EXCERPTS FROM - "Congress Is Still Littered With Insurrectionists"
Slate - January 12, 2021
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/congress-is-still-littered-with-insurrectionists.html
"Monuments to 10 Confederate soldiers and officials stand within the National Statuary Hall Collection, along with several other rebel portraits and busts throughout the building."
"Ironically, National Statuary Hall, where most of these rebel monuments stand, was the creation of Abraham Lincoln’s Union government during the Civil War. Per a bill signed in 1864, each state was invited to send up to two statues of its local heroes. The first, featuring Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, was installed in 1870.
Not until 1909 did a former Confederate state erect a monument in Statuary Hall, when Virginia selected the rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee for commemoration. Lee was a predictable choice amid a renaissance in Confederate culture. By that point, the so-called Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War was in full bloom, and Lee was its patron saint."
"Insurgents—whether of the living or the statuary variety—have no place in our democracy’s sacred spaces. It’s time to remove them all."