The Confederate Memorial in Arlington Shouldn't be Torn Down

An important piece of American history is set to be removed. We mustn't let this destruction of our history happen.

The Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery

“NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD

NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK
NOT LURED BY AMBITION
OR GOADED BY NECESSITY
BUT IN SIMPLE
OBEDIENCE TO DUTY
AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT
THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL
SACRIFICED ALL
DARED ALL — AND DIED”

- The inscription etched on the north-facing side of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

In the years after the American Civil War, there still remained a bitter, hostile divide between the North and the South. Post-war Reconstruction and subjugation of the South failed and exacerbated the hatred along sectional lines. At the time, many believed the deep wounds of the war were never to be fully healed. In 1898, the Spanish-American War changed that — in an extraordinary way. Former Confederate and Union soldiers were tapped to spearhead the war effort. Men from North and South, setting their differences aside, took up arms and united for a common cause.

U.S. President William McKinley, a former decorated Union veteran himself, spotted a tremendous opportunity to further promote peace and reconciliation along Northern and Southern lines after victory was achieved in the conflict. He made a trip to the South to commemorate the unity of America and the valor of the South. While traveling, he witnessed the deteriorating condition of Confederate Civil War graves and was disheartened at the dismal sight. As a result, McKinley sought to better honor the fallen dead of the South. He became the first to suggest the creation of a monument to memorialize the fallen soldiers of the Confederacy at Arlington National Cemetery.

In 1906, Secretary of War William Howard Taft authorized the United Daughters of the Confederacy to draw up plans and raise funds for a Confederate memorial. The team ultimately chose Moses Ezekial, a Jewish American and Confederate veteran, to sculpt the project. Ezekial was one of the better-known American sculptors at the time, as he was most renowned for constructing a life-size statue of Thomas Jefferson for the University of Virginia and for also being the first Jewish cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. Today, he lies buried right beside the Confederate Memorial, making his creation his literal headstone.

In 1912, the cornerstone of the monument was laid. Taft, now president, spoke at the event in front of thousands. Democrats and Republicans, Union and Confederate veterans, all took part in the historic commemoration.

The memorial was officially erected on June 4, 1914, and was unveiled by President Woodrow Wilson. A bronze memorial with a granite base, the statue is the second tallest in the cemetery. A female figure, which represents the South, holds a wreath in one hand while the other rests on a plow. Just under the circular base on which the statue stands are 32 life-size figures, all of whom represent the sacrifices the South endured during the war.

The memorial became a fixture in American history and an important relic of a time of newfound harmony and peace. Starting with Wilson, nearly every president has sent an annual funeral wreath to the memorial to pay respects to the fallen Southern soldiers. President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president, continued the tradition, despite heated pressure from the woke crowd not to do so.

As the men of the time understood it, the memorial was about peace, reconciliation, and harmony. The monument stood in part to bury the hatchet of conflicts past as well as to properly honor and remember the Confederate dead in the Civil War. It also stood to signify a new beginning in American history, a new era that was emblematic of cross-state unity and the reconciling of differences once thought irreconcilable.

In 1913, Union (left) and Confederate (right) veterans shake hands at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This moment, along with the creation of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington, were considered to be the “high points” in post-Civil War reconciliation. (Photo Source: Library of Congress)

Now, the storied memorial is at risk of being destroyed. As part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the “Naming Commission” was created with the sole purpose “to remove the names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America.” The Department of Defense has empowered the Naming Commission with this incredibly broad power, and the Confederate Memorial in Arlington subsequently became its primary target for desecration. The memorial is set to be removed on January 1, 2024, absent any meaningful resistance.

Once seen as a monument symbolizing accord and reconciliation, it is now portrayed as both racist and offensive. Thus, according to regime media and historians, it must be removed from sight and tossed into the wastebin of destroyed history. According to them, the monument to honor the Confederate dead and promote peace is, in actuality, a glorification of slavery, as they believe everything to do with the Confederacy is. Some critics suggest that the memorial is a distortion and a misrepresentation of Civil War history. But is it really?

If the monument is supposedly a gross distortion and misrepresentation of Civil War history, then why did countless Union veterans, most notably William McKinley, support its creation? What did the men at the time understand about the war that the woke brigade and iconoclasts of today don’t?

Contrary to current American history as taught by the government-run education system, most understood that the Civil War was not entirely centered on the issue of abolishing slavery. In 1861, two slaveholding republics were at war. Four slave states in the Union (Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky) were not required to surrender their slaves for the entirety of the war. Kentucky still held slave auctions many months after the war ended. Delaware didn’t abolish slavery until December 1865. New Jersey was the last Northern state to eradicate slavery, and it didn’t do so until January 1866. (Keep in mind that the war ended in April of ‘65).

The Union and Confederate veterans also understood that in every major Civil War battle, slave-owning Northerners fought against non-slave-owning Southerners. The overwhelming majority of whites in the South didn’t own slaves, and the vast majority didn’t benefit economically from slavery. Jim Webb, a Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Senator (D-VA), points out more historical truths in his latest piece in the Wall Street Journal in defense of the Confederate Memorial:

They understood that President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves in those states or in the areas of the South that had already been conquered. The proclamation freed only slaves in the areas taken after it was issued. And in the eyes of a Confederate soldier, if Lincoln had not freed slaves in the union, why should the soldier be vilified for supposedly fighting on behalf of slavery?

Americans have been heavily indoctrinated to adopt a sports team mentality and to believe the good versus evil narrative of the Civil War, and, as a result, basic historical facts like the ones mentioned above evade the monument smashers and desecrators of history today. The iconoclasts, fully supported by those in power, do not seem to understand the history they seem so hellbent on destroying.

They argue that everything that has anything whatsoever to do with the Confederacy is somehow related to the defense of slavery and therefore must be extinguished. This has been the excuse they have wielded for decades to justify tearing down Confederate monuments. But as we have seen over the years, especially in the summer of 2020, the goals of this faction aren’t merely confined to destroying statues and monuments of Confederate leaders. During the “Black Lives Matter” protests and riots that year, hundreds of statues were toppled, defaced, and dismantled. Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt were toppled, along with statues of Northern Civil War leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglass.

When the motives of this faction are boiled down, it becomes vividly clear that, above all else, they seek the complete and utter destruction of American history. This is why safeguarding Confederate statues and memorials is so paramount to protecting the rest of our history. The extinguishment of all things Confederate doesn’t just halt there. It continues until all of what this faction deems “inconvenient history” is obliterated from our understanding. Their movement will surely shift to taking out all of our history, and that history will subsequently be altered to better fit the narrative and worldview of the Leviathan State, as it already has to some extent.

The Confederate Memorial in Arlington should remain intact and should not be removed. It is a historic memorial that has stood for over a century, representing reconciliation, harmony, and peace between Americans. It lauds the ultimate sacrifice of so many fallen Southern soldiers who were not properly memorialized prior. If we continue to allow the destruction of our history to occur, then we should not be in a state of surprise when that storied history is no longer there for our children and grandchildren to learn from.