The Confederate Memorial, a 32-foot bronze statue designed by sculptor Moses Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran and the first Jewish graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was unveiled in 1914 at a ceremony presided over by President Woodrow Wilson.
The statue was removed from the cemetery in 2023 as part of a congressional mandate to rid U.S. military property of names and symbols honoring the Confederacy. Critics said elements of the memorial glossed over the horrors of slavery and romanticized the pre-Civil War South.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last year the statue would return to Arlington. “It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings,” Hegseth posted on X in August 2025. “Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it.”
