Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery can stay for now, judge rules

A federal judge temporarily halted the removal of a Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday after a group called Defend Arlington filed a lawsuit.

The memorial’s removal was planned for this week. A court hearing is now scheduled for Wednesday, and the injunction will expire at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 20. While work had begun on removing the monument, the temporary restraining order issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston allows the memorial to remain in place for now.

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“The removal will desecrate, damage, and likely destroy the Memorial longstanding at ANC as a grave marker and impede the Memorial’s eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places,” the lawsuit said.

Forty-four House Republicans wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to slam the Congress-created Naming Commission’s recommendations to remove the monument in an effort to remove what they believed were symbols that commemorate the Confederacy on Defense Department property in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) disagreed with the commission and insisted the monument “does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity.”

Moses Ezekiel, a renowned Jewish American sculptor and Civil War veteran, created and unveiled the monument in 1914. Ezekiel was interred at the foot of his work in Section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery.

Ezekiel designed the memorial to show a larger-than-life figure of a woman representing the South and crowned with an olive wreath, a symbol of peace. The memorial’s figure is also holding a pruning hook in its right hand, which in turn rests on a plow, a representation of peace and reconciliation.

The monument is a cylindrical mount on which there are 32 other life-size figures.

The monument was praised when it was unveiled in 1914 for its “focus on peace and the future.”

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“Removal of this monument is both antisemitic and a potential illegal desecration of a grave memorial,” the Discover Institute’s Scott Powell said.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) disagreed with the commission’s recommendations to remove the memorial. The commission, however, indicated it plans to preserve the memorial and move it to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley.