Andrew Clyde: “My amendment to the FY24 Defense appropriations bill would simply prohibit the Department of Defense from using funds to…”

“My amendment to the FY24 Defense appropriations bill would simply prohibit the Department of Defense from using funds to administer, implement, or enforce the proposed action by the Department of the Army regarding the removal of the Reconciliation Monument at Arlington National Cemetery. Following 4 brutal years of the American Civil War, our Nation's great leaders, President Abraham Lincoln and future President Union General Ulysses S. Grant, took great measures to ensure that our Nation reconciled and unified after the conflict that turned fellow countryman against fellow countryman. These unifying actions included pardons for Confederate leaders that waged war as well as the restoration of confiscated property. What these great American leaders understood is that a nation divided against itself cannot stand. Then, in 1898, following the Spanish-American War, where Union and Confederate veterans fought side by side under one flag, the American flag, President McKinley declared in the heart of the South, in Atlanta, Georgia, the capital of my home State, that the U.S. Government would commit to sharing the burden of honoring and properly burying the Confederate dead, stating: ``Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. The old flag waves over us in peace with new glories.'' In 1900, Congress authorized Confederate remains to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.…”