Government provides guards for Confederate cemeteries
ILL. — After last year’s deadly clash between white nationalists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, the federal government quietly spent millions of dollars to hire private security guards to stand watch over at least eight Confederate cemeteries, documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs show.
The security effort, which runs around the clock at all but one of those VA-operated cemeteries, was aimed at preventing the kind of damage that befell Confederate memorials across the U.S. in the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence.
None of the guarded cemeteries has been vandalized since the security was put in place. Records obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act show that the VA has spent nearly $3 million on the cemetery security since August 2017. Another $1.6 million is budgeted for fiscal 2019 to pay for security at all Confederate monuments, which could include other sites. The agency has not determined when the security will cease.
Private security was needed “to ensure the safety of staff, property and visitors paying respect to those interred,” Jessica Schiefer, spokeswoman for the VA’s National Cemetery Administration, said in a statement. The agency “has a responsibility to protect the federal property it administers and will continue to monitor and assess the need for enhanced security going forward.”
Most of the protected cemeteries are in the North, in places far removed from the Confederacy. Vast numbers of the buried soldiers were prisoners of war who were held nearby. Many succumbed to smallpox and other diseases. The cemetery monuments are typically simple and solemn, serving more to acknowledge the deceased than to celebrate the slaveholding nation they defended.
Government watchdog groups and some members of Congress question if the spending is still necessary. Steve Ellis, executive vice president of the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the cost of security represents the sort of “spending inertia” too common in government.
“Unfortunately what happens with the government is once you start spending money on something, you generally continue to spend money on it,” Ellis said.
Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago, whose district includes one of the protected cemeteries, said in a statement that while he supports the VA’s decision to prevent vandalism, officials “must remain vigilant in evaluating” government spending.
Monuments to the Confederacy have become especially polarizing since nine black parishioners were gunned down by an avowed white supremacist at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The confrontation in Charlottesville on Aug. 11, 2017, reopened the wound. In the weeks that followed, vandals damaged Confederate sites across the country, and cemeteries were not spared.