Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy expressed openness to renaming Army installations currently named for Confederate generals. One Confederate general, who has a post named after him, would have agreed. After the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee opposed the creation of monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders over concerns that they would be divisive and delay reconciliation. In 1866, for example, he opposed a monument to Stonewall Jackson, arguing “that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South,” construction of such a monument would undermine recovery and reunification. Later, in 1869, he refused an invitation to attend a Gettysburg memorial involving both Union and Confederate officers believing that holding such a memorial would “keep open the sores of war.”