings, Hill’s legal efforts were rebuffed by a Richmond Circuit Court judge in December.

[Hill]…said he doesn’t oppose the city’s plan to return Ambrose Powell Hill to his Culpepper home, but he intends to file an appeal to retain ownership of the statue.

I don’t think Hill’s claim that anyone with a headstone bearing their family name would not want to see it come down is true across the board. As far as monuments go, even the descendants of Confederate leaders wanted to see statues of their forefathers taken down:

The great-great grandchildren of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson have a message for those who adamantly want to preserve the Confederate leaders’ monuments: Let it go.

Gen. Robert E. Lee:

“Eventually, someone is going to have to make a decision, and if that’s the local lawmaker, so be it. But we have to be able to have that conversation without all of the hatred and the violence. And if they choose to take those statues down, fine,” Robert E. Lee V, 54, of Washington DC, told CNN.

Jefferson Davis:

Bertram Hayes-Davis, great-great-grandson of the Confederate president Jefferson Davis told CNN’s Don Lemon that such statues should be moved to a museum if “that’s offensive to a large majority of the public.”

“In a public place, if it is offensive and people are taking issue with it, let’s move it. Let’s put it somewhere where historically it fits with the area around it so you can have people come to see it, who want to understand that history and that individual.”

Stonewall Jackson:

Two men who say they are the great-great grandsons of Stonewall Jackson published an open letter asking the Richmond mayor to remove Jackson’s statue – and others – from a prominent avenue in Richmond.

“We are writing to say that we understand justice very differently from our grandfather’s grandfather, and we wish to make it clear his statue does not represent us”, the open letter read in part…William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian said they know there are two sides to Jackson. He taught Sunday school to slaves, for instance. “But we cannot ignore his decision to own slaves, his decision to go to war for the Confederacy, and, ultimately, the fact that he was a white man fighting on the side of white supremacy.”

Compare those statements with this tidbit from descendant John Hill:

Hill said he was opposed to the removal of all the Richmond-owned Confederate statues because he sees them as a part of history. He also said that although many of the statues are seen as symbols of slavery and oppression, his ancestor did not own slaves.

“All of his census documents show he never owned a slave and he did not believe in slavery,” he said

About A.P. Hill:

Ambrose Powell Hill was born on November 9, 1825, at Greenland, his father’s plantation near Culpeper…Hill was a Confederate general in the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Behind Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and James Longstreet, “Little Powell,” as he was sometimes called, was Robert E. Lee‘s most trusted lieutenant, best known for leading his Light Division in headlong charges but just as effective when making stubborn defensive stands…he fought hard and well at Antietam (1862) and Chancellorsville (1863), and after Jackson’s death he took over the army’s new Third Corps.

Turn the page.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

While speaking at a Republican gathering in New York on Saturday night, in which audience members included notable members of the far-right, MAGAland, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., and the founder of Vdare, Marjorie Taylor Greene made these comments:

Before scoffing at the idea that she played a role in the Jan. 6 attack, she made a crack about how unfamiliar she had been with the layout of the Capitol complex: “I couldn’t even find a bathroom.”

“Then Jan. 6 happens and next thing you know, I organized the whole thing along with Steve Bannon here,” Greene said with apparent sarcasm, to laughter from attendees. “And I will tell you something: If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won.”

“Then Jan. 6 happens and next thing you know, I organized the whole thing along with Steve Bannon here…And I will tell you something: If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s January 6th comments at last night’s New York Young Republican Club Gala:

“I got to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.” pic.twitter.com/KtiecOAlgd

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 11, 2022

Claiming that if she had been in charge of the planning of Jan. 6, “we would have won” and “it would’ve been armed” makes it sound like Greene was actually disappointed by how the day turned out. And while there were indeed guns in the hands of rioters that day, she and Bannon would have made sure there were even more guns because apparently, that’s what would have secured a “win”. But how? Tell us, Marge, what you would have wanted people to do with those guns and what would a “win” look like??

This is an astounding thing for a sitting member of Congress to say, even if she writes it off as sarcasm “making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th.” But Greene isn’t any person on the street making these comments uh, jokes. She is a sitting member of Congress. And that *should* mean something.

As the White House put it:

… goes against our fundamental values as a country for a Member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government. This violent rhetoric is a slap in the face to the Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police, the National Guard, and the families who lost loved ones as a result of the attack on the Capitol. All leaders have a responsibility to condemn these dangerous, abhorrent remarks and stand up for our Constitution and the rule of law.”

Greene and her never-ending cheap MAGAland antics remind me once again why Americans consistently (and rightfully) hold Congress in such low regard. That the audience laughed at her Jan. 6 “jokes,” as she knew they would, makes me happy, yet again, to no longer belong to the Republican Party.

Q: Do you think that Greene shot herself in the foot with these comments in light of angling for an in with Kevin McCarthy, whom she is supporting for Speaker and told the New York Times “I think that to be the best speaker of the House and to please the base, he’s going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway”?

–Dana