Description

Lest we forget…

Recently, there have been efforts to remove this beautiful work of art that has stood at Arlington for over 100 years. It stands as not only a symbol of reconciliation, but to honor the over 500 Confederates buried at Arlington. Get one of these coins while you can, as there is only a limited number created. If the monument is removed, a new coin will be produced.

History of the Arlington Cemetery Confederate Monument. This information was taken from Arlington’s website. All woke and/or progressive propaganda has been removed:

In 1900, Congress authorized Confederate remains to be reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery, which designated a special section for them (in what is now Section 16). The Confederate Memorial was erected there in 1914. By the early 1900s, it had become tradition to establish a new section at Arlington for the dead from a particular war, followed by a commemorative monument.

However, to understand more fully why Confederate graves are at a former Union cemetery, and to interpret the memorial’s symbolism, it is necessary to delve more deeply into historical context. By the turn of the twentieth century, Arlington had become a truly national cemetery, a transformation that occurred amidst reconciliation between North and South. Reconstruction effectively ended in 1877. That year, President Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from Southern states, allowing for sectional reconciliation.

In light of the Spanish American War, the U.S. government reassessed its policies on Confederate burials. Although the Tomb of the Civil War Unknowns likely contained the remains of both Union and Confederate dead, Arlington had been a U.S. Army cemetery, and for years after the Civil War, Confederate veterans could not be buried there. However, on December 14, 1898 — four days after the Spanish-American War ended — President William McKinley kicked off his “Peace Jubilee” nationwide tour with a speech in Atlanta in which he proclaimed, “in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers…. Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. The old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories.” 

The United Confederate Veterans (UCV) identified Confederate graves around the Washington, D.C. area and successfully petitioned the government to have those remains transferred to Arlington. On June 6, 1900, Congress appropriated $2,500 for the removal and reinterment of Confederate remains. By 1902, 262 Confederate bodies were interred in a specially designated section, Section 16. Unlike the orderly rows in the rest of the cemetery, graves in the Confederate section were arranged in concentric rings. Their headstones also looked different: while having the same dimensions as regular government headstones, the Confederate headstones featured pointed tops. The cemetery added more Confederate graves over the years, eventually totaling more than 400. 

On June 7, 1903, the first Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies were held in Arlington’s Confederate section. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a floral arrangement, beginning a tradition continued by nearly every U.S. president. Even President Obama kept the tradition (Editors note: this is the only worthy thing this Obama ever did).

In 1906, with Secretary of War William Howard Taft’s approval, the United Daughters of the Confederacy began raising funds to erect a memorial in the Confederate section. Through such voluntary civic organizations, women led many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century efforts to commemorate wars and to mourn the dead.

Unveiled in 1914, the Confederate Memorial was designed by American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran and the first Jewish graduate of Virginia Military Institute. The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic vision of the Confederacy. Standing on a 32-foot-tall pedestal, a bronze, classical female figure, crowned with olive leaves, represents the American South. She holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.” The statue stands on a pedestal with four cinerary urns, one for each year of the war, and is supported by a frieze with 14 shields, one for each of the 11 Confederate states and the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Thirty-two life-sized figures depict mythical gods alongside Southern soldiers and civilians.

Two of these figures are black Southerners: an slave woman depicted as a “Mammy,” holding the infant child of a Confederate officer, and an slave man following his owner to war. An inscription of the Latin phrase “Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton” (“The victorious cause was pleasing to the gods, but the lost cause to Cato”).

Sculptor Moses Ezekiel was buried at the base of his creation in 1921, after being honored at the first funeral ceremony in the newly built Memorial Amphitheater. Three other Confederate soldiers lie next to him: Lt. Harry C. Marmaduke of the Confederate Navy, Capt. John M. Hickey of the Second Missouri Infantry and Brig. Gen. Marcus J. Wright, who commanded brigades at the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga.