Arlington National Cemetery is preparing to tear down its Confederate Memorial next week, despite pushback from a group of congressional Republicans.
The statue’s removal comes after a nationwide push to remove Confederate symbols from military institutions following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
The decision also ignores a petition by 43 Republican members of Congress to the Pentagon asking it to halt efforts to dismantle and remove the statue, also known as the Monument of Reconciliation, from Arlington Cemetery.
Security fences have already been placed around the monument, which will be removed by December 22, the national cemetery said in a news release.
The surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected while it is torn down.
Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin “disagrees with the Biden administration’s decision to remove” the monument and plans to move it to New Market Battlefield State Historic Park in the Shenandoah Valley, a spokesperson told Fox News.
The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery will be removed next Friday. wikipedia The surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected as the Confederate Memorial is removed. Arlington National Cemetery
An independent commission recommended that the monument be removed in 2022 as part of its final report to Congress on renaming military bases and other buildings or features celebrating the Confederacy.
Following the report, a congressional mandate required the removal of all Confederate monuments by January 1, 2024.
The statue was erected in 1914 and features a bronze woman wearing a crown of olive leaves atop a 32-foot pedestal.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he plans to move the monument to a Virginia state park. fake images
According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow and a pruning shears, with a biblical inscription at her feet that reads: “They have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
The monument includes some controversial figures, such as a black woman depicted as “Mama” holding a white officer’s son and a slave following his owner to war.
More than 40 House Republicans, led by Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, accusing the commission of overstepping its authority when it recommended the monument be removed.
In the letter, Republicans stated that the monument does not honor the Confederacy, but rather celebrates American unity after the Civil War. They claimed that removing the statue would desecrate the graves of Confederate soldiers buried there, Fox News reported.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) led a group of more than 40 House Republicans to keep the monument in place. fake images
“[T]The Reconciliation Monument does not honor or commemorate the Confederacy; “The monument commemorates reconciliation and national unity,” they wrote.
Arlington said the monument’s bronze elements will be relocated, while the granite base and foundation will remain in place to avoid disturbing surrounding graves.
Earlier this year, the Army renamed North Carolina’s Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty. The base was named in 1918 for Confederate General Braxton Bragg, a slave owner.
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