I visited Arlington National Cemetery in December 2023, not long before the Confederate monument was removed. I'm glad I had the chance to see it for myself and I took pictures. I don't defend that monument in any way, but in some ways, I wonder how much good was done by moving it. I mean, I know that space at Arlington for new burials is few and far between. So if the base were to be removed someday, who would want to be buried surrounded by Confederate soldiers?
What is actually very interesting is how those Confederates ended up in Section 16 in the first place. These were men who were wounded in battle and captured, then sent to hospitals in Washington, DC. Some of them were buried in Arlington when the place was designated as a cemetery. However, they were not segregated from other Union soldiers, and could even be buried next to USCT soldiers. Other Confederates were buried at the Soldier's Home National Cemetery on North Capitol Street. In 1900, all of these Confederate remains were moved to what became Section 16 of Arlington.
A Facebook friend of mine is descended from one of these Confederates- Private Samuel Jessup, Company C, 4th Georgia Infantry. My friend was told that he "died of wounds at Appomattox." But I found out that in March 1865, he was shot in both shoulders at Petersburg and captured. He was sent to DC, but was "brought in dead" at Armory Square Hospital, DC, April 9, 1865 (Armory Square was located where the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on The Mall is today). Sam Jessup has been buried at Arlington since 1865.
It is certainly true that the relatively small number of Confederates buried in Arlington early on were not segregated, but they were also not commemorated during early Decoration Day ceremonies. In fact, Montgomery Meigs prevented families of Confederates buried there from visiting their graves.
In the end, the Army was relieved to have the memorial removed. They were not interested in dealing with a controversy that appeared to have no satisfactory solution.
Thanks for these thoughts, and amen to your emphasizing that the removed memorial "was never intended to be a symbol of reunion or reconciliation."
It reminded me of the fierce debate that took place over the course of several days last September in the Wall Street Journal. The argument started with an op-ed opposing removal of the explicitly Lost Cause monument from Jim Webb—Marine veteran with a Navy Cross, author of ten books, former secretary of the Navy, former Democratic senator from Virginia, and an enigma to me--a Virginian and former Navyman--for half a century. He blamed a “new world of woke” for the then-still-pending removal that he said would reveal “a deteriorating society willing to erase the generosity of its past, in favor of bitterness and misunderstanding conjured up by those who do not understand the history they seem bent on destroying.” Shezzam.
Three days of letters to the editor ensued. The online comment total reached about 3800. WSJ readers cared, and they generally echoed Webb’s cockamamie view that a monument—a public history statment—is ***itself*** history that can somehow be destroyed without first contriving a time machine for traveling back to do the destroying. Webb declared, falsely, that the 1914 monument’s “sole purpose” was “healing the wounds of the Civil War and restoring national harmony.”
Retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule, author of the first and longest letter, rejected that reconciliation argument. As others have pointed out in this forum, his _Robert E. Lee and Me_ traces his lifelong struggle to come to terms with the Civil War and slavery. His six-minute YouTube “Was the Civil War About Slavery?”—viewed by millions—demolishes Lost Cause sophistries.
A decade into his Army career, Seidule became a Ph.D. historian and West Point professor. Later he served as vice chair of the military base renaming commission that called for removing Arlington’s monument. “Reconciliation,” Seidule wrote, “didn’t include nine million African-Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state enforced by a terror campaign of lynching.”
Then: "Removing the monument doesn’t change history. It changes commemoration, which reflects our values. When the monument is gone, we can look to the empty space and say, finally, that the U.S. military no longer commemorates an enemy who chose treason to preserve slavery."
I'm glad Kevin, with his long memory of that thing, has now looked to that empty space and posted his thoughts.
There was a time and place for outrage on both sides re: the future of this particular memorial. That time has passed. What's left are the graves and the stories that they convey about the complexity of our shared past. Ultimately, that's what I am here for.
