Is Defending Our Heritage on Trump’s Agenda?

Fighting for Our Heritage

Today’s article is a guest article written by Lieutenant Colonel Edwin L. Kennedy, Jr. U.S. Army (retired) on behalf of Defend Arlington. Defend Arlington is a group organized to oppose and reverse the Biden Era Army’s desecration and erasure of Arlington National Cemetary’s Reconciliation Memorial, which honored the Confederate dead as a McKinley-Era attempt at reconciliation between North and South. As I am a McKinley enthusiast and Southerner, I believe Secretary of Defense Hegseth should restore the Memorial to what it was before Lloyd Austin and Elizabeth erased it out of hate and spite. So, today’s article is a valuable contribution, covering the history of the Memorial, what it shows, and why the attacks on it ought to be reversed. If you agree that the Memorial should be restored by Secretary Hegseth and President Trump, please sign the petition. Finally, you find this article valuable, it would be hugely helpful if you could like it by tapping the heart at the top of the page to like the article; that’s how the Substack algorithm knows to promote it. Thanks again!

Recently, President Trump signed an Executive Order, “Restoring Truth in American History,” in which he ordered the re-erection of monuments under the control of the Secretary of the Interior that have been moved in recent years. But arguably, the most important public monument removed during that time was also a veteran’s headstone and monument to American reconciliation and unity at Arlington National Cemetery.

President Trump instinctively recognizes that great societies remember their history and are proud of it. Memory is a powerful human emotion, one that is critically important to cultural identities. This has been recognized for millennia, with the impulse to build monuments to remember heroes, great men, and culturally important events going back to ancient times, as the Pyramids and those monuments the Bible records stand as a testament to. It is a normal desire to remember those things, events, and people that evoke positive or pleasant emotions or to remember significant loss causing grief. The fact that this is done is relatively consistent across cultural boundaries. It is how we remember.

Many might be familiar with the history of the Roman Empire from history classes in school. Rome is still full of monuments, statues, and other artifacts two millennia after they were first erected in the Eternal City. Whether they commemorate victories, grieve losses, or honor notable men, many of the monuments that stood in the time of the Caesars still look down upon us, and us on them. What’s more, the impulse to build these commemorations of leaders and battles, campaigns and wars was so powerful and widespread that many, even after centuries of archaeology, are being discovered around the former empire. We see their magnificent baths, lifelike statuary, and fabulous public buildings and recognize those monuments as historic works of art that still ought to be preserved.

While that Roman attempt to remember is from ages ago, the Europeans that followed in their footsteps acted on much the same impulse, and so the continent remains full of beautiful statues and memorials to their past leaders, heroes, and wars lending interest, perspective, and ambiance to local sites. Those statues and memorials that remember the sacrifices of the 20th Century’s two world wars are particularly prolific, which makes sense given the horrendous losses seen in both conflicts. And so they commemorated at special sites across Europe and her former dominions, from Ireland to the Volga River, from the Arctic Circle to North Africa. In the Pacific, memorials are found from Australia to Japan and India to Hawaii. In the U.S., every state and many municipalities have memorials to our service personnel. Notably, although very subdued, even the Germans have memorials to their tremendous losses; while they have no memorials to political entities such as the NSDAP, they do still honor soldiers who died in the service to their country. As a retired soldier, I completely understand.

American Monuments and the War Between the States

So, how do we, as Americans, remember? Since the founding of our nation, a great many monuments, memorials, and statues have been erected to commemorate victories or to remember notable people or leaders, with those being raised in huge numbers during the late 1800s. This was due to a couple of substantive reasons. The most important reason was the War Between the States, which saw staggering losses and generated more American casualties than all other American conflicts combined. Civilian losses, especially in the South where the bulk of combat occurred, were also large as combat, disease, starvation, and war crimes took their toll. As could be expected, the war was a significant emotional event for Southerners.

The memorials and monuments erected in the aftermath of the titanic clash between North and South, something that began in earnest about two decades after the conflict, were primarily meant to remember the service and loss of soldiers on both sides. They were never intended to be political statements, a relatively recent, revisionist interpretation with absolutely no basis in fact.

They were not inexpensive, and the South, which bore the brunt of the war on its soil, was least able to pay for the memorials. However, they began catching up to the North in what is called the “age of memorialization,” as was explained by Dr. Michael Bradley in his excellent, published article The Historical Background of Civil War Monuments. Other authors have examined the history and found this as well. For example, author Bryan McManis shared the following adapted essay with Ms. Lou Ann Poole, United Daughters of the Confederacy Virginia Clay Clopton Chapter:¹

“…What people do not know or understand is that after the War the North spent two years and $7M to bury 360,000 soldiers in both the South and the North. Two-thirds of the graves and gravestones had no names. Both sides were overwhelmed by the huge number of dead and wounded in each battle. The manpower to deal with the dead simply was not there. The North tried to bury as many as possible, but the sheer numbers prevented it.”

