Donald Trump vs. American History
Editor’s Note: This article is part of “If Trump Wins,” a project considering what Donald Trump might do if reelected in 2024.
, in a small southern foundry, Robert E. Lee’s face was placed on a furnace that reached a temperature of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the heat mounted, a haunting orange-red glow appeared across Lee’s severed visage, and the cracks that split his bronze cheeks began to look like streams of dark tears beneath his eyes. Lee’s face was once part of a larger statue of the Confederate general that stood in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was at the center of protests and counterprotests during the there in 2017. The city had taken the statue down in 2021 and given it to a local Black-history museum. Once melted, the statue’s bronze would
