Qualla: Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery)

Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery): Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Avriette at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. The granite foundation is still there. Section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery, on a low rise west of the visitor center, where the concentric circles of grave markers radiate outward from a circular grassy clearing. Until December 20, 2023, a thirty-two-foot bronze stood in the clearing, a figure of the South looking south, surrounded by thirty-two life-size figures sculpted by Moses Ezekiel in his Rome studio. Then a crane from a Virginia contractor that had also dismantled the Lee statues in Richmond and Charlottesville lifted the bronze off its base and trucked it away. The granite stayed because moving it would have disturbed nearby graves. By 2027 a new bronze is expected to stand there again.

Image: Avriette at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery): A President Notices Untended Graves

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Special to The New York Times, Public domain. In 1896, campaigning for the presidency, William McKinley passed through Fredericksburg, Virginia and noticed Confederate graves that had been left untended. Most Civil War cemeteries in the North were carefully maintained federal property. The graves of those who had fought for ...

Image: Special to The New York Times | Public domain

Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery): The Memorial the Daughters Built

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Army Corps of Engineers had marked the center of the new Confederate section on its plans with a single letter M, for memorial, but no memorial was specified. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894, requested permission to build one in 1902, 1903, and 1905, ...

Image: Public domain

Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery): Moses Ezekiel of Rome

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The sculptor was Moses Jacob Ezekiel, the first Jewish cadet at the Virginia Military Institute and a Confederate veteran who had fought as a teenager at the Battle of New Market. After the war Ezekiel moved to Rome and built a career as a sculptor of public monuments. He had exe...

Image: Public domain

Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery): What the Bronze Said

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim1965, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ezekiel's memorial is a Lost Cause artifact, made during the period when veterans of the Confederacy and their descendants were actively reshaping the public memory of the war into a story about state's rights, valor, and reconciliation rather than slavery and treason. The most c...

Image: Tim1965 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery): Removal and Return

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Congress established the Naming Commission in 2021 to review Department of Defense items honoring those who had served the Confederacy. The Commission recommended removing the Arlington Memorial. The Defense Department accepted the recommendation in January 2023. After lawsuits a...

Image: Steve from Washington, DC, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0