President Donald Trump prioritized American history on March 27 with an executive order directing his Department of the Interior to restore U.S. monuments taken down during Biden’s iconoclastic occupation of the White House. He fittingly asked that “anti-American ideology” be eliminated from national parks, museums, and memorials.
Under Trump’s instruction, the Interior Department is to reinstall historical markers and statues taken down after Jan. 1, 2020. Art exhibitions that disparage the shared values of traditional Americans or promote racially divisive narratives will not receive federal funding. The Trump administration’s worthy and longed-for efforts must restore Moses Ezekiel’s “Reconciliation Memorial” in Arlington National Cemetery, and here is why.
The Biden administration reversed Trump’s original patriotic vision when it undercut the contributions of a talented Jewish veteran and desecrated the memory of American soldiers in one fell swoop through its unconstitutional removal of Ezekiel’s “Reconciliation Memorial” (1914) at Arlington National Cemetery in December 2023, ordered by then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Now the monument is in storage, dismantled in plywood crates, supposedly “gifted” to the Commonwealth of Virginia for “preservation.” A simple phone call from Trump to Gov. Glenn Youngkin is yet another way the president could quickly reverse Biden’s cancellation of a monument important to our nation’s healing. The Jewish citizenry of our nation might also find the restoration appropriate, given the 2023 massacre and disgraceful campus riots since then.
The desecration of the “Reconciliation Memorial” occurred at the hands of none other than Congress, which acted fanatically in the aftermath of 2020’s race riots. Lawmakers went against Trump’s original executive order (and his later veto) by creating an antagonistic, anti-historical Naming Commission on March 2, 2021.
This attack on Ezekiel’s memorial and other war memorials was championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and funded under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The Naming Commission was awarded $2 million to essentially erase any traces of Confederate memorialization, including the naming of public buildings.
Importantly, when Congress authorized the Naming Commission after the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, the public was in favor of keeping in place Confederate statues, which are part of American history. According to 2020 HuffPost/YouGov polling, only one-third of the public supported removing Confederate statues.
One perspective ignored by the Naming Commission is that of H.K. Edgerton, a black veteran whose ancestors fought for the South in the Civil War and the former president of his local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Asheville, North Carolina. Edgerton says the Naming Commission’s recommendations were unconstitutional.
“In America, trials are conducted by a jury, not by Congress. You can’t punish ‘so-called’ traitors without a trial, and there was none,” Edgerton said in a March 1 statement. He believes that when Warren stood on the Senate floor and justified the removal of memorials or name changes of forts and bases because they bore the names of Confederates and “anyone who supported them were insurrectionist and traitors,” this violated Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the Constitution against bills of attainder.
Edgerton explains that Ezekiel’s work “depicted those former Black Confederate Veterans who in the hour of reconciliation followed the former White Confederates … into the Spanish American War and remained on the Battlefield after a Smallpox and Yellow Fever epidemic struck.”
President McKinley reportedly appreciated the former Southern and Northern soldiers fighting a foreign enemy side by side for the first time since the War Between the States. He applauded the bravery and requested that former Confederate soldiers be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The United Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups subsequently began raising funds for a memorial and wanted the most appropriate sculptor to represent the reuniting of the nation, so they commissioned Virginia’s own Jewish sculptor and Confederate veteran Moses Ezekiel. He created what he would later consider his “crowning achievement,” the “Reconciliation Memorial” that would eventually mark his grave.
The Army acted illegally to remove the important Ezekiel monument on Dec. 23, 2023. Unveiled in 1914 as a peace offering and celebrated as such by President Woodrow Wilson and subsequent presidents, the Naming Commission included this grave-marking memorial on its list to remove, despite Congress specifically excluding grave markers. Furthermore, during the removal, the Department of Defense appeared to desecrate Ezekiel’s grave and others.
Ezekiel, born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, was the first Jewish graduate at VMI. While there, he and other cadets were conscripted for the Battle of New Market (see the film Field of Lost Shoes). One of the 10 boys who lost their lives was our third president’s great-grandnephew, Thomas Garland Jefferson. Fellow cadet Ezekiel nursed him for days as he was dying.
Ezekiel spent his later life developing his sculpting talent and honoring the principles for which they both fought. Ezekiel created the poignant “Virginia Mourning Her Dead” at VMI, which sits atop the graves of some of the cadets who died at New Market, including Jefferson. Ezekiel sculpted “Religious Liberty” and many other important, impressive works in his Rome studio. Over the years, many notable guests, including Ulysses S. Grant, visited Ezekiel’s studio.
Defend Arlington and other groups tried unsuccessfully in court to prevent the Army from removing the “Reconciliation Memorial.” Now they’re trying to appeal what they say was an illegal removal. They and Paul Ezekiel, a family member, have also asked Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to restore the memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. These preservation groups also worry the monument will be placed in the remote New Market Battlefield where Ezekiel’s other masterpiece of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, formerly at VMI, was placed.
The Naming Commission’s undemocratic recommendation for removal appears in its final report of 2022. The preface to that report mischaracterizes the movement across the South to memorialize their fallen as the “Lost Cause.” With so many citizens killed in the 1861-65 struggle (more than 600,000), many statues appeared first in the North to lost soldiers and generals because they were able to pay for them. Only after its economy returned could the South memorialize its fallen soldiers.
Shaped by academics such as Connor Williams and Ty Seidule, the Naming Commission’s preface arrogantly states the movement to commemorate dead soldiers as a “mistaken understanding of the Civil War known as the ‘Lost Cause.’” These revisionist historians discount the funerary, commemorative aspect of the monuments.
They wrote: “In every instance and every aspect, these names and memorials have far more to do with the culture under which they were named than they have with any historical acts actually committed by their namesakes.” This bigoted statement uses a partial truth to negate sincere mourning experienced by loss of life in the South.
It’s important to note that in the several forums conducted by Arlington Cemetery regarding Ezekiel’s “Reconciliation” masterpiece, participants were overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the magnificent monument and grave marker in place. This means the removal of the sculpture went totally against public opinion. It also appears to go against the National Defense Authorization Act, which specifically exempted grave markers from the Naming Commission’s remit.
Given the above facts, the only fitting, proper, and patriotic move is for Trump to ask Youngkin to do the right thing with the “gift” to the Commonwealth of Virginia from the former secretary of defense (which wasn’t legally given anyway), and return the “Reconciliation Memorial” to Arlington Cemetery where it belongs. As a teaching tool, this monument will inspire generations with the superb workmanship of its veteran artist. If Youngkin cares about the Judeo-Christian worldview, educating children, and honoring history, he will gladly comply.
Ann McLean received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and serves on the Jefferson Council, the Virginia Council, and the Republic of Virginia preservation groups. Patricia N. Saffran is a writer and fine artist based in New York City. Former US Editor, Politicalite UK, and former Contributing Editor, Horse Directory Magazine, she has written for various publications on a number of topics including Beaux Arts monuments, equine history, as well as book, movie, and theater reviews. In addition, she has a degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and is the founder of Brandy Parfums.
