We begin with this essay by Professor Samantha Baskin about the confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. “An independent commission has recommended that the government should topple Arlington National Cemetery’s 32-foot tall Confederate monument. It is an egregious paean to the Lost Cause. And, predictably, when the monument was completed in 1914, many Southerners viewed it as a vindication of the ideals for which they had fought. Yet the monument — designated for placement in a national cemetery, with widespread federal approval from Congress and several successive presidents — was never intended to be a regional symbol. The monument, which is officially named ‘New South,’ also had wide support from Northerners, who viewed the statue as the premier symbol of sectional reunion and thus were willing to overlook its white-supremacist origins. After the Civil War, women’s groups in the South, notably the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), took on the task of burying their men and maintaining private cemeteries because their kin were excluded from the newly formed national cemetery system. With renewed hope for reconciliation in June 1900, Congress introduced legislation for a section of Arlington Cemetery for the Confederate dead. That law was in part initiated by a speech delivered two years earlier by President William McKinley in which he advocated for government care of Confederate graves. Soon members of the UDC lobbied for a monument to the newly interred. Secretary of War and future president William Howard Taft granted that request in 1906.”
Professor Baskind writes, “The UDC commissioned Moses Jacob Ezekiel, an internationally known sculptor and Confederate veteran of the Civil War, to fabricate the sculpture. At Ezekiel’s request, the UDC gave him free rein with the design and discarded their original idea to order a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee on the battlefield. Eight years later, ‘New South,’ one of the largest statues at Arlington Cemetery, was dedicated as the definitive monument to Confederate soldiers. The most complex and most controversial section of the massive, five-tiered monument features an eight-foot circular frieze of high-relief figures. At center, Minerva, the goddess of war, glances at the collapsed woman on her left who she tries to prop up. An allegorical representation of ‘the South,’ she appears as a defeated figure who barely grasps her shield, which is inscribed with the word ‘Constitution.’ Soldiers flank the pair, and hovering above are spirits of war calling them to offer the South assistance. Carrying weapons, those soldiers heartily answer the call. Five vignettes surrounding this central grouping were meant to demonstrate the sacrifices that Southern families made as their men went off to fight for the original U.S. Constitution (with slavery intact) that the South, according to the Lost Cause mythology, was trying to protect. In one vignette, a strapping blacksmith has forged his sword for war and takes leave of his wife. In another, a young woman fastens her beau’s sash around his waist as she bids him farewell. Yet another vignette depicts a clergyman and his wife blessing their uniformed son.”
She continues, “A romanticized (and fabricated) view of slavery is also reflected in these vignettes. In one, a faithful enslaved man wearing the uniform of the Confederate States of America follows his master to battle. In another scene, a ‘mammy,’ with a toddler tugging at her skirt, cares for the child of an officer who leaves to go to war. Riddled with racist iconography and textual elements of other Confederate monuments, ‘New South’ also has several distinguishing features. Most notably, it was made specifically for a national cemetery and sanctioned by the federal government, including both Congress and three presidents (McKinley, Taft and Woodrow Wilson). These leaders wanted to remember Americans who died on American soil, however misguided their views had been. They also wanted to make a symbolic statement that the country was reunited. As Taft declared in a speech to members of the UDC in 1912 at the laying of the monument’s cornerstone: ‘I rejoice in the steps that I have been able to take to heal the wounds of sectionalism and to convey to the Southern people, as far as a I could, my earnest desire to make this country one.’ Two years later, at the monument’s unveiling in 1914, Wilson reiterated the passing of sectional antagonism as he accepted the statue on behalf of the government. Deeming ‘New South’ an ’emblem of a reunited people,’ Wilson declared: ‘This chapter in the history of the United States is now closed [and] we now face and admire one another.’ Hundreds of Confederate veterans and a number of their Union counterparts, along with over 4,000 civilians, attended the unveiling. Wilson advanced to a festooned platform with former soldiers carrying U.S. flags of stars and stripes as well as the Confederate battle flag. The extensive program featured several speeches, notably by Wilson and Robert E. Lee’s grandson.”
