A portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is back hanging on the walls of the U.S. Military Academy library this week at the direction of the Defense Department , nearly three years after then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved its removal .

The 20-foot portrait depicts the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and an enslaved individual guiding his horse through a field behind him. In 2022, West Point officials announced they would remove the portrait of Lee, an 1829 graduate and the school’s superintendent in the early 1850s. The announcement followed former Austin’s approval of a 2022 congressional naming commission recommendation to remove 13 Confederate memorabilia from the campus.

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