Pentagon Will Reinstall Portrait Of Confederate General Robert E. Lee With Slave in Background After Years in Storage

The Pentagon has restored a 20-foot portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee to the West Point library three years after a congressionally mandated commission ordered it removed. The painting, which shows a slave guiding Lee's horse in the background, had hung at the United States Military Academy for 70 years before being placed in storage in 2022.

The portrait's removal followed a 2020 law that required Confederate names and symbols to be stripped from military bases and academies, part of a broader reckoning with race and history after the killing of George Floyd.

At the time, West Point's superintendent, Lt. Gen. Steven W. Gilland, said the academy would remove or rename Confederate memorials, streets, and buildings "with dignity and respect," as The New York Times points out. A stone bust of Lee and plaques referencing Confederate leaders, including an image of a hooded Ku Klux Klan figure, were also taken down and placed in storage.

The Naming Commission, created by Congress, argued that these steps were not meant to erase history but to ensure that the academy reflected "the best of our national ideals." However, on Thursday the Army's communications director Rebecca Hodson had a very different take in defending the portrait's return to West Point:

"At West Point, the United States Military Academy is prepared to restore historical names, artifacts, and assets to their original form and place. Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it — we don't erase it."

As NYT points out, "both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been outspoken in their desire to restore Confederate names and monuments that were removed over the last five years," with Hegseth recently calling for returning a memorial to the Confederacy that was removed from Arlington National Cemetery at the recommendation of Congress.

Earlier this summer, bases that had been renamed were rebranded again under soldiers who shared the same surnames as Confederate generals, a move that officials said allowed compliance with the 2020 law while symbolically restoring Confederate-linked names.

The decision also coincides with the administration's attempts to reshape how national institutions present history. On Thursday, Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III was called to a White House meeting as the administration pushed for a review of the museum network's exhibitions.

The White House has said it wants to replace "divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions" within 120 days. President Trump has accused the Smithsonian of promoting "race-centered ideology" and recently called the institution "OUT OF CONTROL" in a social media post.

Historians and critics have warned that these moves reflect a broader attempt to sanitize or revise the nation's past. Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired colonel and West Point graduate, previously wrote that honoring Lee at the academy was "something of an obscenity," as NYT points out.