The Arlington Conspiracy (Part 1)

My dad was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in December of 2019. Much has changed in those four years since his funeral, including the Confederate Memorial webpage on the Arlington National Cemetery website.

The internet archive of the page from December 17, 2019 contains a citation:

Peters, James Edward. Arlington National Cemetery: Shrine to America’s Heroes. Woodbine House, 1986.

Presumably this means that the 2019 page was predominately what Mr. Peters wrote in his book. The next archived copy available on wayback.archive.org is from May 10, 2020. It is immediately clear that the two pages are different. The picture on the 2020 and current page is much better than the older version. There is also no citation at the bottom of the page. The new page says we must “interpret the memorial’s symbolism.” Oh boy.

Here are two examples of interpreting:

2019 — “The vignettes include a black slave following his young master; an officer kissing his infant child in the arms of her mammy…”

2020 — “Two of these figures are portrayed as African American: an enslaved woman depicted as a “Mammy,” holding the infant child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.”

The newer version requires more words to convey the same information but has the advantage of introducing us to the correct way to refer to slaves: enslaved and owned. The capitalization of and the scare quotes used with mammy I can’t explain.

2019 — “…followed by the Latin phrase: ‘Victrix Causa Diis Placuit Sed Victa Caton.’ This phrase means: ‘The Victorious Cause was Pleasing to the Gods, But the Lost Cause to Cato.’”

2020 — “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”) construes the South’s secession as a noble “Lost Cause.” This narrative of the Lost Cause, which romanticized the pre-Civil War South and denied the horrors of slavery…”

At least this time they communicated more with the additional words. There is no citation for the conclusion drawn. Do they have evidence that shows the sculptor’s intention was to reference the “lost cause” as they have defined it?

I would be remiss if I did not remind you that this is a United States Department of Defense website.

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