Equestrian statue of Robert Edward Lee in TX Dallas US

CountryUS
Town:TX Dallas
Year of creation:1936
Rider(s):Lee, Robert Edward

(1807–1870), a top graduate of the United States Military Academy who distinguished himself as an exceptional officer in the US army for 32 years. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his personal desire for the Union to stay intact and despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had offered Lee command of the Union Army. He soon emerged as a shrewd tactician and battlefield commander, winning numerous battles against larger Union forces.

Many military historians have praised Lee’s abilities as a tactician, but his strategic vision was more doubtful. Both of his invasions of the North ended in defeat and he surrendered to Grant in 1865. As Lee was the commanding officer of all the Confederate forces, the remaining armies soon also capitulated. Lee rejected the idea of starting of a guerrilla campaign against the North, and called for reconciliation between the North and the South. He became the great Southern hero of the Civil War, a post-war icon of the ‘Lost Cause of the Confederacy’ to some. His popularity grew, even in the North, and especially after his death in 1870.
Sculptor(s):Proctor, Alexander Phimister

(1860 –1950) was an American sculptor with the contemporary reputation as one of the nation’s foremost animaliers.

Description:

Robert E. Lee on Traveller (also known as General Robert E. Lee and Confederate Soldier, and Robert E. Lee and Young Soldier) depicts Lee, his horse Traveller, and a young Confederate States Army officer. The statue was unveiled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and removed in 2017.

When Proctor was hired by the Southern Women’s Memorial Association to design an equestrian statue of Lee, he initially planned for the statue to depict Lee and a young Confederate States Army soldier heading into a storm with their heads down and the heads of their mounts lowered. Members of the Association were offended that the statue would depict a defeated South, so Proctor redesigned the statue to depict Lee as confidently marching forward. This new design was quickly and enthusiastically approved by members of the association and by Lee’s grandson. The statue cost $50,000. It took Proctor two years to complete a working model of the statue and another two years to complete the finished statue.

In July 2015, the statue was vandalized when someone painted the word “shame” across its base. The vandalism occurred concurrently with protests against Confederate monuments and memorials across the United States. The statue was removed in 2017 following the Unite the Right rally where white nationalists protested the planned removal of another statue of Lee; the rally resulted in the death of a woman at the hands of a suspected white nationalist. Dallas’ city council voted to remove the statue, and the city’s mayor viewed the statue as a symbol of injustice. In 2019, the statue was put up for auction by the city of Dallas; money gained from the sale of the statue was to be used to fund the removal of Dallas’ Confederate War Memorial. The starting bid for the auction was $450,000. The auction was won by a Dallas law firm which bid $1,435,000 on the statue. According to the terms of sale, the statue cannot be displayed within Dallas citylimits . In September of the same year, the statue was installed at a golf course near the Mexican border crossing.

Photographers unknown