I visited Arlington National Cemetery in December 2023, not long before the Confederate monument was removed. I'm glad I had the chance to see it for myself and I took pictures. I don't defend that monument in any way, but in some ways, I wonder how much good was done by moving it. I mean, I know that space at Arlington for new burials is few and far between. So if the base were to be removed someday, who would want to be buried surrounded by Confederate soldiers?
What is actually very interesting is how those Confederates ended up in Section 16 in the first place. These were men who were wounded in battle and captured, then sent to hospitals in Washington, DC. Some of them were buried in Arlington when the place was designated as a cemetery. However, they were not segregated from other Union soldiers, and could even be buried next to USCT soldiers. Other Confederates were buried at the Soldier's Home National Cemetery on North Capitol Street. In 1900, all of these Confederate remains were moved to what became Section 16 of Arlington.
A Facebook friend of mine is descended from one of these Confederates- Private Samuel Jessup, Company C, 4th Georgia Infantry. My friend was told that he "died of wounds at Appomattox." But I found out that in March 1865, he was shot in both shoulders at Petersburg and captured. He was sent to DC, but was "brought in dead" at Armory Square Hospital, DC, April 9, 1865 (Armory Square was located where the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on The Mall is today). Sam Jessup has been buried at Arlington since 1865.
It is certainly true that the relatively small number of Confederates buried in Arlington early on were not segregated, but they were also not commemorated during early Decoration Day ceremonies. In fact, Montgomery Meigs prevented families of Confederates buried there from visiting their graves.
In the end, the Army was relieved to have the memorial removed. They were not interested in dealing with a controversy that appeared to have no satisfactory solution.
Thanks for these thoughts, and amen to your emphasizing that the removed memorial "was never intended to be a symbol of reunion or reconciliation."
It reminded me of the fierce debate that took place over the course of several days last September in the Wall Street Journal. The argument started with an op-ed opposing removal of the explicitly Lost Cause monument from Jim Webb—Marine veteran with a Navy Cross, author of ten books, former secretary of the Navy, former Democratic senator from Virginia, and an enigma to me--a Virginian and former Navyman--for half a century. He blamed a “new world of woke” for the then-still-pending removal that he said would reveal “a deteriorating society willing to erase the generosity of its past, in favor of bitterness and misunderstanding conjured up by those who do not understand the history they seem bent on destroying.” Shezzam.
Three days of letters to the editor ensued. The online comment total reached about 3800. WSJ readers cared, and they generally echoed Webb’s cockamamie view that a monument—a public history statment—is ***itself*** history that can somehow be destroyed without first contriving a time machine for traveling back to do the destroying. Webb declared, falsely, that the 1914 monument’s “sole purpose” was “healing the wounds of the Civil War and restoring national harmony.”
Retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule, author of the first and longest letter, rejected that reconciliation argument. As others have pointed out in this forum, his _Robert E. Lee and Me_ traces his lifelong struggle to come to terms with the Civil War and slavery. His six-minute YouTube “Was the Civil War About Slavery?”—viewed by millions—demolishes Lost Cause sophistries.
A decade into his Army career, Seidule became a Ph.D. historian and West Point professor. Later he served as vice chair of the military base renaming commission that called for removing Arlington’s monument. “Reconciliation,” Seidule wrote, “didn’t include nine million African-Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state enforced by a terror campaign of lynching.”
Then: "Removing the monument doesn’t change history. It changes commemoration, which reflects our values. When the monument is gone, we can look to the empty space and say, finally, that the U.S. military no longer commemorates an enemy who chose treason to preserve slavery."
I'm glad Kevin, with his long memory of that thing, has now looked to that empty space and posted his thoughts.
There was a time and place for outrage on both sides re: the future of this particular memorial. That time has passed. What's left are the graves and the stories that they convey about the complexity of our shared past. Ultimately, that's what I am here for.
Thank you for this insight. I’ll be at Arlington soon to attend an interment, and perhaps will visit some other sections as well.