Statues, new and returning, unveiled in Washington, D.C.

A Revolutionary War–era fife and drum corps whistled and rat-a-tatted at the unveiling of the Department of the Interior’s 14 newly installed statues at the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Over 100 attendees, including National Park Service and Freedom 250 staff, gathered under a blazing sun to witness the exhibition’s official ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The statues’ unveiling also marked the reemergence of one controversial bronze monument: a 14-foot-tall depiction of Revolutionary leader Caesar Rodney on his famous midnight ride to cast the tie-breaking vote for independence in 1776. After nearly a century in downtown Wilmington, Del., the statue of Rodney, who was a slave owner, was removed in 2020 amid Black Lives Matter protests. Now, six years later, Rodney’s is one of several statues the Trump administration is removing from storage.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was one of six speakers at the ceremony. Rollins alluded to the statue’s history. “For a time it all seemed hopeless—the tearing down of the statues, the erasing of our great American history,” she said. “But it also seemed hopeless 250 years ago.”

Rollins thanked President Donald Trump and fellow event speaker Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum for making D.C. “beautiful and great again.”

Not far from Freedom Plaza, another statue was recently placed on grounds adjacent to the White House. The replica of a Christopher Columbus statue replaces its predecessor, which protesters threw into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on July 4, 2020. A memorial for Confederate soldiers that was removed in 2023 will return to Arlington National Cemetery in 2027, and a statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike, which demonstrators set on fire in 2020, has been renovated and reinstalled in D.C.’s Judiciary Square.

Critics argue reinstalling statues erases 2020’s racial reckoning, when protesters or government officials took down monuments to historical figures who owned slaves or had Confederate ties. They lament that the Rodney statue’s base nearly doubled the government’s projected price and cost taxpayers $500,000—all to honor a figure from America’s past whose legacy was complicated by slave ownership.

“These people, according to history, were not really the heroes that they had been portrayed as,” journalist Cari Champion told CNN last year.

But many others disagree and are happy to see the statues return. They say figures who leave a historical legacy are worth honoring, even if they require balanced conversation about their flaws.

“A proper understanding of the human condition is that we’re fallible people, and while we can honor people because of great accomplishments, we don’t put them on a pedestal saying that they were perfect,” said Greg Schaller. Now director of Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute, Schaller attended Caesar Rodney High School in Camden, Del. “They’re not perfect, they’re deeply flawed, as we all are,” he said.

Schaller said it’s crucial to understand the Founders lived with a slavery system inherited from England, though many of their writings showed they disagreed with it. Commemorating their significance with a statue recognizes the good they did for America but doesn’t excuse their mistakes, he said. While there are surely some statues in the United States that wrongly honor historical figures, Schaller said leaders reacted rashly when they removed many in 2020. Reinstalling Rodney’s statue, he said, is a teaching moment.

“We ought to explain … what’s important about these people, but also I think it’s appropriate to talk at the same time about their flaws,” Schaller said.

After the ceremony, visitors meandered around Freedom Plaza, renamed in 1988 to honor Martin Luther King Jr. At Tuesday’s unveiling, Chris Haley said he enjoyed seeing statues of unsung heroes he’d known little about. He noted the black soldiers, many who were born into slavery, that represent six of the new Revolutionary-era statues in the plaza.

“When I saw all these African-American statues, and they wanted their freedom, I was like, why did we continue slavery for so much longer? Obviously, they played an important part in the freedom of our country. We should have realized that right off the bat, but we had to fight a civil war,” said Haley, who is brother to Vince Haley, a speaker at the event and director of the Domestic Policy Council for the Trump administration. “I liked seeing that—that’ll open people’s eyes to the sacrifices of the African-Americans who were obviously pretty important.”

Aimee Riegert, a Virginia resident who attended the unveiling ceremony, said that early American heroes who stood for their ideals regardless of risk demonstrated that anyone can make a difference in America.

“It’s a reminder that we all have a role to play and a great reminder that freedom isn’t free,” Riegert said.

The speakers did not touch on Rodney’s history as a slave owner, but they praised the history represented on the eve of America’s Semiquincentennial.

“The great achievement of the founding of the United States was not the perfection of man but the unleashing of the individual’s capacity to create, to build, to lift up,” said Vince Haley. “Like creation itself, the founding of the United States was good, very good, and remains so today.”

A Department of the Interior spokesperson told WORLD that a permanent location for the sculptures is undecided. The department didn’t specify when the exhibit would close but noted it will provide additional security in the area.

The “12 Soldiers of the Revolution Exhibition” was named after the epitaph of 15-year-old Continental soldier Simon Knowles, honored by one of the plaza’s new statues. One of his descendants, conservative political commentator Michael Knowles, spoke at the event, saying that his relative’s headstone in Maine reads four simple words: “Soldier of the Revolution.”

Several other Revolutionary-era figures came alive in reenactors who intermingled with the crowd. Ryan Williams, head docent at George Washington’s Office Museum in Winchester, Va., attended the ceremony dressed as George Washington.

Williams echoed the speakers’ emphasis on remembering America’s history. “The greatness of our country lies in its trials, tribulations, in the overcoming of those.
It’s something to be proud of,” he said. “I actually think it’s not a bruise or a black eye on our country. It’s a teaching moment, and I think we should be proud of the service that [Caesar Rodney] did do, and also know him for the things he was not so good about.”

Williams noted that the exhibit is temporary, and he hopes that people will take advantage of seeing the statues in person before they’re gone: “It’s the closest you’re going to get to seeing somebody like this in life because they don’t exist anymore.”