We learn, “The commander of the United Confederate Veterans stood on the platform alongside the commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization composed of Union veterans. Both sides touted the monument as a symbol of reunification, first conceived of shortly after the Spanish-American War, where the direct descendants of Confederate and Union soldiers could be found ‘marching side by side in peace and amity.’ Yes, the Spanish-American War did unite White kin from both sides of the Civil War who fought shoulder to shoulder against a foreign enemy. But the monument’s hammering home of a false Lost Cause narrative — an allegory of ‘the South’ that no longer has a grip on the Constitution and the adulation of faithful enslaved people — provides a profoundly disturbing contradiction to the monument’s goal of reconciliation. So did the UDC’s choice to honorifically hold the unveiling on the anniversary of Jefferson Davis’s birthday. And yet, from President Theodore Roosevelt onward, most U.S. presidents sent a wreath to the Confederate section of Arlington Cemetery, and later to the monument itself, on Davis’s birthday. President George W. Bush chose instead to lay a wreath on Memorial Day. Amid calls to cease this tradition, America’s first Black president, Barack Obama, sent a wreath to both the Confederate Monument as well as the African American Civil War Memorial on Memorial Day. While major protests have targeted Confederate monuments in recent years, ‘New South’ has not been vandalized, nor has there been a demonstration demanding its removal. The most public ‘protest’ was a 2017 letter to The Washington Post signed by 22 of Ezekiel’s ancestors. They declared their pride in Ezekiel’s ‘artistic prowess,’ but also urged that since the monument ‘intended to rewrite history to justify the Confederacy,’ it be placed in a museum with proper contextualization. Weighing several tons and measuring over 10 yards long on its side, that is not a possible option.”
Professor Baskind concludes her essay, “An understanding of the historical forces that shaped the monument’s commission and reception in the immediate period after its dedication does not forgive its message, but deepens our understanding of how a eulogy to the Confederacy rests 400 yards away from the Tomb of the Unknowns. As a symbol of reconciliation for White Americans, it worked. Southerners were pacified and grateful to be afforded the same consideration as other American soldiers, while Northerners were content to fortify national solidarity. But the monument also shows how White Southerners won the memory of the Civil War with an overriding narrative asserting that the rebels were fighting for states’ self-determination rather than the right to own human beings — a perspective that links to the current-day persistence of white supremacy. In other words, from its inception to the current moment, Arlington’s Confederate monument is a study in deeply disquieting contradictions, much like America today.”
We next look at this article regarding SECDEF Austin’s acceptance of the recommendation to rename bases and remove the confederate monument from Arlington. “Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin officially gave the go-ahead to implement the final recommendations of the so-called Commission on the Naming of Items of the DoD that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America (or, ‘the Naming Commission’) in a memo released on Thursday. … The renaming effort comes after 18 months of work by the Commission that included ‘extensive consultations with experts, historians, and the communities rooted in the bases in question,’ according to Austin’s memo. The majority of the facilities in question will face renaming after a congressionally-mandated 90-day waiting period that will conclude in December. ‘The installations and facilities that our Department operates are more than vital national security assets. They are also powerful public symbols of our military, and of course, they are the places where our Service members and their families work and live,’ Austin wrote. ‘The names of these installations and facilities should inspire all those who call them home, fully reflect the history and the values of the United States, and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect.’ “
The article tells us, “The move to rename bases that honored Confederate officers comes after a long push from activists and lawmakers to divest the U.S. military of symbols of the 19th-century rebellion, which saw the Southern states secede from the Union in an effort to preserve the slave trade. The proliferation of Confederate base names began at the beginning of the 20th century after an Army general established an informal policy of naming the U.S. military’s many new training camps for troops headed overseas to fight in World War I, a policy generally left up to regional commanders and based on “federal commanders for camps or divisions from northern States and of Confederates for camps of divisions from southern States,” according to an Army Center of Military History study initiated in 2017. The Naming Commission’s renaming plan ‘will give proud new names that are rooted in their local communities and that honor American heroes whose valor, courage, and patriotism exemplify the very best of the United States military,’ Austin wrote in his memo. Implementing the Naming Commission’s renaming plan and ridding the U.S. military of vestiges of the Confederacy will cost the Defense Department roughly $62.5 million, according to the commission’s final report.”
