The debate over how the United States should remember its most divisive chapter—the Civil War—has flared once again following recent moves by the Trump administration and Department of Defense. In late August 2025, the Army confirmed to Military.com that a portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, depicting him in his Confederate uniform alongside a slave guiding his horse, will be rehung in the library at the United States Military Academy at West Point. This reinstallation, coming after years of removals and renamings, has reignited a national conversation about the role of Confederate symbols in public and military spaces.
The Lee portrait’s return is not happening in isolation. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the return of a controversial Confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. The statue, created by Moses Ezekiel and first installed in 1914, features sentimental images of Confederate soldiers and loyal Black slaves. It was removed in late 2023 as part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to eliminate memorials that glorified the Confederate cause and to rename military bases that previously honored Confederate leaders. According to The New York Times, the Ezekiel memorial is expected to be returned to Arlington in 2027 after undergoing refurbishment.
These decisions are part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to counteract initiatives aimed at removing Confederate symbols from military properties. The effort is a direct response to the Naming Commission, established by Congress in 2020 in the wake of nationwide protests for racial justice. The commission was tasked with reevaluating the appropriateness of honoring figures associated with the Confederacy, leading to recommendations that certain depictions—especially those emphasizing Confederate leadership—be removed from military institutions.
The portrait of Robert E. Lee, originally hung at West Point in 1952 during a period that celebrated the so-called “Lost Cause” narrative, was taken down in recent years. The “Lost Cause” perspective has long portrayed the Confederacy’s fight as noble and unrelated to slavery, a view that has faced increasing scrutiny and criticism. The restoration of the portrait is being framed by some officials as an effort to preserve historical legacy. However, many lawmakers and critics argue that maintaining such tributes perpetuates a harmful legacy of racial injustice and undermines the progress made by the Naming Commission.
The Trump administration’s actions have not stopped at West Point or Arlington. Defense Secretary Hegseth and his team have also reinstated names of nine Army bases that had previously been renamed under the commission’s recommendations, and restored a statue of Confederate general Albert Pike in Washington, D.C. These efforts have drawn sharp criticism for circumventing the commission’s legal mandate, often by exploiting technical loopholes—such as identifying obscure veterans who share surnames with rebel generals to justify the reinstatement of base names.
Hegseth has been vocal in his opposition to these removals. After announcing the return of the Ezekiel sculpture, he stated, “Unlike the left, we don’t believe in erasing American history—we honor it.” Yet, as The Atlantic points out, this stance appears at odds with recent statements from former President Trump, who complained on Truth Social that the Smithsonian Institution is “OUT OF CONTROL” because of its museums’ focus on “how bad Slavery was.” The contradiction has not gone unnoticed by critics, who argue that such moves trivialize the Confederacy’s treasonous cause and the deaths of more than 300,000 Union soldiers who fought to preserve the United States.
The complex legacy of Robert E. Lee is at the heart of the current debate. Lee graduated second in his class at West Point in 1829 and served as the academy’s superintendent from 1852 to 1855. When the Civil War erupted, he chose to lead the Confederate forces, a decision that had far-reaching consequences. The Naming Commission’s final report acknowledged Lee’s military significance but recommended a balanced approach: while some representations of Lee could remain, depictions that glorify his role as a Confederate leader should be removed to align with the academy’s—and the nation’s—highest ideals.
For many, the reinstallation of Lee’s portrait and other Confederate memorials raises uncomfortable questions about how history should be remembered and interpreted in military contexts. The debate is not just about statues and paintings, but about the values these symbols represent. As one commentator in The Atlantic wrote, “Americans can similarly pay proper respect to military sacrifice while rejecting Confederate nostalgia.” This sentiment is echoed in the way some Southern communities and institutions have chosen to commemorate the Civil War dead—by honoring the individual sacrifices of soldiers without glorifying the Confederate cause itself.
Institutions like the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) have faced similar challenges. VMI, deeply enmeshed in the Confederate cause, has worked to balance its history with its present-day mission to educate officers for the U.S. military. In 2021, the school removed a statue of Stonewall Jackson, a former VMI instructor and Confederate general, from its campus and relocated it to a battlefield museum. Yet, the institute retained monuments to cadets who died in the Civil War, choosing to remember their sacrifice without celebrating the Confederacy’s objectives.
The Ezekiel memorial at Arlington, which bears a Latin inscription interpreted as “The victorious cause was pleasing to the gods, but the lost cause pleased Cato,” has been a particular flashpoint. While some see it as a tribute to the sacrifices of soldiers, others argue that paeans to the Confederate cause have no place in a U.S. military cemetery. As the commentator in The Atlantic put it, “nothing was righteous about the rebellion against the United States, and paeans to it do not belong in a U.S. military cemetery.”
Supporters of the Trump administration’s actions argue that removing Confederate symbols amounts to erasing history. They contend that it is possible to honor the battlefield sacrifices of common soldiers without endorsing the Confederacy’s ideology. Critics, however, maintain that public spaces—especially those funded by the federal government and dedicated to the nation’s military—should not venerate individuals or causes that fought to uphold slavery and secede from the United States.
The ongoing controversy highlights the difficulty of reconciling national memory with evolving social values. As the reinstallation of the Lee portrait at West Point and the return of the Ezekiel memorial to Arlington proceed, Americans are once again forced to confront the question: What, exactly, should be honored in the nation’s most hallowed institutions?
These decisions, made at the highest levels of government, will shape how future generations understand the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the ideals for which the United States stands. The choices made today about which symbols to display—and which to retire—will continue to influence the country’s collective memory for years to come.
