Guardians Condemn Virginia’s Historic Purge at Capitol Square

Guardians Condemn Virginia’s Historic Purge

Democracy Hypocrisy: $1.8 Million in Taxpayer Expense Despite Public Opposition

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s all-Democrat-controlled state government has completed a troubling purge of Virginia’s history by removing three century-old memorials from the Commonwealth’s most symbolic civic landscape: Capitol Square.

The statues honored three important figures whom iconoclasts reduced to “Confederate bad,” ignoring lifetimes of achievement, contributions to Virginia, and lessons of patriotism and perseverance—all removed at taxpayer expense.

The political party that brought Virginia this catastrophe captured the Capitol on a platform of bringing “affordability” to the people. It is hard to see how this enormous expenditure translates into a lower cost of living for Virginians.

Apart from that pecuniary problem, Virginians should consider this a slap in the face to their opposition to the destruction of Virginia’s public history. Polls of Virginians show that only a small minority supported removing Virginia’s military history, even when related to the bogeymen of “the Confederacy.” A September 2017 Mason-Dixon poll showed that only 35% supported removal, while a Roanoke College poll that month tallied only 28% support for removing “Confederate General” statues like Lee and Jackson.

But that didn’t matter. In fact, when the bill sponsoring the mayhem stalled in committee, legislative leaders hid the measure in the must-pass budget bill. This maneuver suppressed the voices of dissent, including those objecting to frivolous spending as well as the majority of the public who opposed removing historic monuments. Their clandestine strategy arguably exposed the true agenda: an iconoclastic purge of Virginia’s history by any means necessary.

Oh, and it didn't matter that the entire Capitol grounds is a National Register Historic District. [1]

This maneuver was the same strategy employed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in her purge of military assets: using the 2021 must-pass National Defense Authorization Act as a “vehicle” for destruction.

With Democrat hands on all the levers of power, the budget passed in June and took effect July 1.  Less than 60 days later, the destruction was complete. The bill sponsor now has an appointment in the Governor’s Office.  But destructive credit is also due the previous administration. The Capital Square Preservation Council, responsible for safeguarding Capitol Square, was disbanded during Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration.[2]

All Americans should view this as more than just “redecorating” public spaces. These removals represent a theft of the inheritance of our intergenerational public memory, untethering us from the lessons of history by silencing voices from the past. Chinese Communist tyrant Mao knew the strategy: eliminate “The Four Olds”—old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. Mao’s revolutionary Red Guards, like today’s nihilist vandals who toppled a memorial to Christopher Columbus and lobbed it into a lake, believe there is no construction without destruction.

George Orwell’s omen in 1984— “who controls the past controls the future” and “who controls the present controls the past”—may be coming to fruition. Virginia has led the nation in removals of public monuments and memorials, with at least 70; 24 in the capital city alone.  At nearly three-quarters of a million dollars per monument, someone has made a fortune on the Commonwealth’s taxpayers.

Most public monuments were erected by our ancestors as messages to future generations Books can be burned, libraries and museums closed, but granite and bronze require greater effort to silence.

As G. K. Chesterton warned, and President John F. Kennedy echoed, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up.”

G. K. Chesterton described tradition as “the democracy of the dead,” a compact between generations that refuses to let the living silence their ancestors simply because those ancestors can no longer answer back. Capitol Square’s monuments were part of that intergenerational conversation.

By removing these memorials, Virginia leadership is telling us there is nothing to be learned from them—and that it simply does not care whether the people disagree. What better way to lose one’s bearings than to eliminate guideposts from the past?

Stephen Dill Lee supported such monuments, arguing that they stand as “great interrogation marks” to the observer’s soul. A monument interrupts indifference, raises questions, and invites curiosity about the people, causes, conflicts, virtues, failures, and sacrifices our ancestors wanted remembered. Removing them erases the visible question mark before future viewers can ask the question.

So why were these removed monuments erected originally? None of the removed memorials were “squatters.” They were duly approved by the General Assembly based on significance to the Commonwealth.

Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was a retired military officer and teacher, but without his two years of service to Virginia, his name might appear only in obscure historical records. His short 39-year life was a lesson in adversity, self-discipline, grit, and tenacity. A devout Christian, he found consolation after the untimely deaths of his wife and first child. He was a friend to Black Virginians, using the Bible to educate them in his Sunday school class despite the law. Responding to Virginia’s call, he served only two years before his death, yet earned a prominent place in the English language: the verb “stonewall” reflects his success in battle. Jackson’s death made him a martyr to many Virginians.

His statue, a gift from an anonymous Englishman, was accepted by Gov. James Kemper, who announced at the dedication that “the commonwealth this day emblazons the virtues, and consecrates in enduring bronze the image, of her mighty dead.”[3] Kemper said it should remain in situ “to inspire our children with patriotic fervor.”

William “Extra Billy” Smith came from a middle-class Virginia family and became a consummate entrepreneur, gaining and losing two fortunes; first as a coach operator. He served in the Virginia Assembly, entered the U.S. Congress, and served as governor from 1846 to 1849, promoting public education, internal improvements, Capitol Square landscaping, and Virginia’s Mexican War troop quota. After bankruptcy, he chased the California Gold Rush, made a second fortune, and returned to politics. At the War’s start, Smith rejected a military appointment for lack of training, but fate found him in June 1861, when the local commander defending Fairfax was killed in a Union cavalry attack. At 64, Smith became an accidental combatant, rose to brigadier general, then resigned after re-election as governor for the war’s final year.  Facing immense inflation, Gov. Smith created an innovative relief plan for hungry women and children.  His term ended with his arrest after Richmond was captured.

