What to Do About Baltimore's Confederate Monuments

Maryland had three times as many Union soldiers in the Civil War than it had Confederate soldiers, and half of those Union military units were formed in Baltimore. Yet, today, there are three Confederate monuments in Baltimore and just one Union monument in the city. That seems at least mathematically suspect. Many in the heavily African-American city have been frustrated that there are Confederate monuments on public display at all—a sentiment punctuated by the “Black Lives Matter” tag that was spray-painted across one of the monuments during the summer of 2015.

That summer, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appointed a commission to investigate what should be done about the public display of the controversial Confederate monuments in the city. That commission just returned their verdict to the mayor on Wednesday. Of the four monuments under review (three Confederate ones and one dedicated to Roger Brooke Taney, the former Supreme Court Chief Justice who ruled on the infamous Dred Scott case), the commission recommended that the city keep two and drop two.