Fate of Confederate Memorial Portends Loss of Republic

As an alumnus of the Virginia Military Institute, I have been paying close attention to the fact that the removal or possible destruction of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery by the Department of Defense appears to be imminent. If it happens, the tyranny of political correctness will have yet another victory and our teetering Republic will be a step closer to utter ruin.

A fellow VMI alumnus, Sir Moses Ezekiel, a member of the class of 1866 and a veteran of the Battle of New Market, is the sculptor of the memorial. He is buried at the foot of his creation near the remains of more than 260 other Confederate soldiers, effectively making the Confederate Memorial the grave marker it was intended to be. 

In his remarks at the dedication ceremony in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson said the Confederate Memorial represented a “spirit of reconciliation”. And reconciliation certainly was the theme of Ezekiel and prior presidents McKinley and Taft, who were instrumental in bringing it to fruition. They all understood a cemetery necessitated by the Civil War on land once owned by the South’s preeminent general justifiably begets a Confederate section with such an appropriate grave marker.

I propose a return to normalcy. The past can be contextualized, but not canceled or closeted. Throughout history, change is a constant; and, until recently, you have been able to say “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” If everything changes, however, nothing is permanent, and you lose the essence of the thing you’re trying to save. The late historian David McCullough was fond of the expression “We cannot know where we are going until we know where we have been.” Not all change is for the better.

The South is being coerced to renounce the memory of their Confederate soldiers. The argument is you cannot honor those Southerners because they fought for slavery. The reality is they found themselves in the tragic maelstrom that was the Civil War and fought against an invading army for their native states in what they viewed as the second American revolution. They cannot be relegated to history’s dustbin simply because they wore the uniform of the losing side. They, too, were fighting for freedom.

To continue trying to erase history by removing monuments, desecrating graves, and canceling heroes is to continue down the slippery slope of the decline of Western civilization itself. This is cultural Marxism. Marxists tear at the threads of our tapestry of traditional values and common identity. They strike at the heart of society and its underpinnings, using fear, intimidation, and violence to achieve their ends. They propagandize their targets using classic oppressor vs. oppressed dogma. They unreasonably view the past through today’s lens, divorcing a culture from its heroes, so the national identity can more easily be reconceived. Marxism is the most dangerous threat we face as a society. Contradicting our founding principles, their long-term goal is the overthrow of the American Republic.

The polarization of identity politics can lead to civil strife and is reminiscent of how cultural and class revolutions in other countries began. Those of us who are educated rather than indoctrinated are familiar with the purges of the past. History is rife with examples. From Lenin to Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot, those tyrants killed millions of their own people to attain and retain power..

A letter written by Mrs Eliza Clinedinst Crim in 1909, describes her eyewitness account – when she was 24 years old and known as Lydie – of future sculptor Moses Ezekiel and his fellow cadet, mortally wounded Thomas Garland Jefferson, soon after the Battle of New Market.

“They told me about a poor little cadet lying down at the Lightfoot farm, badly wounded. In the morning after the battle, the now Sir Moses Ezekiel, of Rome, Italy, who was then a pretty, black, curly headed Jewish boy, brought him to my home in an ambulance and carried him in. When we laid him down he looked up at me and said “Sister, what a good, soft bed.” This sweet little cadet was from Amelia County, Virginia. His name was Thomas Garland Jefferson. He was about 16 years of age, was blue-eyed and had golden hair. I will never forget him and his sweet, boyish face. He was shot in the breast, and the bullet was cut out of his back. His sufferings were intense, but he bore up so well and never complained. Cadet Ezekiel nursed him very tenderly. His own mother could not have done more for him. The evening before Cadet Jefferson died he called Cadet Ezekiel to read for him. He read the 14th Chapter of St John: “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.” What a deathbed scene – the little Jewish cadet reading the New Testament to his Christian comrade in his last hours. I went to smooth his pillow, and he said, “Sister, what beautiful hands.” He called, “Duncan, come and light a candle; it is growing dark.” The blindness of death came over him. He died about midnight in Moses Ezekiel’s arms. Those were noble boys and Virginia should be proud of them.”

No doubt Moses Ezekiel was thinking of Thomas Garland Jefferson and the other cadets killed in the battle when he was focusing his prodigious talent on this reconciliation memorial now on the brink of destruction.

Arlington National Cemetery is not the place for virtue signaling or moral preening. When it comes to virtue and morality, the living are no match for the dead buried in that hallowed ground. If there is no room in our public discourse for the history of the Confederacy, there is no future for the Union that defeated it. Just as the secessionists predicted, the totalitarian impulse will soon overwhelm us all.

Joseph D. Elie

VMI Class of 1988