Plaques honoring Robert E. Lee removed from Fort Hamilton church
Leaders of a New York Episcopal diocese removed two plaques honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a church property in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
The plaques were removed by the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, which owns the property.
The larger of the two plaques was placed outside St. John’s Episcopal Church by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1912. It commemorated the spot where Lee is said to have planted a tree while serving in the Army at Fort Hamilton in New York in the 1840s, two decades before he became commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
The plaque marked a tree that was a descendant of the one Lee is believed to have planted. A second plaque made note of that. Workers used power tools to remove them Wednesday.