OPINION:
In the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement sparked in 2020 by the murder of George Floyd, Congress required the Department of Defense to create a commission to evaluate the ways the military continued to honor the Confederacy.
The duties of the “naming commission” were to assess the “cost of renaming or removing names, symbols, displays, monuments or paraphernalia that commemorate the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America.”
In January, the commission recommended the removal of Arlington National Cemetery’s Confederate Memorial, which is to be demolished this summer. The memorial, dedicated in 1914, features a bronze woman standing on a 32-foot pedestal, crowned with olive leaves, holding a laurel wreath, a plow stock, and a pruning hook designed to represent the South. The base of the statue features 14 shields with the coats of arms of the 13 Confederate states and Maryland, which didn’t secede and join the Confederacy.
A little history is in order.
After the Civil War, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant worked hard to reconcile the North and the South. Lincoln pardoned and restored property to all who engaged in the war, with the exception of the highest Confederate officials and military leaders. Grant supported pardons for former Confederate leaders — seeking to maintain peace and economic growth — while also protecting the civil rights of freed slaves.
In 1898, President William McKinley held a “Peace Jubilee,” where he stated: “In the spirit of fraternity, we should share with you in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers. … Sectional feelings no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. The old flag waves over us in peace with new glories.”
In 1900, Congress allowed Confederate remains to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, designating Special Section 16 to them — and that’s where the monument stands. Three years later, in 1903, the first Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies were held in Section 16. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a floral arrangement to commemorate it, a tradition that almost every U.S. president has repeated — even Barack Obama. (Mr. Obama modified the tradition by sending a wreath to Section 16 and another one to D.C.’s African American Civil War Memorial.)
With President William Howard Taft’s consent, in 1906, the United Daughters of the Confederacy began raising funds for the statue. It was designed by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran and the first Jewish graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. Other sculptures of his can be found around the nation, including in front of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. He was buried beneath his statue in Arlington, with President Warren G. Harding praising him as “a great Virginian, a great artist, a great American and a great citizen of world fame.”
Now, the radicals in our society are going to tear down his creation because, as the secretary of defense has explained, Arlington National Cemetery can “inspire all those who call them home, fully reflect the history and the values of the United States and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect.”
The military says all bronze elements on the memorial will be relocated, and its base and foundation will remain as to avoid disturbing the surrounding graves. In today’s race-based hysteria, it is a wonder that Section 16 has survived at all.
With the monument’s destruction, the reconciliation message that Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Taft and Roosevelt advocated will be lost.
The statue’s demise will not unite but only further divide.
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