Not Just a Painting: West Point Restores Robert E. Lee Bust

A painting of Gen. Robert E. Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform is back on display in West Point's library, several years after the storied academy removed honors to the Civil War military leader, who graduated second in his West Point class in 1829 and later served as superintendent. There also are plans to restore a bust of Lee that had been removed from a plaza at the US Military Academy, and a quote from Lee about honor that was removed from a separate plaza is now on display beneath the portrait, an Army spokesperson said Tuesday, per the AP. The items were removed to comply with a Department of Defense directive in 2022 that ordered the academy to address racial injustice and do away with installations that "commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy."

The Pentagon's decision to rehang the portrait, which shows a Black man leading Lee's horse in the background, was first reported by the New York Times. It had been hanging in the library since the 1950s before it was placed in storage. The actions at West Point come as the Trump administration restores Confederate names and monuments that had been removed in recent years. President Trump issued an executive order in March titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" that decried efforts to reinterpret American history. The Army then restored the names of bases that originally honored Confederate leaders, finding service members with the same surnames to honor.

A commission created by Congress recommended in 2022 that the names and images of Confederate officers be removed from military academies after repeated complaints by current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services, who described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it. Ty Seidule, a retired brigadier general who served as vice chair of the commission, said Lee's image shouldn't be on display because he "chose treason" and doesn't represent the values taught to cadets. "It is against the motto of 'Duty, Honor, Country.' Robert E. Lee is the antithesis of that," says Seidule, who questions if the restoration of these symbols is legal under the federal law that led to their removal.