Loudoun's Confederate Statue Removed Overnight

The Confederate statue at the Loudoun County courthouse was removed overnight by the Daughters of the Confederacy in coordination with the county government. 

The work, planned in secrecy, was completed without incident. This morning only a portion of the concrete base remains.

The monument was moved to storage.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously July 9 to affirm that the “Silent Sentinel” statue belonged to the Loudoun Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and to allow them to remove the statue from public property.

The organization requested the opportunity to remove the statue amid a growing national movement to take down memorials to Confederate leaders and soldiers. They acknowledged supervisors were likely to take the statue down after the General Assembly this year granted localities the authority to alter or removed Confederate war memorials. 

The Daughters of the Confederacy asserted that they own the statue since they raised the bulk of the money to put it up. That private property claim allowed supervisors to avoid a lengthy public process to remove the monument. Instead, they essentially allowed the organization to come reclaim its property.

The statue, the “Silent Sentinel,” was commissioned by the Clinton Hatcher Camp Confederate Veterans and Sons, now the Clinton Hatcher Camp of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, and the Loudoun Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy, now the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which began raising funds for the project as early as 1901. In 1906, the Board of Supervisors agreed to allocate $500 for the project as long as the Sons and Daughters raise the remaining $2,500, and the statue was formally unveiled in 1908, in the height of the Jim Crow era as Confederate monuments were going up across the south.