Army begins dismantling Confederate memorial at Arlington Cemetery despite opposition

• The military began removing the Confederate reconciliation memorial from Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, despite opposition from lawmakers and some of the US public.
• Opponents of tearing it down say the memorial was intended to symbolize reconciliation between the North and the South after the Civil War, and falls outside Congress' intent to order a review of Defense Department assets that appears to commemorate the Confederation.
• “The Reconciliation Monument does not honor or commemorate the Confederacy,” the Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to the DOD.
  

The Army will begin removing the main part of the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) on Monday, despite opposition from lawmakers and the public, an ANC spokesman confirmed.

While a bipartisan commission determined the memorial fell under its mandate to identify any Pentagon articles that portray the Confederacy in a positive light, some legislators and members of the public who fought in court to stop the removal of the monument to say the removal belies an effort to depict reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War. Calls to stop or delay the removal have gone unheeded, as the process has begun to remove parts of the monument that display the iconography deemed offensive.

“Security fencing was installed around the Memorial yesterday, December 17 and the deliberate deconstruction process is underway,” cemetery spokeswoman Rebecca Wardwell told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

On December 11, 4th Republican members of Congress he wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asking him to suspend the removal of the monument and saying the Army's decision to proceed violates the intent of Congress. outlined in the 2021 defense policy bill.

“The Reconciliation Monument does not honor or commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity. Furthermore, the authority of the Naming Commission explicitly prohibits the desecration of grave sites,” the lawmakers said in the letter. “Given the hundreds of headstones surrounding the monument, it would be impossible for these graves to remain intact if the Department of the Army proceeds with its proposal to remove the monument, it is both a clear violation of enacted statute and the legislative intent of Congress.”

On Saturday, the military completed the last of the regulatory requirements before tearing down the monument, Arlington National Cemetery. said in a press release. Videos show removal staging from Sunday night, with a metal fence and black screen surrounding the memorial and instruments of deconstruction in operation near the statue.

A group called Defend Arlington sued the Army and the Department of Defense (DOD) in a district court a February stop the impeachment on similar grounds to the arguments of Republican lawmakers. The district judge dismissed the case on Dec. 12, court documents show show.

Former President William McKinley, a Union veteran, commissioned the memorial in 1898, seconds on the memorial web page on the ANC site. Congress in 1900 allowed more than 400 Confederate veterans to be re-interred in graves forming concentric circles around the memorial in an attempt to encourage healing from the Civil War half a century earlier.

“Sectional feelings no longer hold back the love we feel for one another,” McKinley said. Successive presidents of both parties have practiced an annual laying of wreaths at the monument.

Sculptor Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish-American Confederate veteran and Virginia Military Institute cadet, is buried on the base. seconds on the cemetery page for the structure.

The bronze figures of the same monument – the parts that will be taken down on December 22 – were unveiled in 1914 under former President Woodrow Wilson to symbolize the peace and reconciliation expected in the decades following a civil war that tearing apart families and the country. aside

Advocates of dismantling the monument argue that the monument represents a historical version of the Confederacy and a sanitized portrait of slavery in the South.

The memorial includes a statue of a woman representing the “American South” holding a laurel wreath, a plow and a scythe surrounded by 14 coats of arms representing the 11 Confederate states and the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. There are 32 figures engraved on the pedestal, two of which appear as slaves, and one inscription pays tribute to the idea of ​​the Southern War as a “lost cause.”

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin plans to move the monument to New Market Battlefield State Historic Park in the Shenandoah Valley, according to spokesman Macaulay Porter. he said The Washington Post adds that the governor does not agree with the army's decision.

Arlington Cemetery said leaving the statue's granite base in place will ensure the graves, headstones and grounds are undisturbed throughout the removal process, according to the Post.

“We want to make sure it's placed within a proper historical context,” a senior military official told the Post.

Security around the cemetery will remain in a heightened state in the coming days, the Post reported. Moving the monument will cost about $3 million.

A disposition in the House defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024 would stop the removal of the memorial. However, the House is out of session and Congress has deliberated on spending bills until January.

National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2021 gave a commission of retired and current civilian authorities and defense officials, known as the Nomenclature Commission, tasked with identifying “all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia honoring or commemorating the Confederate States of America” ​​​​and recommend ways to remove or rename assets.

The army has renamed nine bases in the US to comply with the commission's report.

DOD did not immediately respond to DCNF's request for comment.

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