#Trump's "arch does not frame the nation's honored dead, but frames instead the home of the man who led the armies of

[riversedge]

#Trump's 'arch does not frame the nation’s honored dead, but frames instead the home of the man who led the armies of the Confederacy that killed them'

May 23, 2026 https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercox

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-23-2026


Heather Cox Richardson May 24, 2026

President Donald J. Trump’s proposed triumphal arch would sit at a rotary on the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The proposed arch obscures the Lincoln Memorial, built to honor the president who steered the country safely through the Civil War, but perfectly frames Arlington House, the mansion built by enslaved Americans and once owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The arch does not frame the nation’s honored dead, but frames instead the home of the man who led the armies of the Confederacy that killed them.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton approved the land that had been Lee’s plantation as a national burying ground for soldiers on June 15, 1864. After 32 years in the U.S. Army, Lee resigned his commission and took over command of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, fighting across the state.

In early 1864 the U.S. government bought Lee’s property at public auction after Lee defaulted on property taxes, and months later it became the logical place to establish a national cemetery after the U.S. Army under General U.S. Grant began its spring 1864 offensive to crush the Confederate forces once and for all.............................