The Confederate Memorial We Still Need
The most effective and moving memorial to the Confederacy is still one of the most revered spaces in our nation. It is the only memorial to the Confederacy we still need.
This past week a federal judge ordered that a confederate memorial be removed from the Arlington National Cemetery. The thirty five foot bronze statue was erected in 1914 by the artist Moses Jacob Ezekiel. A female figure with olive branch and flowing robes stands atop a massive column. Additional figures on the monument include a Black woman depicted as a “Mammy,” as well as a slave following his master to war on the side of the Confederacy.
The removal of this statue is part of a larger movement by the United States Army, which runs the cemetery at Arlington, to remove a number of troubling monuments to the Confederacy in military graveyards around the country.
Confederate memorials have been at the center of controversy before, most notably at the 2017 Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, VA. That weekend of events featured violence and at least one death, as rioters and protestors clashed over the removal of a monument to the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. The weekend also showcased the growing wave of anti-semitism and racism inherent in the groups advocating for the statue’s protection.
In the midst of these debates about the possible removal of memorials to the Confederacy, we’re sure to hear the argument that by taking down these statues and monuments, we are in a way erasing history. This is of course, a red herring of an argument. History can be preserved without deifying an enemy to our national ideals.
Plus, we already have the one and only monument to the Confederacy we will ever need.
Arlington House was built at the behest of George Washington Park Custis, the step-grandson of George Washington. Construction began in 1802, and despite the rampant use of slave labor to build it, the house was not completed until 1818.
Once the home was completed, Custis moved in with his wife Mary Lee Fitzhugh, The couple had four children, but only one of them, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, would grow to adulthood. She would eventually marry West Point graduate and US Army Officer Robert E. Lee in 1831. The Lees would then move into the home after the death of George Custis and his wife, Mary.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in April of 1861, President Abraham Lincoln offered command of the Union forces to then US Army General Robert E. Lee. Being a proud Virginian, and a lifelong slave owner, Lee resigned his commission in the US Armed Forces, and became the commanding general of the Confederacy. Lee had chosen his home state over his country. He went home to Arlington to prepare for war.
By June of 1862, the US Government had imposed a property tax to help pay for the war effort. Mary Lee was unable to attend a hearing for her back taxes due to a bout of rheumatoid arthritis and the house was auctioned off in June of 1864. Upon taking ownership of the house, the Army began making plans to use the massive grounds of the estate as a burial place for just some of their hundreds of thousands of dead Union soldiers.
Montgomery Megis, a Quartermaster General for the US Army was placed in charge of the logistics of transforming some of the grounds at Arlington into a cemetery for dead soldiers. Megis was filled with scorn at Lee for leaving behind his duty as an officer in the US Army and taking up arms against his own countrymen in the pursuit of preserving slavery.
In his rage, Megis formulated a plan to bury Union soldiers as close to Arlington House as possible. Megis planned to fill Mrs. Lee’s beloved rose garden with Union dead so that after the war the Lees would be unable to return to their home. Arlington National Cemetery was born. Were it not for the Civil War, it’s unlikely we would have Arlington National Cemetery at all.
160 years later, Arlington is one of our nation’s most sacred spaces. It is the home to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the changing of the guard. The eternal flame for John Fitzgerald Kennedy burns all day and all night without fail. It is the final resting place of Joe Louis, William Howard Taft, Senator Edward Kennedy, and more than 400,000 servicemen and women.
What has become a holy site began as a thumb in the eye of the man who led the Confederacy and helped to kill thousands of young Americans fighting for the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all.
Arlington House is the only site that we need to preserve the legacy of Robert E. Lee and his failed Confederacy. 400 fallen Confederate soldiers have also been laid to rest within the grounds at Arlington to pay tribute to their sacrifice as well. A museum at the house provides context and clarity to Lee’s life before and after the war, and attempts to wrestle with the complicated man he was.
That complicated legacy is best honored with a gorgeous mansion overlooking Washington, DC amidst the graves of 400,000 dead soldiers. The blood upon Lee’s hands rightly fell to his own front door, and stayed there as a marker for us all to take note of. Today, Arlington stands not just as a reminder of the supreme sacrifice of freedom, but also as a monument to the longstanding ugly legacy of the Confederacy, and the man who led it.
Cheers,
Matty C
As Shakespeare put it, "The evil that men do lives after them/The good is often interred with their bones..."