The Trump administration remains to be on its pro-Confederacy campaign, this time by promising to “honor” Gen. Robert E. Lee by rehanging his portrait within the West Level Library.
In accordance with The New York Instances, it was revealed Friday that the Trump administration will restore the Lee portrait on the famed army academy after Congress mandated that it’s eliminated.
“Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it—we don’t erase it,” Rebecca Hodson, communications director for the Military, instructed the Instances.
Lee was the general commander of the Accomplice Military, which operated in service of the unlawful breakaway Confederacy, waging conflict in opposition to the US. The Confederacy was explicitly fashioned to protect the follow of slavery.
A Robert E. Lee portrait is seen on show on the West Level Museum in Highlands Falls, New York, in 2018.
For greater than 250 years, thousands and thousands of Black individuals have been purchased and offered as property, abused and terrorized, and used without spending a dime labor. That is what the Confederates—militarily led by Lee—sought to guard.
In an 1856 letter, Lee wrote that slavery was “a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly interested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former.”
“The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things,” he added.
The subsequent era of U.S. army management is educated at West Level, elevating severe questions on why that establishment needs to be used to honor a determine like Lee and the pro-slavery army that he commanded.
The Accomplice Military was vanquished by the U.S. army and compelled to give up in 1865 at Appomattox Courtroom Home, the place Lee signed the official doc. He’s most well-known as a army determine for dropping a conflict.
The Trump administration has been fixated on restoring statues and different monuments meant to honor the Confederacy, and it’s additionally restored the names of army bases that have been modified underneath the Biden administration—all to “honor” pro-slavery figures.
Concurrently, the Trump staff has tried to erase data and acknowledgement of minority achievement, notably for Black individuals. On the subject of slavery, President Donald Trump not too long ago complained that the Smithsonian community of museums focuses an excessive amount of on “how bad slavery was.”
The Trump administration is presently engaged in efforts to purge museums of correct depictions of the previous, together with documented proof of slavery. The restoration of Lee’s portrait is totally consistent with this racist strategy to U.S. historical past.
