Posted on 08/21/2017 3:09:50 PM PDT by 11th_VA
KEEDYSVILLE — The National Park Service didn’t put up that big statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee near the Newcomer House on Shepherdstown Pike, and has no plans to take it down.
But U.S. Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., said this week that he believes the statue should come down, and that the park service should review all monuments and exhibits concerning the Confederacy that are on its properties for historical accuracy.
Delaney’s concern over the statue, which became the possession of Antietam National Battlefield when it acquired the Newcomer property several years ago, is not simply that it recognizes an icon of the Confederacy. It also is because it doesn’t accurately tell the story of Lee’s misadventures in Maryland.
“I don’t believe that statues and monuments meant to glorify the Confederate cause and Confederate leadership belong on federal land, and they should be taken down unless they serve the clear purpose of educating people about American history and are placed by historians in the proper context for that purpose,” Delaney said in a statement to Herald-Mail Media.
“For example, we should present accurate information and preserve materials in museums when it achieves that objective,” he said.
“The history of this piece, which now resides on this sacred ground, certainly makes it clear it was recently erected by a private citizen out of pro-Confederacy enthusiasm and not to provide historical context or under the direction of a battlefield historian, and therefore, I don’t think that taxpayer resources should serve that end and it should be taken down,” Delaney said.
It is not a new complaint about the statue, which was commissioned by William F. Chaney Jr., the former owner of the property.
Herald-Mail Media reported in 2003 that historians believed the statue was historically inaccurate since it was erected in a Union-held portion of the battlefield.
Historians further noted that Lee had taken a fall from his horse just weeks before the September 1862 battle — spraining his right wrist and breaking a bone in his left hand — and rode in an ambulance rather than on a horse when he arrived in Maryland.
The county’s Historic District Commission voted against permitting the statue, but Chaney won an appeal.
Contending Confederate monuments were outnumbered on the battlefield by a score of 93 Union monuments to three, Chaney, who claimed a distant relationship to Lee, wanted to “even that up a little bit.”
When the park acquired the Newcomer property in 2005, the statue came with it. Battlefield Superintendent Susan Trail told Herald-Mail Media last week there are no plans to remove the statue.
But with last week’s deadly confrontation over a Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., Delaney said it is time to reconsider.
“I believe that the Park Service should review all of their properties and make sure that all of our parks, exhibits, monuments and the like are accurate and historically appropriate as it relates to Confederate images, and will review what legislative proposals already exist in that regard and proceed accordingly,” he said.
Delaney recently announced he won’t be running for re-election next year, but instead will run for president in 2020.
I “want” this back-bencher loser to removed from the congress. That said, any statues that are removed of confederates should be given a place of prominence on the National Mall adjacent to the Smithsonian African American Museum. Maybe that would get these racist fascists to settle down.
>There was no “Civil War”.
You are correct, there was never a civil war. Much like the Revolutionary, they seceded to govern THEMSELVES (as the Declaration reinforces). They never fought to rule what already was.
No offense to you personally, but the Right is *TERRIBLE* for beginning every discourse by using the Socialists language/talking-points. Hard to win even the battle(s) when you’re beginning the play on your own 10yrd line.
Look how easy it was to plant the seed that the ‘Nazis’ (aka Socialists) were the ‘alt-*RIGHT*’...
So like all the Northern troops were doing was playing that new game - baseball there?
Any white person that votes for a Democrat candidate is in sane and hates themselves very much.
I do find it a bit odd that there’s a statue of Confederate General Lee at Antietam and not one for Union General McClellan, and it was General McClellan who won the Battle of Antietam.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
What an idiot
Battlefields are precisely where statues should be
So erect one of McClellan.
Perhaps he doesn’t have a statue because he didn’t get along with Lincoln.
“Historians further noted that Lee had taken a fall from his horse just weeks before the September 1862 battle — spraining his right wrist and breaking a bone in his left hand — and rode in an ambulance rather than on a horse when he arrived in Maryland.”
Artistic license. Next!
You’re confusing the snowflakes. Stop it right NOW! /sard
Well stated!
McClelland didn’t ‘win’ so much as he ‘failed to lose’. Antiedam was an opportunity to crush the ANV on the wrong side of the Potomac River. Instead McClelland had to settle for a very narrow strategic victory — he did deny Lee’s vision of a victory on “Union Soil”. But only just. The ANV got away.
Had McClelland actually exercised command on his various corps commanders and made a coordinated assault something in Lee’s army would have broken. Most likely at the stone bridge where his lines were thin.
sorry bout that! /sard
McClellan had to play it safe and remain in a defensive posture simply because he couldn't afford to lose. If McClellan had of gone on the attack and lost the battle, there would have been nothing to stop Lee from attacking and capturing Washington D.C.
McClellan's priority at the time was to defend the U.S. Capitol. Destroying the ANV could wait for another day.
This was all passed on to me by one of McClelland's descendants, that still live in the D.C. Area.
Reading Shelby Footes 3 volume work on the Civil War should be required reading for all Americans.
Not exactly a dry historical perspective, more of being there and riding or marching along with the Men, Women, and Children who experienced first hand Americas greatest tragedy.
A reasonable request. Everyone know that the Civil War was fought between the North and the Republicans...
...and Lee was the biggest Republican of all.
Of course his descendants would tell you that, and they might even be right, I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
But what Lincoln needed to win that war was a cold blooded, calculating killer.
A man who was not afraid to use his superior numbers to end that war with an uncontested victory; that man was Ulysses S. Grant.
Lincoln once said when the politicians and a lot of the public wanted Grant’s head, “I can’t spare this man, he fights”.
Between Grant and Sherman, as Sherman said “We will make them howl”.
Lee fought because the northern armies INVADED VIRGINIA.
Where is the bright line where the hammer drops and the BS stops?
It is one thing when you are taking the statues out of public squares but when you are taking them out of hallowed ground?
The Confederate soldiers were not war criminals and were not treated as such. But now we have liberal communists, socialists and anarchists who are determined to have a trial, with a pre-ordained conclusion that will not stop at just statues of Confederates, it will mean any monument to a white person.
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