In the fall of 2023, at a foundry outside Virginia, a team of welders in protective gear dropped pieces of a Robert E. Lee statue into a 2,250-degree furnace. An arm disappeared into the heat, then a leg. It took many multihour sessions to liquefy the monument of Lee astride his horse. When they were ready to burn Lee’s face, they cut it from the head with a torch and lowered it into the molten abyss. As it melted, his mouth seemed to widen into a scarlet scream.
This was about more than the transformation of an old artifact. It was an attempt to destroy myths about the Civil War and the righteousness of the Southern cause that had persisted for over a hundred years.
