On Monday, a congressional panel reviewing military schools recommended that structures portraying Confederate leaders at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy be renamed.
According to Axios, "The Naming Commission" recommendations include removing depictions of Gen. Robert E. Lee from West Point, which is part of a wider effort to rename military installations associated with Confederate military officers.
The commission, in the second part of its report to Congress, states that the recommendations were not made "with any intention of 'erasing history.'"
"Rather, they make these recommendations to affirm West Point's long tradition of educating future generations of America's military leaders to represent the best of our national ideals."
"Cadets of the present who devote their lives to national service should do so in an environment and setting that honors the greatest examples, traditions, and leaders of our past."
Specifically, the commission recommended that the Army rename a housing area, a barracks, a child education center, a street, and a gate named after Lee. It also recommended removing a portrait of the general on display in Jefferson Hall, the library.
"No doubts exist that Robert E. Lee fought for the Confederacy," the commission writes, "he was its most effective and storied leader, and by the end of the Civil War, Lee had risen to General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States.
"Lee's armies were responsible for the deaths of more United States Soldiers than practically any other enemy in our nation's history."
As for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the commission stated the Navy should rename two buildings as well as a road named after Confederate Adm. Franklin Buchanan and Matthew Maury, a Confederate naval officer who said that "African Americans" were "unworthy of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness."
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