This article on the same subject tells us, “The Confederate States of America, the short-lived rogue collection of states addicted to slavery and its profits, will finally be put in its place, if the U.S. Department of Defense has anything to say about it. And a commission that has identified 1,111 items under military control — bases, buildings, streets, signs, and even a floor mat — most certainly does. Findings from the Naming Commission that first met in March 2021 revealed a wide-ranging inventory of locations, items, and even software in military use around the globe. The goal is to remove all official commemorations of the Confederacy, ‘an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason,’ according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. The commission is chaired by retired Adm. Michelle Howard, the first Black woman to command a U.S. combat ship, the first Black woman to hold two-star and three-star admiral ranks, and the first Black person and the first woman to serve as vice chief of naval operations, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Navy. Most of the items are spread across 26 states. This includes seven states on the Union side and three that were not yet states at the time of the Civil War. There are also items in Washington, D.C. — the Union’s capital city then and our country’s capital now. Still others are at U.S. military installations in Germany and Japan, which were not established until after World War II. These, of course, are not all of the monuments and memorials around the United States that commemorate the Confederate cause.”
The article continues, “These symbols don’t exist as a result of accidents or coincidences. Nor were they part of efforts in the immediate wake of the war to ‘bind up the nation’s wounds,’ as President Abraham Lincoln described it. They were created in the early years of the 20th century and remain echoes of a decades-long campaign to recast Confederate history. The real Big Lie, these efforts taught that the Confederacy was a noble ‘lost cause’ attempt to maintain traditional American values, rather than a treasonous insurrection seeking to preserve slavery and the economic engine powered by the forced labor. The commission itself declared, ‘these names speak far more to the times, places and processes that created them than they do to any actual history of the Civil War, the Confederate insurrection, or our nation’s struggle over slavery and freedom.’ The military base names were among many — honoring both Union and Confederate figures — given to training camps assembled hastily in the run-up to both world wars. Spread around the nation for convenience and political reasons, their names were often picked by local officials who sought to honor their community’s history. Most of the camps, regardless of their namesakes, closed after the wars. But some remained and grew in size and importance over time. On the commission’s list are nine military bases named for Confederate generals. New names have already been proposed for these locations, subject to approval by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III. The recommendations include changing the name of Fort Bragg in North Carolina to Fort Liberty, to capture the American ideal.”
The article also tells us, “Seven vessels are listed. One is a Navy warship named for a Civil War battle won by the Confederate army. Five others are landing craft operated by the U.S. Army and named for Confederate military victories. The remaining one is an oceanographic survey ship, USNS Maury, named for Matthew Maury, who served in the U.S. Navy starting in 1825. He mapped currents and prevailing winds in ways that dramatically increased the speed of sailing. For that work, he is known as the father of modern oceanography and naval meteorology. However, in 1861, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Navy and joined the Confederate navy. The inventory also details 14 markers, monuments or statues; 53 paintings, plaques, or portraits; 742 signs, maps, marquees, or displays; and a single floor mat at the Fort Lee commissary. It also includes specific screens in military computer systems, logos on vehicles, and other administrative changes. The commission recently added references to military units’ battle flags, used at formal events and special occasions to signify the units and their heritage. The flags are often decorated with ribbons for particular awards the unit has earned or identify battles the unit has fought. An August 2022 inventory update added the battle flags of 48 units, which bear a total of 491 streamers commemorating the participation of those units, or their historical predecessors, in battles as part of the Confederate army, though now they are part of the U.S. military. A September 2022 update recognized that symbols within the insignia for several units, such as a saltire — the X-shaped cross that forms part of the Confederate battle flag — and even the color gray were in some cases meant to honor the Confederacy.”
