Posted on August 6, 2019

Confederate Monument Defaced Last Month Has Been Removed from Santa Ana Cemetery

Alicia Robinson, Orange County Register, August 1, 2019

A monument to Confederate soldiers who settled in and helped establish Orange County after the Civil War, no longer stands at the Santa Ana Cemetery.

Erected in 2004 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the 9-foot-tall granite structure – which had been vandalized with red paint and the word “racists” last month – was removed early Thursday, Aug. 1, Orange County Cemetery District General Manager Tim Deutsch said in a news release. {snip}

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The district contacted the Orange County chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to discuss altering the monument per an agreement the two parties had apparently reached. But, Deutsch said last month, the Confederate group had not followed through and had stopped responding to his inquiries, so the district’s board ordered the monument removed.

Robert Williams, who leads the Orange County chapter and statewide division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, disputes the district’s account of the monument saga.

Reached Thursday, Williams said district officials are motivated by “the most absurd kind of political correctness” and that there are plenty of records and people who were involved in putting up the monument. {snip}

“Nobody put it there in the middle of the night – there was a huge public ceremony,” Williams said.

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The monument names 10 men and also commemorates “C.S.A,” the Confederate States of America. Two panels are etched with the names of [Jefferson] Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee.

In the news release, Deutsch said the district wanted the monument out quickly because there’s a shortage of burial plots, and it became “an unsightly public nuisance” after the vandalism. {snip}

Williams said he believes the district’s actions, seizing and removing private property, were illegal.

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