Rewriting history was the goal.
Mary Anna Lee, the widow of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, wanted a version of her husband’s life told. So she gave exclusive rights to prominent sculptor Edward Virginius Valentine to make his likeness.
Valentine created a triumphant iteration of Lee: cane in one hand, hat in the other. A second work, commissioned after his death, portrayed him as a fallen, Christlike hero. Valentine would go on to make eight statues of the storied Civil War general, who famously resigned his U.S. Army commission to fight for the Confederacy.
While many public honors to the Confederate States of America and its leaders were dismantled following the killing of George Floyd three years ago, reminders commemorating Southern troops and leaders remain across the state — from monuments and statues to the names of schools, streets and buildings. Many were born in the decades after the Civil War, when the so-called “Lost Cause” movement of reframing the conflict as an issue of states’ rights, not slavery, took hold.
Read the full story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
