As of August 4, according to a cache of the page accessed through archive.org, the Park Service described the Lee Memorial this way:

The Robert E. Lee Memorial honors Lee's military and public leadership in pre- and post-Civil War America. Congress designated the memorial to recognize that “the desire and hope of Robert E. Lee for peace and unity within our Nation has come to pass.” From the portico you can contemplate our nation's fate as you gaze across the river that once divided us.

The language now is different. The description lessens the focus on the memorial as a celebration of Lee and places it in a slightly more neutral context. It makes a new reference to “the most difficult aspects of American history,” including slavery:

Arlington House is the nation’s memorial to Robert E. Lee. It honors him for specific reasons, including his role in promoting peace and reunion after the Civil War. In a larger sense it exists as a place of study and contemplation of the meaning of some of the most difficult aspects of American History: military service; sacrifice; citizenship; duty; loyalty; slavery and freedom.

In a statement, the Park Service acknowledged it made the change this week but did not directly attribute it to the events in Charlottesville and the ensuing public debate over Confederate memorials.

“It is our mission to provide historical context that reflects a fuller view of past events and the values under which they occurred, and the update was made in that spirit,” the Park Service said. “The National Park Service is committed to sharing our nation’s history inclusively and holistically, and we have elicited scholars’ advice on how to present, more completely, the experience of those who were enslaved at Arlington House. Their stories will be prominently featured when the rehabilitation of the house, slave quarters, gardens, and exhibits is complete.”

As my colleague Adam Serwer has written, the notion of Lee’s “role in promoting peace and reunion after the Civil War” is itself a matter of dispute, subject to historical revisionism highlighting his letters opposing the construction of Confederate monuments while ignoring his racist views toward blacks and his opposition to their enfranchisement.

Arlington House has a complicated history: It was originally built in the early 1800s as a memorial to George Washington by the first president’s adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis. Custis’s daughter married Lee, then serving in the U.S. Army, and he lived there for most of his adult life. And it was, according to the website, at Arlington House where Lee resigned his military commission once Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861. He never returned.

The Union Army occupied the house during the war, and knowing that it belonged to Lee’s family, Quartermaster General Montogmery Meigs, whose son was killed in battle by Confederate soldiers, secured approval to begin building a military cemetery on the grounds in the hopes that it would render the home uninhabitable and dissuade Lee from returning after the war.