Like everything at West Point, it’s all organized and planned. According to the superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, while the Corps of Cadets is away this winter break, the beautiful campus overlooking the Hudson is being stripped of its shameful Confederate symbols.
Heading out are likenesses of Robert E. Lee (including him wearing his Confederate uniform) to a bronze triptych plaque at the Bartlett Hall Science Center depicting a hooded and armed Klansman (he is clearly labeled “Ku Klux Klan”).
When the cadets return from their vacation, the disturbing portrayals will have been properly removed and sent to storage. This is not about sanitizing history. West Point was the focal point of the Union’s heroic effort in defeating the traitorous Confederacy, a slavocracy that tried to destroy the Constitution and caused the bloodiest war ever in American lives, both North and South.
