{"id":31291,"date":"2024-06-14T17:38:43","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T17:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2024\/06\/14\/house-says-no-to-returning-confederate-memorial-to-arlington\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:24:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:24:47","slug":"house-says-no-to-returning-confederate-memorial-to-arlington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/federal-oversight\/2024\/06\/14\/house-says-no-to-returning-confederate-memorial-to-arlington\/","title":{"rendered":"House says no to returning Confederate memorial to Arlington"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An amendment to the House version of the annual defense bill that sought to allow the return of a Confederate memorial recently removed from Arlington National Cemetery failed to advance on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The provision, which lawmakers voted to not include<\/a> in the final version of their must-pass policy bill, would have instructed the Army to relocate the \u201cReconciliation Memorial\u201d to the hallowed grounds of the northern Virginia burial site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As both the House and Senate slogged away on their respective variants of the defense legislation, the reintroduction of the measure<\/a> rehashed a partisan debate over whether reinstalling the monument would preserve American history or reinforce revisionist views of the Confederacy and slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bronze elements of the Confederate memorial were removed in December from the cemetery<\/a> and are currently in storage<\/a>. That followed a congressionally-mandated requirement<\/a> to rename, remove or modify Department of Defense assets that a commission identified as commemorating the Confederate States of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a brief back and forth over whether gravesites adjacent to the memorial were being disturbed in the removal process, a federal judge ultimately said no desecration was taking place<\/a> and that the expulsion of the monument could continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Andrew Clyde, the Georgia Republican who introduced the amendment, and previously led dozens of Republicans in a push<\/a> to stop its removal, spoke on the House floor Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis monument in Arlington was a powerful symbol of the healing and unification of our nation after the deep divisions of the Civil War,\u201d he said. <\/b>Separately, in an op-ed he penned<\/a> in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this week, he wrote that it \u201cdoes not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; it honors and commemorates national unity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But others have disagreed with that interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important to remember why we removed the memorial in the first place \u2014 because treason in defense of slavery is no virtue,\u201d Rep. Don Beyer<\/a>, a Virginia Democrat, said on the House floor, adding that the monument \u201cis not an emblem of a reconciled people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t