“Confederate graves were often no more than shallow pits, with the bodies rudely thrown in and barely covered…”

“Tens of thousands were never buried at all. The bones often littered the battlefields untouched. The North also did a practice of dumping dead Confederates into wells on farms up to 150 bodies at a time. This was to poison the drinking water and stop the use of watering crops in the fields after being burned… Nothing was spent to bury Confederate soldiers; but worse, the Union bought prime Southern land for pennies on the dollar to create federal land for graveyards for Union soldiers who could not be sent North for burial…Some Confederates were buried by private funds in the South, but the economy was so bad and all wealth lost that they numbered very few…Many more had been placed in mass shallow graves that became uncovered and destroyed by weather, animals, or vandals…”

Similarly, Dr. Carol Cadori, former president of the Tennessee Valley Civil War Roundtable and Union soldier descendent stated:

“This is why there are so many more war memorials in the South than in the North – the grief of families not knowing who and where their dead were…The War Memorials are giant grave stones for the unknown Confederate dead…They are not monuments to slavery or lost causes, but to brave soldiers who fought and died defending their land and their beliefs.”

A defining moment in North-South relations came when America subsequently went to war with Spain in 1898, just 33 years after the War Between the States. Fortunately for the country, it was a defining moment in a good way. Union Army veteran and then-U.S. President William McKinley was extremely pleased with the patriotic response of the South as hard feelings over the vindictive Reconstruction policies were put aside, and Southerners, many of them children and grandchildren of Confederate soldiers, raced to the U.S. colors. Four former Confederate senior officers, for example, were commissioned as U.S. Volunteer officers, and famed Confederate General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler served as one of the leading Spanish-American War generals. In short, the display of patriotism demonstrated throughout the South, along with Washington’s grateful recognition of it, showed that the country had made progress toward reconciliation.

In response to the South’s outpouring of support for America’s cause, President McKinley, who understood the import of the moment, gave a generous compliment to the Southerners who rallied to the colors, sparking a move that superseded his untimely death by assassination. Before he died, he was responsible for the first of four Congressional Acts that eventually made Confederate soldiers virtually co-equal with Union soldiers.

His powerful response of further reconciliation began with the reinternment of Confederate POWs in the Washington, D.C. area into Arlington National Cemetery in 1901. This was the first step by the Federal Government to fulfill President Abraham Lincoln’s second memorial address, in which he vowed to “bind up the nation’s wounds” and spoke of action “with malice toward none with charity for all” in caring for Confederate soldier graves. This was a controversial proposal. Not to the surviving Union veterans, but rather to the women of the South who were suspicious of the long-term stability of the newly minted reconciliation movement.

Prior to embarking on the Arlington Plan, the Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic and double amputee Corporal James Tanner was consulted by then-Secretary of Defense William H. Taft about the plan. When asked, he responded:

“Among my comrades of battlefield reputation I am prone to believe there will be but little, if any, opposition expressed. For myself, I have no hesitance at first mention of the matter in taking my position, especially in view of the fact that to be consistent with all I have said or written since the war, I must take this position. I have said since my election as commander-in-chief that if the position gave me the opportunity to say one extra word or to perform one extra deed which would be more weight than my word or deed otherwise would be to work for harmony and good feeling over all the country, then I would rejoice more than otherwise, that I was commander-in-chief. Rather than take any other position on this subject, I would lay down my commission.” Cordially yours, JAMES TANNER, Commander-in-Chief, G.A.R.

All of this occurred at the peak of the “age of memorialization”, America’s Renaissance, where both sides were erecting memorials and monuments to their aging veterans in increasing numbers. Financing the Southern memorials took years of fund-raising, mostly through small donations of nickels, dimes, and quarters. The ladies who had suffered the loss of fathers, husbands, and sons were the first to step forward, and they worked assiduously to design, finance, and dedicate memorials to honor their war dead. With first President McKinley’s, and then President Roosevelt’s support, a memorial was proposed. Like others, it took years to finance but in 1914, the Reconciliation Memorial (a.k.a. “New South) was officially dedicated in the center of the Confederate graves in Arlington National Cemetery. It was a funerary memorial but also a monument to reconciliation and unity.

The Memorial and Gravestone

President Woodrow Wilson, flanked by surviving Union Army and Confederate Army veterans dedicated the beautiful Reconciliation Memorial. Thousands attended from both the Northern and Southern sides, with everyone from members of Congress, to Union and Confederate veterans themselves, who recognized its significance.

