House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Monday said he too supports calls for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s capitol.
Boehner is among many GOP leaders to endorse similar calls from Gov. Nikki Haley. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, both South Carolina Republicans, joined her in calling for the removal of the flag after nine people were shot to death in a historic black church in Charleston.
“I commend Governor Nikki Haley and other South Carolina leaders in their effort to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds,” Boehner said. “In his second inaugural address 150 years ago, and a month before his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln ended his speech with these powerful words, which are as meaningful today as when they were spoken on the East Front of the Capitol on March 4, 1865:
“‘With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.'”