Gov. Smith’s memorial was unveiled on Memorial Day in 1906, challenging the “Confederate statue” narrative because that day honored Federal military dead. One of only two Virginia governors represented in Capitol Square, it listed his extensive résumé. Gov. Claude Swanson accepted it for the people of the Commonwealth because “from early manhood to mature old age, in peace, in war, in the days of her power and splendor, through her gloom and defeat, this devoted son of Virginia firmly, faithfully and fearlessly served her.”[4] Swanson added that “future Virginia…can point to this son as one of her brightest and purest jewels” and called Smith “the highest type of a Virginian.” Only 4.5% of Smith’s 89 years involved service to Virginia during her Confederate years, yet he was cancelled from the public square for it. Though uniformed, the monument listed his broad service to the Commonwealth, now suppressed from view of the hundreds of thousands of annual visitors.

Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire was a Winchester-born physician, teacher, and surgeon whose medical and scientific significance far surpassed his military service. After Winchester Medical College and study in Philadelphia, he briefly taught at Tulane before answering Virginia’s call. His medical knowledge moved him from the ranks to the Medical Corps as surgeon for Stonewall Jackson’s command and later chief surgeon of Jackson’s corps. He helped establish the humanitarian principle, codified in the Winchester Accord, that captured military medical personnel should be treated as noncombatants. Colleagues on both sides praised his skill and insistence that doctors treat the wounded rather than sit in prison.

McGuire also improved field hospitals and ambulance details in Jackson’s corps. A first-rate practical surgeon for his era, gifted organizer, and prolific writer and speaker, he shared medical knowledge in textbooks and professional journals, many on urology. After the war, he built lasting Richmond institutions—hospitals, a nursing school, and a medical college feeding into today’s VCU system—and rose to the presidency of the American Medical Association.

Dr. McGuire’s memorial was dedicated on January 7, 1904. Only four years of his 65-year life were spent in the military’s Medical Corps, but the iconoclasts felt this, along with his views about race, though widely accepted in the era, including in the North, was enough to purge his immense contributions to the Commonwealth from public view. The monument was accepted by Gov. A. J. Montague, “with the confidence that it will be cherished as an evidence of his rich contribution to science, humanity and country,”[5] and “will proclaim with duration and eloquence of bronze the memory of a patriot, soldier and scientist, whose life powerfully impressed his day and generation.”

The result of these removals is the suppression of history in a diminished Capitol Square. Removal from this historic location—the seat of Virginia government and a venue enhanced by tributes to the removed men—sends a clear message: only certain history is allowed to be told here, and who knows what will be banned next.

Monuments are a form of civic speech. They speak across time, not only for the government that approved it, but for the citizens, families, veterans, donors, and those who established its meaning as a message to future generations. To remove one because modern officials dislike its message is not merely landscaping; it is the suppression of historical intergenerational communication. Instead of allowing the monuments to continue speaking, Virginia’s Democrat government chose elimination—absence over memory, political cleansing over inheritance, and erasure over contextualization.

So why were these monuments specifically targeted for removal? Jackson has been targeted persistently by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has advocated for removal through its “Whose Heritage?”[6] target list. But the other two were not. But as the man who literally wrote the book on iconoclasm, Alexander Adams, said, “if it’s old and bronze it has to go.”  

So-called “Confederate statues” are removed because, not despite, being landmarks set by our forebears as messages from the past.  They are low-hanging fruit in the war on American history fueled by critical theory applied to history (i.e. Critical Historiography).

Like the French Revolution, there is no stopping the bloodlust until it collapses from within. Destruction of Richmond’s famed historic Monument Avenue by institutional iconoclasts was not enough to assuage the pillaging vandals; it only encouraged them. Hopefully for Virginia, that collapse comes before Washington is removed from Capitol Square.

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[1] National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form, Capitol of Virginia/Virginia State Capitol; https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/66000911; Accessed August 30, 2026.

[2] The Surreptitious Disappearance of the Capitol Square Preservation Council; The Roanoke Star; February 12, 2026; https://www.theroanokestar.com/2026/02/12/the-surreptitious-disappearance-of-the-capitol-square-preservation-council/; Accessed August 30, 2026.

[3] Inauguration of the Jackson Statue, Tuesday, October 26, 1875; https://archive.org/details/inaugurationofja01virg/page/5/mode/1up; Accessed August 30, 2026.

[4]“Extra Billy” Smith Monument Unveiled; Ledger-Star

Ledger-Dispatch; Norfolk, Virginia · Wednesday, May 30, 1906; pp. 1, 6.

[5] Hunter Holmes McGuire, M.D., L1. D., Unveiling a statue of in the Capital Square, Richmond, Va., January 7, 1904; Southern Historical Society Papers, volume 31; https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2001.05.0289%3Achapter%3D1.41; Accessed August 30, 2026.

[6] Whose Heritage? Map; https://www.splcenter.org/whose-heritage-map/; Accessed August 30, 2026

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