The Memorial was the design and work of eminent, world-renowned sculptor, Moses Ezekiel. Before becoming a sculptor, Ezekiel was the first Jewish graduate of VMI, and fought in the war as a Confederate soldier. That service informed his design; the bas-relief bronze friezes surrounding the Memorial were his reminiscences of his wartime service and reflected the culture of the times that he himself experienced personally. Thus, the Monument wasn’t something about which he had read nor what he heard second-hand. It was, rather, what he saw and experienced. Reflected on the bronze friezes were soldiers and civilians of his experiences. A black Confederate, in uniform, marching with his white comrades; a weeping black Mammy with a soldier’s child; soldiers heading to war with a purpose, many of them never to return. These were things soldiers on both sides knew of. In 1914, there was no outcry. There were no objections from the veterans. The Memorial reflected the reality of 1861-1865 and the survivors knew it. Perhaps some were offended but they knew better than to fight the truth.

Moses Ezekiel considered this Memorial to be his crowning achievement. He specifically requested that he be buried at the base of the Memorial with it acting as his headstone. When he died in 1921 that is exactly what happened. Ezekiel was buried in a grave at the base of the Memorial just as he had desired.

The Army’s Desecration of a Monument to the Dead

He lay undisturbed until December 2023, when the U.S. Army reneged on its reconciliation and drove heavy equipment onto his grave in order to dispose of the Memorial that had been there for 109 years undisturbed. The Army denied desecrating the grave but photos by a third party show otherwise.

The Army’s Erasure of the Memorial

There are a number of disappointing issues with the actions of the Army. First and foremost, the removal of the Memorial was outside the remit. It was a recommendation, and grave markers, such as with this Memorial, were expressly exempted. Then SECDEF Lloyd Austin, a major DEI proponent, decided to execute on the recommendation. Had he done what the law required, he would never have allowed the Memorial to be removed. Even the biased recommendation by the temporary “Naming Commission” was flawed as the removal breached a number of laws that were conveniently ignored by the DoD legal team.

Second, during the appeals process, the Army / DoD legal team violated judicial ethics by inviting the appeals court judge to visit the dismantling of the Memorial without representation by the legal representatives of the litigants suing to return the Memorial. That is unethical and illegal. Prior to the DoD arranged visit, the Memorial dismantling site was hastily “policed” so as not to exhibit the violations they were accused of. Evidence was removed so that Judge Alston would not see any violations.

Third, the U.S. Army has surreptitiously “gifted” the Memorial to a third party without completing the required consulting party process, during pending litigation, in an effort to “moot”” the lawsuits against them. This alone is such an egregious wrong that correcting it is a must.

Fourth, the illegal removal of a memorial has established a terrible precedent for the removal and destruction of memorials and monuments due to revisionists’ interpretations. The total hypocrisy of those led by Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren to destroy anything Confederate is astounding. Instead of focusing on the meaning of this Memorial, Warren, reading from Southern Poverty Law Center talking points, has ‘re-meaned’ the Memorial. Trump, on the other hand, recognizes in his aforementioned Executive Order that monuments have been changed by those like Pocahontas “to perpetuate a false revision of history or improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.” He gets it.

Lastly, with the current political and racial unrest, much based on the unprecedented proliferation of anti-American beliefs and hatred of our heritage, the natural question arises as to whether the caustic DEI ideology is not an underlying reason for the attack on the Reconciliation Memorial. Moses Ezekiel was recognized during his time as one of the world’s eminent sculptors. The fact that he designed the beautiful Memorial and designated it to literally be his grave marker naturally begs the question as to the effects of Critical Marxism, DEI, and the rest of the caustic leftist ideology on the decision to remove the Memorial. It is no accident that DEI became a cornerstone of the woke movement, resulting in its embrace by the DoD under SECDEF Austin.

It should be noted that the formation of Warren’s infamous “Naming Commission” occurred at the same time as the official acceptance of the leftist ideology of DEI by the U.S. Biden administration. The avid acceptance of DEI and Cultural Marxism, ideologies that seek to “deconstruct” and destroy, by groups like BLM and the far-left Democrats meant that the DoD and woke political appointees such as SECDEF Austin were infected by the virus of that evil thinking as well. Leftists, communists, and socialists, all of whom were imbued by that ideology, then focused on attacking and deconstructing monuments to America over 2020 and the following years. What better target than the Memorial by one of the most famous Jewish sculptors in the world that serves as his grave marker? Such is what they appear to have thought, as they proceeded to desecrate Ezekiel’s grave.

