Richmond VA – David J. Kent

Lincoln and Tad, Richmond VA The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia once had a statue depicting Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad sitting on a park bench. As of this writing it is no longer there, and hasn’t been since 2023. So, where is it?

I discussed Lincoln’s trip into Richmond in a previous post, which you can read here. In a nutshell, Lincoln had been visiting Ulysses S. Grant and the troops at City Point, a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers. When Richmond fell and Jefferson Davis’s government fled south, Lincoln decided to take Tad and visit the city. There he walked from the river to what had been the White House of the Confederacy. Shortly after his visit, Lincoln made his way back to Washington, and Lee surrendered to Grant by the time he got there.

The White House of the Confederacy, along with Tredegar Iron Works and the Appomattox Courthouse building where Lee surrendered, is now the American Civil War Museum (next door to the main location is the Tredegar Pattern Building, still run by the National Park Service as part of its Richmond National Battlefield). The statue of Lincoln and Tad commemorating Lincoln’s visit was installed at the Tredegar site in 2003. Not everyone was happy. In a post on the Lincoln Group of DC’s website, Lincolnian.org, Wendy Swanson noted that:

However, despite this peaceful theme the atmosphere at the statue’s actual dedication, almost twenty years ago on April 5, 2003, was anything but serene. Protestors with pro-Confederate leanings did their best to disrupt the dedication ceremony. Garbed in clothing from the era as well as modern t-shirts containing themes derogatory to the Sixteenth President, the protestors’ presence at the dedication was quite evident. They greeted ceremony attendees with chants and anti-Lincoln signs and slogans. During the ceremony a small plane flew over the crowd, displaying a banner containing words made infamous by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, “Sic semper tyrannis.” There also was a second event held that day to counter the tribute to Lincoln. At Hollywood Cemetery there was a protest vigil at the grave of Jefferson Davis.

While many people were in Gettysburg this week commemorating the Battle of Gettysburg, which occurred July 1-3, 1863, I was in Richmond visiting Tredegar and the Confederate White House. Two and a half years ago the statue of Lincoln and Tad was moved “temporarily” to The Valentine, a Richmond-themed Museum two blocks away. At Tredegar the statue had its own stone exedra bearing the words from Lincoln’s second inaugural address: To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds. At the Valentine, the statue sits in a small corner outside the building, where it is expected to sit for several years while the National Park Service builds an amphitheater at the Tredegar site. The amphitheater is apparently still under construction, although it looked largely finished and quite impressive during my visit this week.

Jefferson Davis at the Valentine, Richmond VA While at the Valentine I also got to see another “Civil War President.” A statue of Jefferson Davis had stood for many decades along Monument Avenue in Richmond. During the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the Davis statue was vandalized with paint, then pulled down. That statue now sits – or more accurately, lays – in the Valentine’s main gallery. Pink and yellow paint splatters the bronze, Davis’s head is bashed in from the fall off his pedestal, and his right arm is nearly severed. The display symbolizes the city’s change in attitude over its prior adulation of Confederate figures. All of its many dozens of Confederate statues have now been removed, with the exception of a few remaining on the grounds of the Viriginia State Capitol (you walk past them as you proceed from the equestrian statue of George Washington to the Governor’s Mansion). They are now joined by two large group statues, one featuring the many women who fought for voting rights and the other of Barbara Johns and others who fought the battle that would become Brown v. Board of Education. Johns is scheduled to replace Robert E. Lee in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Interestingly, it was Edward Virginius Valentine who had sculpted both the Lee statue (now removed from the hall and currently at Richmond’s Museum of History and Culture) and the one of Davis now at the Valentine Museum. Hopefully, Johns will make it into Statuary Hall soon, perhaps after the new governor takes off after this fall’s election.