Nancy Pelosi demands Republicans agree to remove 11 Confederate statues from Congress including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee as Donald Trump refuses to rename Army bases (12 Pics)

Hours after President Trump said he wouldn't be renaming military bases named for Confederate leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flaunted her opposition by highlighting her work to get Confederate statues in the U.S. Capitol removed. 

Pelosi sent out a copy of a letter she had addressed to the chairs of the Joint Committee on the Library, which manages the National Statuary Hall collection - the 100 statues contributed by states that are on display in Statuary Hall and other places around the U.S. Capitol complex.  

Each U.S. state gets to contribute two statues and there are currently 11 Confederate figures on display. Pelosi called for their removal. 

Pelosi's demand comes amid a wave of anti-racism protests raging across America and the world, in which several statues that symbolize racial oppression have already been torn down. 

Donald Trump last night rejected demands to rename a series of military bases named after leaders of the Confederacy, calling them 'hallowed grounds'.  

+12

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter asking that the 11 remaining Confederate statues in Statuary Hall and around the Capitol complex be removed 

+12

+12

Confederate statues on Capitol Hill include ones of Jefferson Davis (left), which represents Mississippi in the collection and General Robert E. Lee (right), a gift from the commonwealth of Virginia 

+12

+12

Commander Joseph Wheelerfor the Confederate Army of Tennessee, left and lawyer Uriah Milton Rose, right

+12

+12

Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens, left, and military officer Wade Hampton

The statue collection includes Gen. Robert E. Lee, a gift from Virginia, the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, which is a contribution from Mississippi and Alexander Hamilton Stephens, a statue given by Georgia.  

Additionally Mississippi has a statue of Confederate James Zachariah George, Alabama has Joseph Wheeler, South Carolina has a statue of Wade Hampton, North Carolina has a statue of Zebulon Vance, West Virginia has John E. Kenna, Louisiana has Edward Douglass White and Arkansas gifted a statue of Uriah Milton Rose, an attorney who sided with the Confederacy. 

The statue of Edmund Kirby Smith, a general in the Confederate Army, was already expected to be replaced.  

Most of the Confederates in the collection are depicted in uniform.  

In her letter to Sen. Roy Blunt, the chair and a Missouri Republican and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the committee's vice chair and a California Democrat, Pelosi quoted Stephens' 'corner-stone speech' in which the Confederacy's vice president said the 'assumption of the equality of the races' was something that was made 'in error.'  

'Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition,' Stephens had said in the speech, Pelosi reminded the lawmakers. 

She argued that the statues that are on display on Capitol Hill 'should embody our highest ideals as Americans.' 

'Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals,' Pelosi said. 'Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage.' 

'They must be removed,' she argued. 

'While I believe it is imperative that we never forget our history lest we repeat it, I also believe that there is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country.' 

The push to get rid of Confederate symbols has come in the aftermath of the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd, a Minneapolis black man, at the hands of a white police officer. 

+12

+12

Edward Douglass White, left, and John E. Kenna, right 

+12

Zebulon Baird Vance, a Confederate military officer in the American Civil War, the 37th and 43rd Governor of North Carolina

+12

+12

James Zachariah George, left,  and Edmund Kirby Smith, right

The 'Black Lives Matter' protests that followed have put renewed attention on issues like the Capitol Hill statues, flying the Confederate flag at certain events and renaming 10 U.S. Army bases, which currently are named after Confederate leaders. 

On Wednesday, President Trump articulated that the U.S. bases would not be renamed under his watch.  

Democrats had previously tried to get the Statuary Hall collection statues removed on the heels of the August 2017 protests in Charlottesville that pit KKK members, neo-Nazis and white supremacists against counter-protesters, one of whom was killed. 

Republicans, at the time, responded by saying that the statue selections are up to each state.    

Upon seeing the letter, Lofgren said she agreed with Pelosi that the Joint Committee and the Architect of the Capitol 'should expediently remove these symbols of cruelty and bigotry from the halls of the Capitol.' 

'The Capitol building belongs to the American people and cannot serve as a place of honor for the hatred and racism that tears at the fabric of our nation, the very poison that these statues embody,' Lofgren said.   

The longstanding debate over Confederate statues has come rushing back into the spotlight this month during the huge anti-racism movement following the death of George Floyd.  

Floyd, an unarmed black man, died in Minneapolis police custody after a white officer knelt on his head for nearly nine minutes while arresting him. 

Virginia governor Ralph Northam last week announced plans to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, although a judge has stalled this proposal. 

Elsewhere, statues of Christopher Columbus have also become a target for protesters who say he unleashed centuries of genocide against Native Americans.  

One Columbus statue was pulled down with ropes, set on fire and rolled into a lake at a park in Richmond on Tuesday night. 

Another Columbus monument was beheaded in Boston, in a waterfront park near the city's North End. 

However, Donald Trump says his administration will 'not even consider' changing the name of any of the 10 U.S. Army bases that are named for Confederate leaders. 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper had indicated he was open to discussing such changes in the wake of Floyd's funeral. 

But Trump weighed in on Wednesday night, saying: 'These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. 

'The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.'

Nancy Pelosi's Confederate statues letter in full  

Dear Chairman Blunt and Vice Chairperson Lofgren:

The Joint Committee on the Library is tasked, by law, with management of the National Statuary Hall collection, including the authority to determine the placement of statues. Currently, 11 statues representing Confederate soldiers and officials are on display as part of the National Statuary Hall collection in the United States Capitol. Among these 11 are Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, President and Vice President of the Confederate States of America, respectively, both of whom were charged with treason against the United States.

The infamous words of Stephens make as clear today as they did in 1861 the aims of the Confederacy. In his 'corner-stone speech,' Stephens asserted that the 'prevailing ideas' relied upon by the Framers included 'the assumption of the equality of the races. This was in error.' Instead, he laid out in blunt and simple terms the awful truth of the Confederacy: 'Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.'

As I have said before, the halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy. The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation. Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals. Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed.

While I believe it is imperative that we never forget our history lest we repeat it, I also believe that there is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country.

Let us lead by example. To this end, I request the Joint Committee on the Library direct the Architect of the Capitol to immediately take steps to remove these 11 statues from display in the United States Capitol.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this request.

Sincerely,

NANCY PELOSI

Speaker of the House

CONFEDERATE STATUES ON CAPITOL HILL AND THE STATES THAT GIFTED THEM

Jefferson Davis - Mississippi 

James Zachariah George - Mississippi 

Wade Hampton - South Carolina 

John E. Kenna - West Virginia  

Gen. Robert E. Lee - Virginia 

Uriah Milton Rose - Arkansas 

Edmund Kirby Smith - Florida  

Alexander Stephens - Georgia 

Zebulon Vance - North Carolina  

Joseph Wheeler - Alabama 

Edward Douglass White - Louisiana  

Who was Jefferson Finis Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America? 

 Jefferson Finis Davis, the first and only President of the Confederate States of America, serving from 1861 to 1865. He was a slave and plantation owner, a politician and soldier born in Kentucky and raised in Mississippi.

He graduated from his military academy in 1828, and went on to serve briefly in the Black Hawk War in 1832 before returning to his plantation.

Davis later went onto become a Congressman and a Senator before he formally withdrew from the U.S. Senate on January 21, 1861 after Mississippi seceded from the Union.

One month later, he was selected to become the provisional President of the Confederacy.

Historians say his poor leadership skils may have played a part in the defeat of the Confederacy, and say he was a weak leader compared to Union counterpart, President Abraham Lincoln.

He was captured in 1865, and accused of treason and imprisoned at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. However, he was released after two years without being tried.