After it was vandalized almost two years ago, the bronze statue of a Confederate soldier has been repaired and placed back at the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery in Columbus' Hilltop neighborhood.

On Aug. 22, 2017, vandals knocked over and decapitated the statue, probably as it struck a column when it fell, Columbus police said. The vandals left the hat but took the head, which was never found, said Douglas Ledbetter, director of Dayton/Marion National Cemeteries, which is part of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Association.

Ledbetter said the statue was repaired by attaching a new head and placing the original hat on it. Workers erected the statue Tuesday, he said.

Camp Chase was the largest Union Army prisoner-of-war camp for thousands of captured Confederate troops during the Civil War. More than 2,000 soldiers are buried at the cemetery, most of them Confederate soldiers who died while in prison.

The Camp Chase statue was damaged less than two weeks after a woman was killed and dozens were injured by a Toledo-area man during a white-supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A Confederate statue was knocked down at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the same month as the Columbus statue was damaged, and another was vandalized in Sylvania, Georgia, as debate over Confederate memorials roiled the country. In Texas, the legislature is now debating a bill that would extend protections for Confederate memorials.

On Wednesday, a Virginia judge ruled that authorities in Charlottesville can't remove statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson because they are war memorials protected by state law.

Tim Nosal, a spokesman for the VA National Cemetery Administration in Washington, D.C., said the Camp Chase cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places and falls under the National Preservation Act of 1966, which establishes government-wide policies about responsible stewardship for historical properties.

"It's our responsibility to preserve its historic integrity," Nosal said. And that meant restoring the statue.

The government hired McKay Lodge Art Conservation Laboratory in Oberlin to restore the statue for $40,804, Nosal said.

Nana Watson, president of the Columbus chapter of the NAACP, said she was unaware and "shocked" to learn the statue was repaired and reinstalled. She said she wonders why the government spent the money.

"Is that a good use of our federal funds here?" Watson said. "I could think of a lot of things we can request funding for in our community."

Betty Jaynes of the Westgate Neighbors Association said she didn't know the statue was coming back but was personally pleased to see history restored. "I know it's a very touchy subject," Jaynes said.

Richard Hoffman, a board member of the Hilltop Historical Society, said he was glad the statue was back too. The memorial, he said, was designed to reconcile the North and the South.

The society will host the annual Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery Memorial Service on Sunday, June 9, said Hoffman, who said the service remembers from both the North and South.

Stephen Humphrey was walking past the cemetery along Sullivant Avenue on Wednesday afternoon. Humphrey, a 53-year-old African American who lives in the Hilltop area, said removing the statue removes a part of history that reminds us where we come from.

"Racism is not a statue. It is not a flag," Humphrey said.

"It won't erase racism. It will erase the conversation."

mferench@dispatch.com

@MarkFerenchik