Further, it must also be said that the Cultural Marxist left, in its bending toward vicious anti-Semitism over recent years, has acted in line with some of the Union’s worst moments and quite in contrast to the spirit of reconciliation. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s General Order No. 11, for example, ousted all Jews from the Tennessee District he controlled in 1862. Is that not reflected in the woke Warren Commission’s war upon the Reconciliation Memorial, the greatest work of America’s greatest Jewish sculptor?

The Warren Commission’s attacks on the Memorial had to be rationalized by other reasons that could evoke popular irrational emotions so the “race card” was employed. Even though the Reconciliation Memorial was not in any way meant by either the sculptor or any president to demean any race or support the restoration of slavery that did not prevent Warren’s Commission from trying to fabricate a totally synthetic link. The death of George Floyd provided the impetus for their anti-Southern hate campaign to immediately invoke their illogical arguments that the Reconciliation Memorial was about slavery and racism.

The frieze encircling the Memorial was crafted by Moses Ezekiel to represent the scenes from the war that he knew first-hand from his experience. Marching soldiers, family members, and other civilians are shown. Ezekiel put black participants in the frieze, which was a good and noble thing, as they were an integral component of Southern society.

Ignoring the righteousness of those inclusions on the Memorial, the cancel culture mob was particularly outraged by two of the friezes, both of which were recordings by Ezekiel of what he saw: black soldiers and civilians as a huge part of Southern society. Further adding to the ridiculousness of the outrage is that their existence on the Memorial in no way endorses slavery, but instead recognizes their important contributions. Erasing them (known as “Erascism”) denigrates their very existence.

The fact that a black Confederate soldier was included has made the left lose their collective minds. How dare Ezekiel include a black Confederate soldier? How could that be? The Twitter historians don’t want to admit what even Frederick Douglass reported in September 1861 in the Douglass Monthly:

“It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still. There is a Negro in the army as well as in the fence, and our Government is likely to find it out before the war comes to an end.’“

But instead of recognizing that this military funerary memorial reflected the truth of the Southern ranks, they had to cancel it from view as it didn’t fit the narrative. All military service should be appreciated, not just that of the soldiers who fit the narrative, and the memorial did just that.

As could be expected, the scene showing a tearful black “Mammy” holding a young white child also caused the leftists to go berserk. Nursemaids of all skin colors have been part of family life for centuries. It wasn’t invented in the South, but a caring surrogate mother figure with black features was too much for the Woke purveyors of revisionist history. With absolutely no evidence and armed with a narrow lens of presentism, the Wokeistas proclaimed that the Mammy was a slave. Perhaps, but not necessarily. 7% of Mammys were free. No one will ever know, and yes, chances are high that she was enslaved. But the memorial didn’t ‘glorify’ slavery; it recorded it. The glorification is in the eye of the beholder.

This memorial was unique in Arlington and, in fact, in the world for many reasons, but one worth mentioning is its spiritual significance. It was the only memorial at Arlington with a very of scripture: Isaiah 2:4. That verse provides, “[A]nd they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” Ezekiel’s theme of peace and reconciliation could not be better expressed. But with the removal, so went the message, and took God away.

The memory of our ancestors is important to cultural identity. Remembering our families and their sacrifices is part of our DNA. Memorializing them and their achievements and loss is not to suppress others nor is it nostalgia for slavery and racism any more than honoring the U.S. flag that flew over a legally segregated military for eight decades is. The Arlington National Cemetery Reconciliation Memorial evokes positive emotions of courageous American soldiers from the South and commemorates our ancestors’ honorable service, nothing more. It is how we remember. And it also is how America shows the world how to unite after tragedies.

Perhaps President Woodrow Wilson said it best in his dedication address:

“Am I mistaken, ladies and gentlemen, in supposing that nothing of this sort could have occurred in anything but a democracy? The people of a democracy are not related to their rulers as subjects are related to a government. They are themselves the sovereign authority, and as they are neighbors of each other, quickened by the same influences and moved by the same motives, they can understand each other.”

It’s a lesson worth remembering. President Trump must ensure it is not erased and recover the gifted memorial for reconciliation at Arlington.

About the Author: Lieutenant Colonel Edwin L. Kennedy, Jr. U.S. Army (retired), is a former graduate history Assistant Professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (USACGSC), For Leavenworth serving on faculty for 19 years. He is a certified Army professional historian and instructed the graduate Civil War core curriculum course and electives. As the former senior officer, Combat Studies Institute (U.S. Army) Staff Ride Team, he conducted extensive studies and staff rides to Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg for senior military officers. As a guest speaker, he frequently presents to groups on military history topics. He continues to volunteer his personal time to educate military leaders during Civil War battlefield visits. Col. Kennedy is a plaintiff in litigation to restore the Memorial.

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