Let me say it again: I don’t get this campaign to bring down Confederate symbols. As far as I can see, there are more pressing problems in the nation than getting all worked up about a statue from the Old South.
The U.S. Army won’t scrub the names of Confederate generals from a base in New York City, military officials told Congress.
A group of Democratic lawmakers asked the Army in June to rename a pair of streets at Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn, which currently honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, part of a broader effort to take down Confederate memorials across the country. But the Army rebuffed the appeal.
“After over a century, any effort to rename memorializations on Fort Hamilton would be controversial and divisive,” Diane Rendon, an official in the Army’s bureau of manpower and reserve affairs, wrote in a July 20 letter. “This is contrary to the nation’s original intent in naming these streets, which was the spirit of reconciliation.”
Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., mocked the decision as a victory for white supremacy.
“That ‘reconciliation’ was actually complicity by the North and the South to ignore the interests of African Americans and enforce white supremacy, effectively denying the result of the Civil War for generations,” she said Monday.
“These monuments are deeply offensive to the hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents and members of the armed forces stationed at Fort Hamilton whose ancestors Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson fought to hold in slavery.”
General Lee and General Jackson mean a lot to US Army history. They were distinguished US Army veterans who fought in the Mexican War and enjoyed respect from their friends in the Union. General Lee, in particular, was one of great military men and came in second in his class at West Point. He was wounded in the Mexican War and earned a reputation as a great soldier.
We can disagree with their decision to fight for Virginia, in Lee’s case, but it’s historical revisionism to say that they fought for slavery. In other words, there was a lot more to that war than slavery. Right or wrong, General Lee was motivated by his love of Virginia, not slavery.
Again, we can disagree with their decisions without deleting the many other contributions that they made to the country.
It’s time to leave The Civil War in the past and worry about today’s real problems. The war ended 142 years ago! The lousy inner city public schools are a crime that is happening today.
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