It is ironic that the day before Flag Day, Representatives Arrington, Jackson and Pfluger voted to restore a confederate monument to Arlington Cemetery. Tony Gonzalez did not vote. The measure was defeated by a vote of 230 to 192.
The monument, sometimes called the "Reconciliation Monument", was erected in 1914 at the country's most hallowed cemetery where Union dead from the Civil War are buried. President Woodrow Wilson attended the dedication. The monument commemorated soldiers and sailors who died fighting for the pro-slavery confederacy. Wilson, the first Southerner and Democrat elected President after the Civil War, was an avowed racist. This was during the height of Jim Crow when the Lost Cause" myth was being created that the war was not fought over slavery and to cast the former traitors to the Union as honorable men with a just cause.
The monument was removed in 2023 as a result of the Commission on renaming military installations and bases. Representative Andrew Clyde tried to include an amendment in the Defense Appropriations Act requiring the monument be restored. Clyde had previously sought to stop the removal in 2023. Advocates for restoring the monument argued that it was a monument to reconciliation not slavery or racism despite the representation of slaves on the monument.
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