Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Robert E. Lee Monument Will Stay in Charlottesville - City Council Votes to Leave it In Place


VICTORY IN CHARLOTTESVILLE!  WES BELLAMY'S MOTION TO MOVE THE ROBERT E. LEE STATUE FAILS...
...AND KRISTEN SZAKOS, THE WOMAN WHO FIRST CALLED FOR THE REMOVAL OF THE MONUMENT, ANNOUNCES SHE WILL NOT RUN FOR RE-ELECTION!
The motion failed on a 2-2 vote, at their regularly scheduled session last night, with Bellamy and Szakos voting to move the monument, Galvin and Mayor Signer voting to keep it in place, and Fenwick abstaining.  Later, Bellamy and Szakos put forth multiple motions with different wording but with the same call to remove the monument, all of which resulted in the same 2-2 vote, ending in defeat each time.
This decision will save the citizens of Charlottesville millions in wasted legal fees. Lawyers were standing by with injunctions and law suits ready to file had Bellamy's motion passed. City Councillors knew this and opinions from their own City Attorney and the Commonwealth's Attorney General confirmed that moving the monuments would have violated state law.
Disgraced Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy had called for his supporters to show up in force and apparently they did.  
After the initial vote, chaos erupted in council chambers and police and council members had to step in to intervene.  With the official closing of the Blue Ribbon Commission, the Va Flaggers call for the immediate resignation of Wes Bellamy and an end to the whole fiasco. It is obvious that he does not have the support of his peers or his constituents. He is clearly out of touch with the citizens of Charlottesville, unfit for office, and if allowed to remain on City Council, will continue to be a distraction and impediment to the success of the city.  
The victory in Charlottesville follows on the heels of a similar decision in Alexandria, where state representatives refused City Council's request to seek permission from the State legislature to remove the Confederate monument there, and the defeat of Mayoral candidates in Portsmouth and Richmond who had called for the removal of Confederate Monument.
It is fitting that just a few days after the Lee-Jackson Day holiday in Virginia, and on the eve of the celebration of his birth, we learn that the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville will remain and those who wanted to tear it down have been denied.
God bless the eternal memory of Robert E Lee...and God Save the South!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Virginia flaggers, Us Southern Northerners couldn't be more prouder of the fight you are taking head on for our Confederate ancestors and our heritage. And know this you have a large group of Confederate supporters up North Ohio.
Deo Vindice Sisters and Brothers.
Virginia Hesser Southern bloodlines on Northern soil!

Tony said...

My name is Anthony A Holland and I am a member of SCV Camp 1631 in Santa Barbara California. I am a Georgia born son of the south. We are 8 members strong and carry the colors proudly. The time I have lived in this state has been a real adventure. Liberal minded californian's just don't understand what it means to have a history and be proud of it. I do my best to share my history with my coworkers and friends. Some are interested some are not. I forward Virginia Flaggers e-mails to anybody who wants to open their minds to something other than liberal politics. I look forward to returning to Georgia after retirement. Keep the faith and god bless..

Steve Gambone said...

“I believe he (Robert E. Lee) will be regarded not only as the most prominent figure of the Confederacy, but as the Great American of the nineteenth century, whose statue is well worthy to stand on an equal pedestal with that of Washington, and whose memory is equally worthy to be enshrined in the hearts of all his countrymen. This estimate is based upon a criticism of his character as a man, a soldier, and a Christian citizen. As a thinker and man of intellectual powers little has been said of him, and yet, intellectual power, associated with moral purity, are the true spring of greatness.” -- British Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley

Note: In 1862 Wolseley put his British military career on hold to check out the War Between The States. He met with Generals Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson during that time.

The Right. said...

Awesome victory. Thank you Flaggers for all that you do.

Unknown said...

Best news I have heard in a long, long time. Stick together. Defeat the closed-minded politicians and agitators. Those who resist can prevail!

mountaindew171 said...

Wrong http://www.newsplex.com/content/news/Fenwick-to-vote-to-remove-statue-411879765.html Y'all want to come back?

Unknown said...


I'm glad the American conversation is now reexamining the South's determination to whitewash the legacy of the Civil War. There is so much falsehood spread about why the southern states seceded. Time is long past to set the record straight about Robert E. Lee and many other CSA leaders.

So much mythology exists about secessionist, Robert E. Lee. Much is made about his reported distaste for slavery. Some have repainted him as an abolitionist, but that is controversial at best.

Robert E. Lee did not free his slaves because of his personal nobility. He worked slaves to pay off family debt and kept them in bondage to do so, despite Custis's legal will that had established their emancipation years earlier. Sure, Lee wrote a proclamation of emancipation in 1863 of his slaves, one day after Lincoln. After Lincoln did, Lee did so because of a standing Henrico County court order that Lee could hold Custis's slaves for an additional period not to exceed five years. Lee went to court to fight to keep Custis's slaves that had actually been emancipated in Custis's will. Lee didn't exactly "legally inherit" the Custis slaves until a court ordered so under contest. Again, Lee was an executor of the Custis will and had been directed to free those slaves.

Robert E. Lee went to court to fight for the right to keep these same slaves past their emancipation by Custis in order to work them to pay down his family's debts. His decision to do so sparked rebellion he had to put down, even, and ship some of them under armed guarded march to Richmond to settle the plantation down.

As for the oft romanticized quotes shared to color Lee an abolitionist, consider a passage in an 1856 letter to his wife from the Smithsonian website:

The passage begins: “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.” But he goes on: “I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.”

Robert E. Lee felt he had a right to further subjugate Custis's slaves to pay off his family debts, despite a written will to the contrary. Apparently, he had a hand in how long "a wise and merciful Providence" would hold the Custis slaves in subjugation. Necessarily long enough, it seems, for his own family to profit financially a bit longer off their "painful discipline."

Faced with pivotal, moral choices, Lee made typical, financial choices of a Southern slave owner. He valued slave labor for financial gain and the protection of his own family's social position over their moral and apparent legal right of the emancipation. When Robert E. Lee had to make a moral and legal choice, he chose wrongly and went to court to defend his right to keep and work slaves that he was supposed to free. A short while later, he chose to lead the secessionists over the the choice to lead the Union. Robert E. Lee, thereby, was destined to infamy.

Foogan said...

Nothing worse when people make up their own facts......He choose his country, Virginia. We are loosely independent sovereign states or countries back before Lincoln decided to kill 800,000 of us own countrymen because where else was he going to get the money to pay for government. You Yankee slave traders and holders sure trying to snow the rest of us....By the way, Corwin Amendment destroys your self imposed morality or lack thereof when making the war all about slavery..

Unknown said...

Great news just made my day!lets celebrate and remember all our history but let's also never forget today is a different time and time changes everything ,let's pray for the better with open hearts and open minds