We learn, “Several of the items on the list are at places where the nation’s top military leaders are trained. They raise questions about how to honor U.S. history without glorifying the treason and rebellion of the Confederacy because the locations and items are named for people who distinguished themselves during loyal service to the U.S. military. They are also the same people who resigned their U.S. commissions to serve in the Confederate military, complicating any formal recognition of their roles in American history. Consider Maury Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, which is named for the naval oceanographer. Take the official residence of the Naval Academy’s superintendent, and the street it is on, both named for Franklin Buchanan. He served as a U.S. Navy officer for 45 years, proposed the creation of the Naval Academy, and served as its first superintendent from 1845 to 1847. Like Maury, Buchanan resigned his U.S. commission in 1861 to join the Confederate navy. The commission has recommended the Naval Academy rename both buildings and the street. The commission’s inventory lists 10 items at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Two are roads named for Pierre Beauregard and William Hardee, academy graduates and longtime U.S. Army officers who both resigned to serve in the Confederate army. The commission has recommended that the roads be renamed. Seven other items specifically honor 1829 academy graduate Robert E. Lee. They include a barracks, a child-care center, a group of homes, a mathematics award, and images and quotations by him. From 1852 to 1855, he was West Point’s superintendent. In 1861, he resigned from the U.S. Army, joined the Confederate army, and ultimately became the top general. The commission has recommended that five items be renamed and that one portrait of Lee in his Confederate uniform be removed.”
We also learn, “The 10th item on the commission’s West Point list is a public space on campus called Reconciliation Plaza, dedicated in 1961 to ‘commemorate the reconciliation between North and South.’ The plaza includes several markers with engraved images of several Confederate figures, including Lee. Monuments there commemorate the Confederacy, including a depiction of ‘Confederate forces in insurrection against Fort Sumter, South Carolina,’ the event that opened hostilities in the Civil War. The commission recommended several changes to the plaza, including the removal of the images that depict Confederate figures, and removal or modification of those that commemorate the Confederacy. … Another item not on the commission’s inventory list is a monument called the Honor Plaza, which includes a quotation from Lee identifying him as Maj. Robert E. Lee, his rank when he served as West Point superintendent. But the quote is from a time when he was serving in the Confederate army. The commission has recommended it and its reference to Lee be removed. However, the commission has determined that any images or references to Lee during his time as superintendent at West Point and that ‘do not conflate his Confederate service are historical artifacts and may remain in place.’ There are also plaques inside buildings that depict the names of Fitzhugh Lee and Joseph Wheeler, West Point graduates who served in the Confederacy. The commission has determined those markers commemorate their Confederate service but has left their disposition up to West Point officials. The commission has not identified any items that honor the Confederacy or Confederate personnel at the other Defense Department academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Its review did not include the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, nor the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, which falls under the U.S. Department of Transportation.”
This report discusses the renaming of Fort Hood in Texas:
Finally, we see this article from Delaware. “However the midterm elections go, they will see the end of a tradition in President Biden’s home state that has embodied the spirit of democracy at its best for more than two centuries. Since at least 1812, the winners and losers of state- and federal-level elections have ridden carriages together in parades through the Delaware municipality of Georgetown. The event is held on Return Day, the Thursday after the polling, the time decades ago when the tallies became available. The winner of a particular race sits in the carriage facing forward, the loser backward. The starting point where the victors and vanquished assemble together is the Georgetown Historical Society and the Marvel Carriage Museum, which provides most of the horse-drawn vehicles for the parade. That became politically complicated in 2007, when the museum also became the site of a Confederate memorial that includes the battle flag flying prominently from a flagpole. The memorial sponsors—United Daughters of the Confederacy Caleb Ross Chapter #2635 and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Delaware Grays Camp #2068—had at one point considered erecting the monument a dozen miles from the museum, on the grounds of what was once a plantation owned by William Ross, who was governor from 1851 to 1855. The quarters once occupied by the 14 people enslaved by Ross is the only such structure still standing in Delaware. Ross, whose name is among the 140 names cut into the monument, aided the Confederacy, and his son, Caleb, died while in Confederate service.”
