CHARLESTON — A highway marker commemorating Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee will once again be displayed downtown, ending a year-long legal battle over its removal.
“Lee will rise again in Charleston,” read a July 29 statement from Brett Barry, president of the American Heritage Association — the same group that also recently settled an even longer lawsuit against the Charleston City Council over its removal of the statue of John C. Calhoun from Marion Square.
Rumors have swirled since that the Lee marker may end up in Marion Square, but no one has confirmed its final resting place or that of Calhoun, although terms of the Calhoun settlement explicitly bar that statue from being displayed, publicly or privately, anywhere within the city’s limits.
The monument to Lee was previously located on King Street in front of Charleston Charter School for Math and Science. It was removed in July 2021 at the request of the Charleston County School District and placed in storage at a city warehouse on Milford Street until late May. That’s when the local chapter of the United Daughter of the Confederacy, who originally erected the monument in 1947 and filed the suit against the district, took possession of the marker.
Dale Theiling, chairman of the Board of Field Officers of the Fourth Brigade, the historic militia that owns Marion Square, said the board has been in discussions with the women’s group.
“The UDC is considering Marion Square,” Theiling said Aug. 8.
Representatives from the state chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy did not respond immediately for comment.
Barry, whose heritage group provided financial backing for the suits against the school district and the city, told The Post and Courier that Lee will be re-erected in downtown Charleston, but that “the new location for Lee is not being disclosed at this time.”
The lawsuit argued that the school district violated the South Carolina Heritage Act, which provides that monuments and memorials on public grounds commemorating American wars or Native or African American history cannot be “relocated, removed, disturbed, or altered” without approval from the state legislature.
The city has argued that the removal did not violate the Heritage Act, as the marker itself was not explicitly a “war memorial.”
In January, S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office wrote an amicus brief supporting the claim that the district had violated the state act. He previously threatened to sue the city of Charleston and the school district over the marker’s removal.
“The lawsuit was simply withdrawn since we achieved a better outcome,” Barry told the paper in an email July 31.
In the July 29 statement declaring victory, Barry referred to the Confederate general as “fabled.”
Following his defeat in April 1865, Lee argued against creating monuments to the former Confederacy, saying it would “keep open the sores of war.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
