A statue of a Revolutionary War general was removed from City Hall in Albany, New York, on Saturday over his ownership of slaves.
City workers removed a statue of Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler before loading it onto a trailer and hauling it to a storage facility. The statue’s removal fulfilled an executive order that Democratic Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan issued three years earlier.
As a Revolutionary War soldier, Schuyler led colonial forces defending against the British Saratoga campaign that sought to control the Hudson River valley. The British campaign was defeated at the Battle of Saratoga, marking the first time continental forces successfully repelled a large-scale British force. The battle marked a key turning point in the war and is credited with convincing the French to support the American war effort.
Schuyler is also notable as the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton. He is also the namesake of several locations across New York, including Schuyler County and Fort Schuyler.
Schuyler’s statue had stood in front of City Hall since 1925 and paid tribute to the Albany native’s service in the Continental Army, as well as his work in the Albany Common Council, the New York State Senate, and the U.S. Senate.
“The City’s decision to place a statute of Maj. Gen. Schuyler in front of City Hall ignored a grim aspect of his life, namely that he was reportedly the largest owner of enslaved people in Albany during his time,” Sheehan wrote in her June 11, 2020 order.
Sheehan’s order directed Schuyler’s statue to be stored until it can be given to a museum accredited by the New York State Department of Education or New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation “for future display with appropriate historical context.”
Sheehan tweeted several photos and a video of the statue removal on Saturday.
“Moving the Schuyler Statue is about realizing that as time marches on, times change, and we need to change and adapt with them. It is not about erasing history – it is about placing it in the context based on what we know now and based on what our residents are demanding we know,” Sheehan said in one of her Twitter posts.
Historial Figures Removed
Sheehan’s original 2020 order to remove the Schuyler statue came amid widespread protests and riots around the country following the death of George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody.
The demonstrations sparked by Floyd’s death gave rise to a broader debate over America’s racial history. While some localities handled their statue removals through a formal process, rioters took the issue into their own hands on numerous occasions, pulling monuments down on their own.
While several early statue removal efforts focused on Confederate generals, some efforts focused on monuments to American founding fathers such as Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—both of whom owned slaves.
In the summer of 2020, a statue of President Ulysses S. Grant was toppled. Grant had owned a slave for a brief period in his life but freed that man by 1859 and went on to lead Union forces against the slave-owning Confederate states during the Civil War.
In 2020, rioters in Portland, Oregon, toppled a statue of 16th President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had owned no slaves and had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in the Confederate states to be free. Lincoln also advocated for and saw several states ratify the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, prior to his assassination.
In June 2020, a group of Republican protesters defended a statue of 26th President Theodore Roosevelt against a removal effort. The statue, which stood in front of the American Museum of Natural History, featured Roosevelt on a horse flanked on one side by a Native American and on the other side by an African man.
The American Museum of Natural History said the statue “communicates a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing.” The statue was eventually removed from the museum’s front and relocated to North Dakota.