The article continues, “At the monument’s dedication, 300 people sang ‘Dixie.’ Then-Gov. Ruth Ann Minner spoke and declared May 12 to 18 of that year ‘Confederate History and Heritage Week’ in the state. And the Confederate flag was raised at what had long been the parade’s starting point. The flag continued to fly despite the fervent objections of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, which noted that the white supremacist who murdered nine in a South Carolina church in 2015 had posted photos of himself with a Confederate flag. In 2019, the legislature cut off funding to the museum. The museum and the affiliated Georgetown Historical Society said they had a commitment to Confederate veterans organizations to keep flying the flag. Despite the rancor, Democrats continued riding in the parade. But last month, the Delaware Democratic Party announced that it was urging its members not to board the carriages. Executive Director Travis Williams called the confederate flag ‘antithetical’ to the spirit of coming together. The party resolution requested ‘all elected Democrats in our state refuse to ride in the carriages provided by the Marvel Museum for the Returns Day parade until such time as the Confederate flag is removed from outside the Marvel Museum.’ Williams reported that Democrats will still participate in the parade itself, including the concluding ceremony, when a hatchet is literally buried in a box of Delaware dirt and sand. But few, if any, Democrats are expected to take part in the symbolic essence of the parade, which begins with boarding a carriage alongside their Republican opponents.”
The article also says, “That spirit was voiced by the newly elected Sen. Joe Biden when he rode in the 1972 Return Day parade with J. Caleb Boggs, the longtime incumbent he had just defeated in an historic upset. ‘[You] hop into a carriage… and you ride for an hour through town, sitting knee to knee,’ Biden was quoted saying, describing the experience as ‘brutal’ and ‘beautiful.’ Biden also rode in the November 2008 parade as the newly elected vice president and a re-elected but soon-to-resign U.S. senator. ‘This is great! This is great!’ he was quoted saying as he waved from a white carriage to the more than 10,000 cheering parade-goers. Due to security concerns, Biden did not ride with his Senate opponent. The same reason was cited for Biden boarding the carriage partway down the parade route. The late entry also saved him from boarding in the shadow of the Confederate flag that had gone up 19 months before America had also just elected its first Black president. Biden cited security concerns again after the 2012 election. He appeared only at the closing ceremony. In 2020, the last election cycle, COVID-19 closed the whole parade and Return Day ceremonies were kept to a minimum. Everything might have resumed as before this year had the five-member Georgetown Town Council not voted 3-2 to resume funding for the museum. The decision was strongly opposed by Mayor Bill West, a former town cop and state trooper as well as a Republican who supports a true republic. He is also a democrat in the sense he passionately supports democracy. ‘Bipartisan,’ he told The Daily Beast.”
We learn “In July, the town went ahead and issued a check to the museum for $24,750. And that seemed to be that until opponents of the funding pointed out to West that the museum had filed its application after the April 1 deadline set by statute and the proposal had never been considered by a town committee before being submitted to the council for a vote, as is also required by law. West promptly canceled the check. The three council members in support of the funding then held an unannounced meeting consisting only of themselves and voted to restore it. They presented the museum with a new check. … By tradition, the only town officials who ride in the Result Day Parade are those from Georgetown, which hosts the event. West has decided that he will walk with his wife this year rather than ride with the opposing trio from the council. … The historical society and the museum did not respond to requests for comment, though the society said in August that it calls on ‘all citizens of good character and good faith to commit to the environment of unity, pluralism, and tolerance… allowing those who chose to honor their dead to do so with respect for their election.’ West regrets that Return Day will not be the glory that it once was, but he does not blame the Democrats. ‘It’s a fabulous day,’ he said. ‘It’s just going to be tainted this year because of the historical society not wanting to take the flag down. They’d rather represent the sons of the Greys [Confederate veterans] than they would the Georgetown community.’ ”
Student of the American Civil War 
How 22 of Ezekiel’s ancestors could sign a protest in 2017 remains, alas, a mystery.
Little-known is that Christopher Lloyd was seen in the area driving a DeLorean.
Seriously, though, Mike, good catch. I totally missed that when I read it through.
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