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- Feb 5, 2017
When a Monument Gets Its History Wrong - Emerging Civil War
The U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from Antietam National Battlefield (see here for details). The statue, erected in 2003 on private property along Route 34 heading into Sharpsburg, was later acquired by the National Park Service when the park...
emergingcivilwar.com
This article asks some hard questions and raises some issues that are well-worth discussing and talking about.
The ongoing controversies that surround all Confederate monuments these days cloud another fundamental question specific to the Lee statue: what do you do about a monument that’s factually wrong?
As it happened, I pondered this same question this week when I visited the site of the upper pontoon crossing in Fredericksburg.
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The Upper Pontoon Crossing at Fredericksburg, where the UDC monument hunkers under boxwood trees
On December 11, 1862—158 years ago today—the Army of the Potomac bridged the river under fire and fought their way into the city, establishing a presence in Fredericksburg and setting the stage for a major battle on December 13. A bolder with a handsome bas relief plaque commemorates the crossing of the 7th Michigan as part of the initial Federal force. Nearby, a squat granite marker placed by the United Daughter of the Confederacy also commemorates the event.
But the U.D.C. monument gets the story wrong.
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