Cleburne,
Multiple things.
1. Even he points out that the statue was built as an attempt at reconciliation. The president mentioned, McKinley was from Ohio and a "Union officer" who fought Lee.
2. The land of Arlington belonged to Lee and his family. It was a working plantation. So "tainted" not only by "slavery" and "traitors", at least that is the reasoning for the removal that those demanding it be removed, slavery and traitors. So how can we tolerate our Union dead be buried on tainted land?
"Arlington House, constructed between 1802 and 1818, was the nation's first memorial to George Washington. In 1778, John Parke Custis, the son of Martha Washington and her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, purchased 1,100 acres of land in northern Virginia, on rolling hills overlooking Washington, D.C. In 1802, their son George Washington Parke Custis (the first president's step-grandson) inherited the property, then known as Mount Washington. Custis decided to construct a Greek Revival-style mansion there as his home and a place to display his large collection of George Washington heirlooms and memorabilia (furniture, silver, china, family portraits). The estate was a working plantation, and the mansion, called Arlington House, was built by enslaved African Americans. George Washington Parke Custis and his wife, Mary Lee Fitzhugh, lived at Arlington House until their deaths in 1857 and 1853, respectively. They are buried in what is now Section 13 of Arlington National Cemetery. "
3. My great great uncle is buried at Vicksburg, should I demand he and other union dead be reburied in the North?
4. I made a statement once that it was a good thing they did not know there was a confederate monument at Arlington, during another "discussion" of the destruction of a confederate monument. I guess they found out.
5. I predict they will eventually demand the Confederate dead be removed from Arlington.
