By JULIE GRACE | Fall 2020

"It's a revolution!" someone shouted in the darkness at the Lake Monona shoreline.

On June 23, a crowd of protesters pulled a 1.5-ton bronze statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg from its pedestal on the east side of the Capitol building, dragged it down Main and Butler streets and pushed it into the lake. The crowd erupted into cheers.

Protesters, ostensibly taking to the streets over the death of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers, were tearing down monuments all over the country. At first, it was Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee, the most prominent reminders of the Confederacy and slavery.

But very soon, statues of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were toppled because they owned slaves. Christopher Columbus came down because he was a colonialist. The abolitionist, Union war hero and architect of emancipation Ulysses S. Grant had to be removed because, well, because.

On the same night Heg was brought down in Madison, Forward, the statue standing at the Capitol as "an allegory" — not of oppression and bigotry, but “of devotion and progress,” according to Wisconsin State Historical Society records — also came down.

Why Heg? He was an immigrant, a public servant, a prison reformer, an activist and a soldier who died fighting to end slavery.