Defense chief Pete Hegseth is restoring to West Point Military Academy a giant painting of rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee that shows him wearing his gray Confederate uniform and accompanied by a slave guiding his horse.

The painting was originally hung in the storied academy’s library in 1952—at the height of racial segregation, voter suppression, and Jim Crow laws in the South—as part of an effort to rehabilitate the disgraced general’s image, The New York Times reported.

Its return is part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to reintroduce Confederate symbols, restore monuments that whitewash the evils of slavery, and remove references to slavery from national museums and parks.

Lee had a long history with West Point, attending from 1825 to 1829 and graduating

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