The Biden administration has taken steps to remove the Confederate statue from Arlington Cemetery in Washington, DC. On Sunday, John Reid of Richmond’s Morning News posted photos of the demolition crew arriving at the cemetery to begin the process of taking down the monument.
John also shared video footage on Monday morning as he reported on its removal. A crane was brought in to facilitate this process and is expected to be completed by Monday.
In April 2021, Congress voted in favor of removing the statue with 41 Republicans joining Democrats to move forward with dismantling this memorial dedicated to Civil War veterans.
Funds have been allocated for its destruction and it must be done no later than January 1st, 2024.
The statue was originally erected in 1924 under President Calvin Coolidge and was the most important work by Jewish artist Moses Ezekiel.
Here is background on the statue that the radical left will remove from Arlington on Monday.
Background
The American Civil War ended in 1865, but it took many decades to heal the war’s bitter wounds. President William McKinley, a former Union soldier who would one day sit in the Oval Office, committed himself to healing the nation’s wounds. After the Spanish-American War ended in the 1890s, he proposed building a memorial to reconciliation. His hope was that the Memorial would help heal the bitter sectionalism between the North and South and honor the many Southern soldiers whose contributions had helped to secure U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War.
Moses Ezekiel, the most prominent Jewish-American sculptor of the American Renaissance (1870-1945), built the Reconciliation Memorial from 1912-1914. It features thirty-two full-sized figures cast in bronze, depicting the universal experience families faced when their lives were interrupted by a call to combat. It was Ezekiel’s culminating work and his grave. The Memorial is surrounded by four-hundred graves in Section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery.
One in a series dedicated to national healing and peacemaking—including the Memorial Bridge that links Virginia to Washington, D.C.—the Reconciliation Memorial was dedicated in 1914. This was the result of the combined efforts of four U.S. presidents: William McKinley, Howard Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.
Every U.S. president, from William McKinley to Barack Obama in 2009, has placed an honorary wreath at the Memorial’s base in a formal ceremony. After 2009, however, this ceremony stopped.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter protests, momentum grew to destroy historic American monuments and memorials. Violent rioters defaced and vandalized the Lincoln Memorial and a World War One memorial, among many others.
At what point will Washington and Jefferson be removed from society?
What a disgrace.
