Vandals left graffiti on the Robert E. Lee Statue At Antietam National Battlefield/NPS
Vandalism of statues tied to the Confederacy continues in the National Park System, with graffiti sprayed on the statue of Robert E. Lee at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.
Back in June a statue erected in 1933 by the Tennessee Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Confederate soldiers who died in the landscape now preserved by Fort Donelson National Battlefield was vandalized with spray paint.
Most recently, the Robert E. Lee statue at Antietam was painted with "You Lost the War," "Racist," "BLM," and "Death To Slavery" sometime Thursday night.
Antietam rangers are investigating the vandalism, while preservation experts are being brought in to erase the graffiti.
If you have information that could help identify those responsible, you can contact any National Park Service employee, or give the Special Agents of the NPS Investigative Services Branch a call. You don't have to identify yourself, but agents want to know what you know:
CALL or TEXT the ISB Tip Line: 888-653-0009
ONLINE form www.nps.gov/ISB > "Submit a Tip"
EMAIL [email protected]
EMERGENCY dial 9-1-1
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Comments
Shouldn't the headline be, "Robert E. Lee Statue at Antietam National Battlefield Contextualized?" Seriously, the National Park Service ALLOWED the erection of a statue to Robert E. Lee, who INVADED Maryland and whose leadership in the battle resulted in thousands of deaths of people loyal to the United States? What is it doing there, in the first place?
Here's a tip for the National Park Service: the bronze plaque on this Lee memorial reads, "Robert E. Lee was personally against secession and slavery, but decided his duty was to fight for his home and the universal right of every people to self-determination."
Why is the National Park Service promoting these utter lies? He personally enslaved people. He personally defended secession. He personally defended the right to enslave people. And he personally, in actions and in words, OPPOSED the right of every people to self-determination. Every assertion on this plaque is untrue. The graffiti is less unsightly than those lies. Why is the National Park System literally putting this racist traitor on a pedestal?
Why don't people understand this is part of America's History. Like it or not. Respect our history
There is no room in our culture for respect towards monuments to race supremacy.
Maura appears to be a likely candidate for investigation. There's been many great individuals through the centuries that wound up on the wrong side of history. Slavery was bad, but a hundred and fifty years ago there was also something called Honor. Lee wasn't honored as a slave holder. He was honored as one of the greatest battlefield commanders in History. That's why his tactics are still studied at West Point.
Maura is right that context matters. But context also dictates that a Confederate monument at Antietam National Battlefield is not the same as a Confederate monument at a courthouse, traffic circle, city hall, state capitol, town square, school or university. Monuments erected in those latter places are there to honor something laudatory, something to be celebrated and honored, about the historical person being depicted. (And Confederate leaders carry so much baggage - from white supremacy to treason - that its hard to imagine any other qualities they may have had that could possibly outweigh that and justify their presence in such places.) But at Antietam, and other Civil war historical sites, battlefields and parks, the monuments are about something completely different. They are about remembering the thousands of Americans who fought, suffered, and died in these places - Americans on both sides, regardless of whether they were, for a few short years, considered Union or Confederate. And this includes remembering, intepreting, and yes, depicting, the men who led them. That's why the respected Southern Poverty Law Center purposefully leaves such monuments off its list of Confederate monuments in the public eye which it seeks to question (https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confede...).
Having said that, the wording on that plaque which Maura reports is genuinely problematic - not because of whether it offends or not, but because it is historically incorrect. It should be corrected - but by the Park Service, not vandals.
Why in 2003 did the NPS put up a statue to Robert E Lee? For its interpretive impact? Why is this agency continuing to spin the Lost Cause narrative. There is no need for a statue placed in 2003 at Antietam to be there. We know General Lee invaded Maryland. We know his troops lost and we know his brilliant military tactics lost the Battle of Gettysburg. The statue isn't needed.
Dedicated in 2003, 138 years after the end of the Civil War, the 24-foot statue of Lee was commissioned and placed by a private citizen on private land. The National Park Service (NPS) acquired the property in 2005, making the plot the statue rests on federally owned land. In addition to significant local backlash during the statue’s unofficial commissioning, the monument is also historically inaccurate.
A congressman had introduced legislation many times to remove it from the battlefield. So not only did the NPS acquire the property - it knew there was a statue there that I would suspect by some provisions in the deed the statue had to stay. If not, it should be hauled away to the Presidenrs new Statue Garden or somewhere else. It does not belong at Antietam.
NPS Do the right thing Remove the statue!
From the Washington Post in 2017
Noting Union memorials outnumbered Confederate memorials at Antietam before the statue was built, Chaney said he sought to “even that up a little bit,” according to the Hagerstown, Md.,-based Herald-Mail. A dedication on the statue defends Lee’s legacy.
So NPS not only paid for this land but bought it with a statue on it that had an incorrect and biased interpretation on it NPS showed poor judgement here This was a dishonest way to get a statue placed in an NPS unit especially a statue designed to "even up" the numbers of confederate monuments on the battlefield. Shame
This statue should be moved to a museum where it can be viewed safely and isolated along with the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Yeah, Maura, Robert E. Lee really never did anything worse than Jean Lafitte did and Jean Lafitte has a whole park named after him. So, just have some patience and wait to argue over something more important, like whether the Jeffrey Epstein Memorial should be right on the National Mall or pushed back into the shrubbery a little bit.
On ABC News on July 1, 2020 Acting Director David Vela offered what has been termed a nuanced defense of defending Confederate Monuments on NPS property.
Okay..put up or shut up time.
Mr. Vela stated “Let’s talk about who put it up, why they put it up. The context, the lens that they used in putting it up, and then give you more information -- and then when you leave that visitor experience, you decide, visitor, what do you do with it?”
So, why doesn’t the NPS put a context to this statue? Why did the NPS purchase this property of a statue that was put up in the early 2000’s? Who put it up and why did they put it up? Seems like they put it up because the person wanted to “even out” the number of Confederates on the battlefield. If that is the case, why did the NPS spend tax-payer funds to purchase a property that had the statue of Lee? Did the price of the property pay for the statue itself?
Seems like the context of this whole thing is lacking. Maybe the NPS should do what its acting director said it does.
The statue should go and the NPS should be forced to reckon with its decision to add a memorial to a traitor on sacred ground -- less than 20 years ago! No one needed a statue of Robert E. Lee at Antietam to know he was there and ordered the killing of thousands of American boys. I guess that is more context that the NPS might want to offer.
The Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate invasion of Maryland. It resulted in a stalemate -- but enough of a Union victory to give President Lincoln what he needed to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. As a Marylander, I would welcome a statue to remember that fact that as opposed to this one of Robert E. Lee.