Arlington Confederate Monument Could Go To Virginia Military Institute

ARLINGTON, VA — The Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery could be headed to the Virginia Military Institute at the request of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, according to reports.

The Board of Visitors at VMI unanimously approved a motion last week to accept the statue and place it at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park, the Cardinal News first reported. The park is owned and operated by the college and is located about 77 miles north of the school's Lexington campus.

During the meeting discussing the move, board member Hugh Fain called the statue a “gift we’re being asked to accept” and said Gov. Youngkin and his administration thought the battlefield was the “most appropriate place” for the monument, the Washington Post reported.

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The move will be paid for with state and federal funding, reports said. The Department of Defense must also approve the move.

Due to a federal mandate requiring all Confederate memorials to be removed or renamed, officials announced plans in March to remove the 110-year-old from Section 16 of the cemetery.

Unveiled in 1914, the Confederate Memorial was designed by American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran and graduate of Virginia Military Institute. Upon his death, Ezekiel was buried near the statue.

The monument features 32 figures depicting mythical gods alongside Confederate soldiers and civilians. Two figures are Black, depicting an enslaved woman holding the infant of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

Two of the figures are Black: One an enslaved woman holding the infant child of a white officer, and the other an enslaved man following his owner to war.

"The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery," the cemetery's website states.

The process of removing the memorial began after a Congressional committee directed the Department of Defense to remove or rename any items from federal-owned land depicting any person who voluntarily served the Confederacy. The Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery was among those items, officials said.

The secretary of defense agreed with the committee's recommendations, and the directive became law in December 2022.

In a statement sent to Patch, a spokesperson for Gov. Youngkin said that while the governor would have preferred for the monument to remain atop Ezekiel's grave, the Newmarket battlefield provides a "fitting backdrop" to the sculptor's legacy.