The Trump administration is still on its pro-Confederacy crusade, this time by promising to “honor” Gen. Robert E. Lee by rehanging his portrait in the West Point Library.
According to The New York Times, it was revealed Friday that the Trump administration will restore the Lee portrait at the famed military academy after Congress mandated that it be removed.
“Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it—we don’t erase it,” Rebecca Hodson, communications director for the Army, told the Times.
Lee was the overall commander of the Confederate Army, which operated in service of the illegal breakaway Confederacy, waging war against the United States. The Confederacy was explicitly formed to preserve the practice of slavery.
For more than 250 years, millions of Black people were bought and sold as property, abused and terrorized, and used for free labor. This is what the Confederates—militarily led by Lee—sought to protect.
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 next generation of U.S. military leadership is educated at West Point, raising serious questions about why that institution should be used to honor a figure like Lee and the pro-slavery military that he commanded.
The Confederate Army was vanquished by the U.S. military and forced to surrender in 1865 at Appomattox Court House, where Lee signed the official document. He is most famous as a military figure for losing a war.
The Trump administration has been fixated on restoring statues and other monuments meant to honor the Confederacy, and it’s also restored the names of military bases that were changed under the Biden administration—all to “honor” pro-slavery figures.
Simultaneously, the Trump team has attempted to erase records and acknowledgement of minority achievement, particularly for Black people. On the topic of slavery, President Donald Trump recently complained that the Smithsonian network of museums focuses too much on “how bad slavery was.”
The Trump administration is currently engaged in efforts to purge museums of accurate depictions of the past, including documented evidence of slavery. The restoration of Lee’s portrait is completely in line with this racist approach to U.S. history.