Apparently, as a result of a decision by the now disbanded “Congressional Naming Commission,” the Moses Ezekiel Reconciliation Monument will be removed from Arlington Cemetery. The now defunct panel’s Final Report, issued on September 19, 2022, includes the following information specific to the statue: “The Department of Army should consider the most cost-effective method of removal and disposal of the monument’s elements in their planning.” 

This can only make sense to people who are ignorant of American history…or who detest it. To celebrate and foster the country’s reconciliation and healing after the Civil War, President McKinley, a Union army veteran, told the nation, “Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other… The Union is once more the common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice.” In support of those ends, McKinley promoted a bill to establish a Confederate section in Arlington Cemetery, which eventually resulted in the reinterring of some 260 Confederate bodies from various previous burial places to that hallowed ground. Several years later, then Secretary of War William Taft approved a request for the erection of a monument in that Confederate burial area.

Moses Ezekiel, a world-renowned American sculptor and the first Jewish cadet at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), was chosen to create the monument that would capture the spirit of reconciliation, serve as memorial to the hundreds of dead Confederates buried in Section 16, and be recognized as a prominent “Peace Monument,” commemorating the miraculous reunification of the North and South.

Later, in 1912, then President Taft presided over the monument’s cornerstone dedication ceremony, describing it as “a beautiful monument to the heroic dead of the South,” and “a benediction of all true Americans.”

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson unveiled the completed monument, calling it “an emblem of a reunited people.” He added that it would help “to declare this chapter in the history of the United States closed.”

Only Democrats could be for the removal of the “Reconciliation Monument,” literally a specifically designed and designated symbol of inclusion, peace and unity. That they get away with proclaiming to be the party of tolerance, peace, and inclusion simply illustrates the stupefying ignorance of a majority of Americans, and the underlying, similarly stupefying concomitant bias of the mainstream media and Big Education.

Democrats were pro-slavery, pro-secession, and anti-reconstruction. It should not be surprising that those in the Congressional Shaming Naming Commission—and the army, apparently-- want to abolish a monument to love, loyalty, devotion, sacrifice, and unity. Sadly, this is not ironic, but rather fitting, for the Party of Destruction and Division.

Image: Ron Cogswell via Flickr, CC BY 2.0, unaltered.