The Confederate Memorial at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia is set to be removed this week, officials said.
Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson Kerry Meeker told CNN in an email Sunday they anticipate the monument to be completely removed by Dec. 22.
The move is the latest action in the removal of Confederate symbols from US military facilities set forth by a Department of Defense directive issued last October.
The Army, which operates the cemetery, said on the cemetery’s website the process to prepare for the monument’s removal, which included an environmental assessment, was completed Saturday. The evaluation found removing it “will not have significant environmental impacts,” according to officials.
Officials said they will remove the bronze elements, which will be relocated.
Meeker said crews installed safety fencing around the monument and added the surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected during the monument’s removal.
Cemetery officials said the statue’s granite base and foundation will stay at the site to “avoid disturbing surrounding graves.”
According to the cemetery’s website, Confederate remains weren’t allowed to be buried at Arlington until 1900, 35 years after the Civil War ended.
“By 1902, 262 Confederate bodies were interred in a specially designated section, Section 16,” the cemetery said. The total is now more than 400, according to the cemetery website.
According to the cemetery, the statue, which was designed by American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and unveiled in 1914, depicts a bronze woman atop a 32-foot-tall pedestal wearing a crown adorned with olive leaves, holding a laurel wreath, a plow stock, and a pruning hook. At her feet, a Biblical inscription reads, “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks,” the cemetery said.
Other figures on the monument include a Black woman depicted as a “Mammy,” carrying an infant of a white officer, and a Black man following his owner to war, according to the cemetery.
Not everyone is on board with the decision of the statue’s removal.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has voiced his disappointment, said his spokeswoman Macaulay Porter, adding the governor plans to relocate it to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, calling it a “fitting backdrop for Ezekiel’s legacy.”
Last September, the U.S. Congressional Naming Commission recommended the Confederate statue at the cemetery be removed.
The changes at Arlington National Cemetery come a year after West Point removed several Robert E. Lee items, which included a portrait and a stone bust of the Confederate general.
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Hey deranged dimwit history void moron Biden—this is part of our History dumbass !!!
Confederates = Hitlerites/NAZIS = Democrats
And I’m a white lifelong Republican working person…
USA no longer honors evil…
Although the Democrats still love evil, lies, drug abuse, slovenlyness, lifetime welfare, perversions, unneeded wars, murdering…
This is so DN stupid, this is our history. And any educated person knows the civil war was NOT over slavery, it was because of the high taxes on cotton. If is was over slavery, why did the people in the north not free their slaves till 3 years after the war. Another twisted part of history by our government.
Stupid is the legacy of this deranged Administration
Civil War was over slavery and unfair business practice of using slaves to compete and over human rights…
NO, slavery wasn’t thrown in till near the end of the war, so the north could prolong the war and destroy as much of the South as possible.
It most definitely was about slavery. It is clearly spell out in their Declaration for Secession in just about every confederate state (go ahead and look them up). The wealthy landowners did not wanted to lose their free slave labor and it convinced the poor ignorant whites that it was about state rights and freedom so they would fight against their own interests.
Little have changed…The poor ignorant whites remain as so and now the wealthy convince them to vote Republican because of “God, gays, Mexicans or whatever…..and as long as they remain ignorant, they will be easy to hoodwink and manipulate…
The latest slaves to be freed were in Texas and that is because their owner did not tell them about emancipation. Very few people in the North had black slaves since it was easier for the slaves to petition the courts for emancipation, so even if you were from an slave state, you did not took your slaves with you when you traveled North. The North had “wage slaves”…kind of stuck in their jobs because they had few opportunities.
I would suggest for you to read the Real History of America by Howard Zinn, but you probably will not.
The south LOST the Civil War. That is all we need to nite. NO monuments for LOSERS.👿
Seemingly idiots not educated in history seem to also be stupid —oh we’ll be a 🐎 ass
You’re just a brainwashed fool, just like all democrats, and like all of them , very uneducated.
I pray there is a place in HELL for the Bidens involved in the selling of a President’s Name who never stood for anything except he was a modern day segargationist. Retired Naval Officer
Would a God that supposedly loves us create a hell to punish people for eternity?
What is a “Segargationist” …is that a digestive tract condition?
Semper Fi 🇺🇸
Disgusting. Anyone who approves of this is a traitor to America.
May I remind you that the Confederates were traitors to America? Why should there be any monuments to celebrate traitors and slavers?
From where I am from, we hang traitors, not give them monuments.
Sure you know so little las the🐎ass you are
As somebody born in another country and that have lived in many different countries throughout my life I never quite understood why would the US would in any way honor the treasonous rebels that almost destroyed the union for the sake of keeping other humans in slavery.
I initially thought that maybe it was in order to bring harmony back into our country….but that really did not happened and now we are still stuck with the stupid confederates.
Sherman had the right idea….burn everything and teach them the errors of their ways.
Get a life.
BAH HUMBUG TO THOSE TAKING THIS LOVELY MONUMENT DOWN…..HONORING
MANY INCLUDING MY GREAT GRAND FATHERS…..OFFENSIVE TO ME…
AND….THIS WAS LAND OWNED BY GEN LEE’S INLAWS…..MARTHA WASHINGTON’S GRAND
SON, AND, TAKEN OVER BY THE UNION GOVERNMENT BECAUSE THEY NEEDED GRAVE
SPACE. FINALLY, CONFEDERATES WERE ALLOWED TO BE LAID TO REST HERE
ON LAND OWNED BY THE LEES, CALLED STRATTFORD HALL.
FOR SHAME….. AN ATROCITY TO MAN, THE SOUTH, THE CSA,
AMERICA AND GOD.
BAH HUMBUG LUMPS OF COAL IN THE STOCKINGS OF THOSE WHO WISH AND CARRY
THIS FORWARD
This is part of History you stupid Idiot! Why would anyone such as yourself want to change History?
WTF? everything is a part of history! think destroying every monument/statue will make people forget? its a waste of time & money!
Not all southerners owned slaves. Not all northerners were against slavery. Slavery was wrong but after the Civil War, the nation started the healing process with Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. This proclamation allowed for a full pardon and restoration of property to all engaged in the rebellion with the exception of the highest Confederates leaders. New state governments could be formed when 10% of eligible voters pledged allegiance to the USA and the Southern states were encouraged to construct plans to deal with former slaves as long as former slaves’ freedom was not compromised. We still had to progress through segregation but after the 1954 SCOTUS case of Brown Vs. Board of Education plus the Civil Rights bills of the ‘60s, the USA has made tremendous progress in coming together in unity. There are, however, some miscreants who live in the past and refuse to forgive the “South” and I suppose we’ll always have to listen to their biasness.