Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and the Center of Military History reached a deal this week to install Moses Jacob Ezekiel’s famed grave-site sculpture in Arlington Cemetery, the Beltway Brief has learned, after Virginia accepted a request from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to display the statue in the cemetery it was intended for, near the grave of its artist. The display is part of a 50-year loan from the commonwealth and goes a long way toward healing recent desecrations.
The announcement comes just over a year and half after the statue was unceremoniously torn down and shipped to an Old Dominion warehouse by then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
‘And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’
“At the request of Moses Ezekiel’s family and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Moses Ezekiel’s sculpture will be returned to Arlington National Cemetery,” Youngkin said in a statement to Beltway Brief, “where he is buried and where his legacy as a renowned American artist and decorated veteran can be honored.”
The sculpture, first erected a century ago, was initially swept up in the moral fervor of the early 2020s — but mistakenly so, because the story it tells is exactly the kind of story Americans needed to hear in those angry years.
Ezekiel (1844-1917) was one of the more celebrated sculptors of his day and the first Jewish-American sculptor to gain international acclaim. His works still exhibited today include “Religious Liberty” in Philadelphia, a memorial to writer and poet Edgar Allen Poe in Baltimore, and a statue of Thomas Jefferson in Louisville.
He was also a veteran of the Confederate Army, who alongside his fellow cadets at the Virginia Military Institute fought at the battle of New Market. He lost his shoes in that muddy battle, but worse: He lost his roommate, whose bedside he attended for two days before the 17-year-old Thomas Garland Jefferson slipped away.
Ezekiel’s memorial to that hard fight shows the Roman goddess Virtus, traditionally associated with Virginia in art and on the state’s flag, in mournful watch. The sculpture’s base holds the remains of six of his 10 classmates who died that day.
When the war was over, Ezekiel went to Europe — first to Berlin, then to Rome. While he maintained a lifelong friendship with Robert E. Lee, visitors to his studio also included President Ulysses S. Grant. His Arlington work was commissioned by the Northern and Republican President William McKinley and dedicated by the Democratic and Southern President Woodrow Wilson. Just a few years later, Ezekiel’s death was marked by the Northern and Republican President Warren G. Harding.
The statue’s display at Arlington was coordinated between the governor of Virginia, who was warehousing it in crates, and the Center of Military History, which is responsible for the official history of the United States Army, including the preservation of historic art and documents. It will take an estimated two years to reassemble the 32-foot sculpture, restore it, and prepare it for display in 2027 alongside interpretive panels that will explain the complicated history around America’s Civil War and the slow path to reconciliation.
That path toward national healing didn’t quite begin at Appomattox Court House, where Lee surrendered his army to Grant. The Spanish-American War 33 years later was the first conflict that saw American military units from the North and South once again on the same side of the battlefield and even included veterans of both sides.
This reality served to rekindle mutual patriotism and affections between the North and the states of the former Confederacy. But Southern support for the war and its conclusion was lukewarm at best, pushing McKinley to tour the region by train, making the case and preaching for a renewed national friendship.
During the tour, he was disturbed at the state of disrepair of Confederate graves, and so in a December 1898 speech at the Atlanta Peace Jubilee, he pledged to end the federal practice banning their upkeep to help the broader movement toward unity. The speech was a hit, and by 1900 it had led to congressional legislation, sponsored by both a Republican and former brevet major general for the Union and a Democrat who had served as a Confederate general, to reinter nearby Southern war dead in a section of Arlington near those killed in the more recent conflict with Spain in Cuba.
Ezekiel was selected as the artist, and his grave now joins the approximately 481 other Confederate soldiers and civilians laid in circles around the old base of the memorial, which was left in place in 2023 to avoid further disturbing the graves.
Feelings ran high in the years after the Civil War ended, and the animus continued for a century in some areas. Reconciliation was seriously sought and hard-won. The 2020s saw what Democrats and liberal allies called “a reckoning,” which is just about the opposite of “reconciliation,” and included memorials removed, graves disturbed and bodies dug up, churches attacked, and statues around the country torn down.
It was an ugly time, when the kinds of moral lessons and historic contexts that could have been helpful were ejected in favor of destruction. Historic art is crucial to knowing our history, and this statue’s display in Arlington is an important step. Ezekiel’s inspiration, after all, was Isaiah’s prophecy that when God is accepted, war will end: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
“After a full refurbishment, the sculpture will be displayed at Arlington in 2027,” Youngkin told the Brief. “We are grateful for the care being taken to preserve and display this statue, which allows us to better understand the complex history of the United States.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “I’m proud to announce that Moses Ezekiel’s beautiful and historic sculpture — often referred to as the ‘Reconciliation Monument’ — will rightfully be returned to Arlington National Cemetery near his burial site.
“It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it.”
Bedford in the New Criterion: Moses Jacob Ezekiel and a true part of the story
Blaze News, 2023: Pentagon to tear down Reconciliation Monument in Arlington National Cemetery by week’s end despite protest
Bedford in the Federalist, 2020: Everywhere statues are torn down by the mob, history promises people are next
Bedford and Tucker Carlson, 2020: Statue destruction is ‘always followed by people’
Blaze News, 2023: National Cathedral swaps out Civil War-themed stained glass for civil rights-themed windows
Blaze News, 2022: Democrat mayor orders body of Confederate general dug up
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