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The New Market battlefield may soon become the home to a Confederate monument currently located in the Arlington National Cemetery.
The Virginia Military Institute board of visitors voted Sept. 13 to accept, pending approval by the Department of the Army, the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.
The monument would be placed in the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park, which is owned and operated by VMI. Following a recommendation of the Army Naming Commission late last year, the cemetery is being required to remove the memorial, and it concluded a public comment period on Sept. 2 on the “careful removal and relocation of the memorial.”
The monument was erected in 1914 and designed by Moses Ezekiel, a 1867 VMI graduate and the first Jewish cadet to attend VMI. During his tenure at VMI, Ezekiel fought in the Battle of New Market in 1864. Ezekiel was buried at the base of the monument in 1921, along with three Confederate officers.
The monument is located in Section 16 of the Arlington National Cemetery, a special section designated by Congress in 1900 for Confederate remains. Prior to 1900, no Confederate remains had been allowed in the national cemetery, but that changed after the Spanish-American War as part of the post-Civil War “reconciliation effort.” Eventually over 400 Confederate remains would be placed there, according to the cemetery’s website.
The cemetery’s website also points out that while Confederate graves were allowed in the national cemetery, the remains of Black soldiers who fought for the Union during the Civil War were not permitted in the main cemetery. They were placed in the “Lower Cemetery” alongside former slaves and poor whites. Arlington National Cemetery would remain segregated until 1948.
The Confederate Memorial features a 32-foot-tall pedestal holding the bronze figure sporting a crown with olive leaves. The monument also holds 14 shields for the 11 Confederate states as well as the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. There are also numerous human figures, including an enslaved man and woman. The woman, depicting a “Mammy,” is holding a white Confederate soldier’s child.
“The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” according to the cemetery’s website.
In 2017, 22 members of Moses Ezekiel’s family wrote to The Washington Post in hopes of getting the monument removed from the national cemetery and relocated to a museum that would show its “oppressive history.”
Gov. Glenn Youngkin had originally asked Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to keep the monument in its current location. However, after Youngkin learned of Austin’s intent to follow through on the Naming Commission’s recommendation, he “expressed his hope that the Department of the Army would work with his office to move this monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park,” according to a memorandum from VMI Superintendent Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins to the VMI board of visitors.
In a statement given last Wednesday, Macaulay Porter, a spokesperson for Youngkin’s office, said, “The governor believes that the New Market battlefield will provide a fitting backdrop to Ezekiel’s legacy even though he disagrees with the Biden administration that the statue should have been slated for removal.”
In his memorandum to the board of visitors, Wins said, “In response to the governor’s intent and direction pending receipt of approval from the Department of the Army and all the necessary funding from available federal or state resources for the project, I recommend that the memorial be accepted by VMI for placement at the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park.”
His recommended motion was approved unanimously.
