Virginia removes three Confederate memorials
[August 29, 2026]
Years into efforts to purge Richmond, Virginia — a former
Confederate Capital — of memorials honoring the Confederacy, the
Commonwealth of Virginia began removing three more Confederate memorials
in the city on Friday.
Statues honoring Confederate Generals Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and
Gov. William “Extra Billy” Smith, as well as Confederate Dr. Hunter
Holmes McGuire, had been displayed in Capitol Square, a public park and
civic campus near the state Capitol, for more than 100 years. |
This image taken from a WRIC video shows workers attaching straps to a
Confederate statue as they prepare to remove it from Capitol Square in
Richmond, Va., on Friday, Aug. 28, 2026. (Courtesy WRIC) |
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The Virginia legislature ordered the statues’ removal during its
2026 session.
“This doesn’t change the history of the Civil War,” said former
Democratic State Sen. Adam Ebbin, who sponsored the legislation.
“It changes who we choose to venerate on the Capitol lawn.”
Efforts to remove Confederate statues from prominent places of
honor in Richmond began in 2018, estimated Democratic state Sen.
Mike Jones.
“They’re symbols,” Jones said of the monuments. “Is this what
the Commonwealth is about? Is this where we want to direct
people to?”
“It's not.”
The monuments will be preserved by the Shenandoah Valley
Battlefields Foundation, which said in a statement the statues
will be relocated to battlefield sites within the Shenandoah
Valley.
“These monuments were intended to serve as tributes to valor,
sacrifice and community heritage during a difficult chapter in
American history,” the Virginia division of the United Daughters
of the Confederacy wrote in a statement. “Our desire is that
memorials and works of art should be displayed in the manner in
which donors intended, so that the public may continue to learn
from them, think deeply about them and come to their own
conclusions.”
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