United States
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A box, believed to have been stored inside the plinth of a Confederate statue one hundred and thirty-four years ago, was found a week ago in Virginia. Its content is far from the expectations of historians.
Is it the discovery of an incredible one hundred and thirty-four years old treasure? Or that of a simple keepsake box left there by a man seeking posthumous glory? In short, this is the debate that has animated the American media for nearly a week.
On December 17, while dismantling the stone plinth of the statue of General Robert E. Lee, in the center of Richmond (Virginia), local workers fell on a box, encrusted in the stone. Neither one nor two, the site is stopped. Experts and historians are called in to the rescue. Even Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor of the US state, goes there.
If the commotion is such, it is because petty cash matters. According to several articles dating from 1887, a Confederate time capsule was buried at the time in the pedestal of the statue. Archival documents, present in the library of Virginia, claim that 37 residents of Richmond, but also organizations and entrepreneurs, have stored no less than 60 objects for future generations, including many memories of the Civil War , from the Confederate States, and even a photo of Lincoln in his coffin. Enough to make it a coveted treasure.
Years of mobilization to bring down Robert Lee
For several years, the monuments erected in homage to Robert Lee, the army chief …