Seven Facts the Federal Government Does NOT Want You to Know About the Confederate Memorial at Arlington

The Congressional Naming Commission said that Moses Ezekiel’s monument represents the “Lost Cause, which romanticized the pre-Civil War South and denied the horrors of slavery…” They said it “offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery” so the monument should be destroyed. It is what they don’t tell you that the average American should be concerned with.

1. A world famous Jewish American artist created the monument. He was a Confederate Veteran and is buried at the foot of the memorial.

2. A former Secretary of the Navy in the Grover Cleveland administration was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Arlington Confederate Monument Association. Hilary A. Herbert was also a Confederate veteran.

3. President William McKinley, a Union veteran, was instrumental in creating what is now Section 16 in Arlington National Cemetery to bury Confederate veterans.

4. Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson carried on the tradition of honoring Confederate veterans at Arlington culminating with Wilson’s address at the 1914 dedication.

5. The tradition of presidential administrations laying a wreath at the Confederate Memorial on Veterans Day existed for about 100 years. President Obama deserves credit for resisting calls to abandon the tradition.

6. Women from all parts of the country sponsored the creation of the monument and raised the money required. These Daughters of the Confederacy met with government officials and presidents to garner support for the memorial.

7. Union veterans attended the dedication in 1914. The leading Union veteran, General Washington Gardner, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic spoke.

These facts tell a very different story from the one the Federal Government wants you to believe. Ask yourself, why the Naming Commission did not mention any of these things? The destruction of the monument would be disrespectful to the millions of Americans who have Southern ancestors. It would also disparage all the Americans who supported the memorial at the turn of the 20th century. It is the height of arrogance to think we know better now.