A statue of Thomas Jefferson that has stood in City Hall for more than 100 years has been carted up and hauled away for relocation after it drew offense from Democrats, according to a reporter for the New York Post.
Jefferson's statue can be seen inside a crate marked "Fragile" in a Monday evening tweet from Julia Marsh, City Hall bureau chief for the Post.
"That's Thomas Jefferson's statue behind the wooden boards and foam," Marsh tweeted. "Art handlers are preparing to crate him up and lower him down the stairs at City Hall using an elaborate pulley system. He's headed to NY Historical Society."
Subsequent tweets show workers pushing the boxed-up statue down the hallway of the rotunda and then being lifted over the side by ropes and pulleys.
"Hope it's insured! Art handlers slowly guide the 1833 Thomas Jefferson statue down the City Hall rotunda," she tweeted as workers slowly guided the statue down to the main floor.
The City Council voted unanimously in October to remove the 7-foot statue because of Jefferson's slave ownership, but had not decided where it would be moved.
It first appeared in City Hall in the 1830s and was moved to the Council chamber 80 years later, where it has overlooked City Council meetings ever since.
Though Jefferson is the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and served as the nation's third president, he also owned slaves, and fathered six children with one of them, Sally Hemings, according to a variety of scientific and historical investigations.
In January 2000, a committee formed by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation reported that the weight of all known evidence — from a comprehenisve DNA study, original documents, written and oral historical accounts, and statistical data — indicated that Thomas Jefferson was the likely father of all six of Sally Hemings's children listed in Monticello records. In June 2018, the foundation, with an introduction of a new exhibit on Sally Hemings, asserted the relationship is a "settled historical matter."
That fact and Jefferson's move to push Native Americans off their ancestral lands drove council member Inez Barron to say the statue should not be in "a position of honor and recognition and tribute" in the chamber.
Conservatives disagreed with the move, with former President Donald Trump writing in a statement from his Save America PAC in October.
The late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important Founding Fathers, and a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States, is being "evicted" from the magnificent New York City Council Chamber.
Who would have thought this would ever be possible (I did, and called it long ago!). Next up, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and, of course, George Washington.
The Radical Left has gone crazy, and it's hurting our Country badly — But someday soon, sane people will be back, and our Country will be respected again!
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