All posts tagged "Confederacy"

The Trump administration erased language criticizing slavery and the Confederacy from a memorial sign and website at Arlington National Cemetery.

According to a Monday article by the Washington Post, the changes are part of a broader effort to reshape how the Civil War is portrayed. The Confederate Memorial was a 32-foot bronze statue commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and unveiled in 1914.

The statue was pulled from the military cemetery in 2023 after Congress ordered the removal of names and symbols honoring the Confederacy from U.S. military property. The bipartisan Naming Commission recommended taking the statue down amid backlash over its imagery, which included an enslaved woman carrying the infant child of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war, according to The Post....

The U.S. Army has reportedly decided it will move forward with the removal of a Confederate memorial, despite the fact that dozens of Republican lawmakers cautioned against it.

The Army says it will start next week on the removal of the memorial from the Arlington National Cemetery, according to the Washington Post.

"A woman representing the American South, standing atop a 32-foot pedestal, lords above most other monuments within America’s most revered resting place," it reported. "It portrays, according to the cemetery’s website, a 'mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.'"...

Washington and Lee University in Virginia triggered outrage from right-wing commentators after it moved a memorial marker for Confederate General Robert E. Lee's horse, reported The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

"University officials removed two markers dedicated to the memory of Robert E. Lee’s horse, Traveller, in July, The College Fix reported. Lee was Traveller’s companion during and after the Civil War, and the horse died a few months after Lee’s death in 1871," reported Brooke Leigh Howard. "According to a July press release from Washington and Lee, the first plaque was on a stable, which was said to be Traveller’s last home. The other marker was a gravestone for the horse which was buried near the University Chapel, also the burial site for Lee and a national landmark ... Two other plaques that commemorated where Lee took the university’s presidential oath of office and where his office was located were also removed."

Washington and Lee University is itself named for Lee, who served as the institution's president following the Civil War....

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) believes there's no need to mention slavery when honoring the Confederacy because it "goes without saying" that slavery is "bad."

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell apologized Wednesday for neglecting to include a mention of slavery in a proclamation proclaiming April "Confederate History Month." President Barack Obama called that "an unacceptable omission" Thursday.