In 2017, after the violent clashes in Charlottesville, Va., President Trump said of white supremacists defending a statue of Robert E. Lee: “I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
Today, three years later, statues of not only Confederate soldiers but also of presidents — Washington and Jefferson among them — are being defaced and toppled. Some Trump supporters are using this moment as evidence that the president’s Charlottesville warning was prescient.
The president is now on the losing end of this issue, with support for removing the some 1,500 memorials to the Confederacy scattered across the country greater than ever (more than 52 percent of American voters in favor, according to a recent poll). Despite this, Mr. Trump’s question deserves an answer, perhaps mainly because it is one point on which the president and his detractors can agree: It should stop at the grave sites and battlefields that are meaningful reminders of our nation’s history.
Arlington National Cemetery is considered by many to be America’s most hallowed ground, and yet many Americans may not know that it is inextricably linked to the Civil War.Continue reading the main story
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