A metal box was found in Richmond, Virginia, under the base of the Statue of General Robert Lee, unbulled in September. It could contain relics of the secession war.
Le Monde with AFP
This is a find that revives hopes to discover a photo of Abraham Lincoln very awaited by collectors. A temporal capsule has been discovered, Monday, December 27, in the base of a Statue of a Confederate General debased in September.
“They found it!”, Tweeted the governor of Virginie Ralph Northam , a week after opening a first capsule who disappointed the experts. “It is likely the temporal capsule that everyone was looking for,” added the Democrat, joining the photos of a rectangular metal box of thirty centimeters long. The governor said the box would not be open Monday, the experts want to examine him.
A control capsule is a receptacle containing objects or documents representative of an era, for future generations. It was found under the base of the imposing equestrian statue of General Robert Lee, head of the Confederate army who defended slavery during the war of secession (1861-1865), inaugurated in 1890 in Richmond, the former capital of secessionists located in Virginia. View As a symbol of the country’s slavery by many Americans, the statue was unbulked in September, in a context of questioning Confederate monuments.
Seeking a photo of Abraham. Lincoln
Once the statue dismantled, experts began the research in his base of a mysterious temporal capsule placed there in 1887, which had to contain relics of the secession war, like buttons or bullets, from the currency. Confederate, a Bible, but especially a photo showing President Abraham Lincoln in his coffin, a cliché presented as a “historic bomb”, likely to distort the collectors’ market.
A first box had been exhumed, then open with care by Mr. Northam, but it contained only three books and a fabric envelope with a photograph, all damaged by the water, as well as a coin of Unknown origin. This capsule seems to have been placed in the base by workers who participated in the erection of the statue. One of the books was a guide for astronomers and browsers dating from 1875. But another seemed to have been published in 1889, two years after the assumed funeral of the capsule, suggesting that another receptacle of this type. could be under the base.
The Statue of General Lee in Richmond had become the target of anti-racist demonstrations after death in May 2020 by George Floyd, African-American asphyxiated under the knee of a white policeman in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, and the Climb of the Black Live Movement Matter (“the black lives count”).
During the Civil War, the Confederate South fought for the maintenance of slavery, abolished during the conflict in the rest of the country.