Richmond Quotes

“The question loomed again—massively so—a few minutes later as we strolled down Richmond's most famous, or infamous, street: Monument Avenue. The boulevard was lined with statues of the Confederacy's Holy Trinity—Davis, Lee and Jackson—and of two of their ablest lieutenants, Jeb Stuart and Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval commander and brilliant oceanographer....

The scale of Monument Avenue also amplified the weirdness of the whole enterprise. After all, Davis and Lee and Jackson and Stuart weren't national heroes. In the view of many Americans, they were precisely the opposite: leaders of a rebellion against the nation—separatists at best, traitors at worst. None of those honored were native Richmonders. And their mission failed. They didn't call it the Lost Cause for nothing. I couldn't think of another city in the world that lined its streets with stone leviathans honoring failed rebels against the state.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“Whatever one felt about the Confederates, their enshrinement on Monument Avenue was historic in its own right, a unique museum piece of the Lost Cause mentality.

Still others gave this rationale a political twist. "[Arthur] Ashe isn't a soldier and his statue will barely reach [Robert E.] Lee's saddle," said Wayne Byrd, who headed a chapter of the Heritage Preservation Association, a pro-rebel flag group I'd encountered elsewhere in the South. "This statue will trivialize Ashe and be disrespectful of Confederate-Americans who hallow the other men on that street."

In the name of inclusiveness and sensitivity—both to Ashe's memory and to "Confederate-Americans," a heretofore neglected minority—Byrd proposed memorializing still another ignored group: black Confederates. Recent scholarship suggested that some slaves and free blacks fought in the rebel ranks, though their numbers and motivation were unclear. In effect, the Heritage Preservation Association, one of America's most politically incorrect groups, was trying to claim politically correct motives while making a gesture that was precisely the opposite. By honoring blacks who took up arms in defense of their white masters, the group had found a sly way to disassociate the Cause from slavery.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“During a break, I approached Byrd in the hall and asked what he meant by the term Confederate-American. "A Confederate-American—then and now—is simply anyone who's against big government," he said. "We as Southern Americans just want to be left alone."

"Yeah, the South wanted to be left alone—to oppress people!" a long-haired man shouted.

"It was not about slavery!" a man with a rebel-flag T-shirt barked back. "It was states' rights!"

"Exactly. The right to own slaves. Tear the statues and plantations down!"

"Should we tear down the Pyramids because they were built by slaves? And what about Washington and Jefferson? They owned slaves. Should we tear down memorials to them?"

I noticed a white man in jeans and duckbill cap standing off to the side, smoking a cigarette and shaking his head as the others shouted. Wallace Faison was a peanut farmer from a small town near the North Carolina line. "For me it's not political at all," he said quietly. "The South—we lost. I feel like I lost, too. Monument Avenue is like that last Valhalla, that spiritual place I can go. It's crazy, I can't explain it, but that's how I feel.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War