09/15/2026
Statues and Monuments belong in cemeteries and battlefields.....
The story of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery—often called the Reconciliation Monument—is inextricably bound to the soil of Shenandoah County. Unveiled in 1914, the 32-foot bronze monument was designed by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, an internationally renowned sculptor whose life was a series of striking contradictions: he was a Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jew, an expatriate who lived openly as a gay man in Rome, and a lifelong defender of the Southern Confederacy.
Ezekiel’s path was forged at the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864. As VMI’s first Jewish cadet, the 19-year-old marched into Shenandoah County to check a Union advance. During the fighting, Ezekiel witnessed his 17-year-old classmate, Cadet Thomas Garland Jefferson—whose father was John Garland Jefferson and whose family traced directly back to the line of President Thomas Jefferson—struck down in the mud.
After the battle, Ezekiel searched the field, carried the mortally wounded Jefferson to the New Market home of Eliza Clinedinst, and held him as he died three days later. That night in Shenandoah County stayed with Ezekiel for the rest of his life, fueling the emotional romanticism he later carved into stone and bronze.
To understand Ezekiel, one has to look at the life he built after leaving the American South. Seeking personal and artistic freedom, he moved to Europe in 1869 and established a studio inside the ancient Baths of Diocletian in Rome.
In Italy, Ezekiel lived openly in a 45-year romantic relationship with German portrait painter Fedor Encke. Though formal correspondence of the era discreetly described Encke as a "traveling companion," the two shared their home and lived as life partners. European society granted Ezekiel a level of personal latitude he never could have found back home.
His Jewish faith remained central to his identity. Raised in an observant household, Ezekiel refused to hide his heritage, famously remarking, "Everybody who knows me knows that I am a Jew—I never wanted it otherwise." He created major works celebrating faith, including Religious Liberty for B'nai B'rith, yet he always maintained that his religion and his Southern loyalty existed side by side.
When commissioned to design the Arlington monument in 1906, Ezekiel viewed it as his crowning work. Placed in Section 16, the monument aimed to symbolize national unity, yet its lower frieze embedded lost-cause depictions of enslaved people that sanitized the realities of chattel slavery.
When Ezekiel died in Rome in 1917, his final wish was to lie at the base of his creation. Reinterred there in 1921, his grave remains in Arlington today, even after the bronze structure above it was dismantled in December 2023.
As the fight continues, Remember that the canceling of our nation's past isn't going away. Truth is the history isn't guaranteed to be safe in a graveyard or on battlefield in these current times.
Stonewall Jackson High School resides on a battlefield in Quicksburg, Virginia as well.
Photo Credit : Arlington National Cemetery
