WorldNetDaily columnist James Zumwalt has been fretting over the impending removal of a Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery for a while how. He huffed in a March 29 column:
With wokeism protesting any memorialization of those who fought for the Confederacy during our American Civil War, a magnificent memorial in Arlington National Cemetery is, like the Buddhas of Bamiyan, being slated for demolition. More than a century old, the 32-foot-high Confederate Memorial was enthusiastically promoted by an earlier Congress, three U.S. presidents and veterans on both sides after the conflict. It was specifically embraced to symbolize a unified America in the aftermath of the War Between the States.
The Confederate Memorial was actually the brainchild of Union veteran and U.S. President William McKinley; it was President William Howard Taft who spoke at the laying of its cornerstone; and it was President Woodrow Wilson who spoke at its 1914 dedication, alongside both Union and Confederate veterans. Almost half a century after a war that had so divided America, claiming 750,000 lives and the maiming of over a million more, this memorial recognized a nation’s reconciliation and reunification.
Designed and constructed by Confederate veteran and internationally renowned Jewish sculptor Moses Ezekiel, he, along with three other Southerners, lie buried at the monument’s base, thus serving as their headstone. It is a grave marker also for 462 other Confederates whose graves are arranged in concentric circles around it. Such a burial arrangement is an integral part of the memorial, exactly as Congress, three presidents and veterans from both sides intended.
Those today planning the memorial’s destruction lack any appreciation for the emotions at play in 1914 or for the artistic value it offers. Hypocritically, woke activists, demanding those who fought for the South more than seven generations earlier be banned to the dustbin of history for failing to grasp 21st century values, fail to grasp the emotional needs existing in 1914 to honor all who served to help reunify a divided nation. They are committed to the memorial’s destruction at a cost of over $100 million.
As we pointed out when fellow WND columnist Carole Hornsby Haynes tried to defend the memorial, the cemetery’s own website states that “The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” and that the only two African-American figures are stereotypical — a “mammy”-type figure and an enslaved man following his owner to war. Zumwalt’s evidence that the removal would cost “over $100 million” was a tweet by a pro-monument group that said nothing about cost.
As the removal date drew near, Zumwalt spent his Dec. 8 column lashing out at Sen. Elizabeth Warren for supporting the removal and other signs of needlessly honoring the Confederacy:
Unless a federal judge takes the appropriate action, on De. 18 the demolition of the 109-year-old Confederate Reconciliation Memorial located at Arlington National Cemetery will begin.
The word “reconciliation” was included in the memorial as it was the intention of our 25th U.S. president, William McKinley, and his peers who had fought on the side of the Union to demonstrate the post-Civil War healing of war wounds with those who had fought for the Confederacy. The country had suffered an ideological split during that conflict but, like a bad marriage in which the parties separated only to realize later they needed each other and returned to their union, the memorial was commissioned as a testimonial to the reconciliation of North and South.
As has been reported, the destruction of the memorial, “will desecrate the graves of almost 500 Confederate soldiers and family surrounding the memorial in concentric circles who, by 1901 law, are American soldiers entitled to the same respect and dignity as any American soldier who has ever lived.” In the mind of Sen. Warren, honoring those who fought for the South is insensitive as they should eternally be condemned for having honored the institution of slavery. This is contrary to the sentiment of McKinley who observed, “Every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor.”
As the cemetery’s website also suggested, the word “reconciliation” in the memorial’s name is meaningless because it was not accompanied by the granting of civil rights to black people. Zumwalt then tried to engage in a little Civil War revisionism:
Warren and Austin ride their high horses trumpeting slavery as the main focus of the war, but such trumpeting demonstrates a lack of understanding about history and about what caused those on both sides to fight. At war’s end 17 senior commanders – nine from the North and eight from the South – gave farewell addresses to those who had served under them. Those addresses were assembled in “The Last Words” – a book authored by historian Michael R. Bradley – a work that clearly destroys slavery as the “single cause myth.” While the moral issue of slavery has long been given as a common explanation for why the American Civil War was fought, it was the economics of slavery, along with political control of that system and states’ rights, that were mainly responsible.
Actually, several Confederate states specifically cited slavery as a reason for leaving the Union in their secession statements. Still, Zumwalt huffed that “Warren will never understand the bond of respect, despite the ideological differences, that existed between North and South.”
Zumwalt used his Dec. 20 column to dishonestly liken the removal of the Confederate memorial to the Taliban’s destruction of centuries-old Buddha statues carved into a rock face in Aghanistan’s Bamilan Valley:
Twenty-two years after the Bamiyan Massacre by the Taliban, the U.S. is on the verge of committing its own massacre that will eradicate an important part of our history. In fact, had it not been for a last-minute restraining order issued by a federal judge, that massacre would now have been completed.
The architect of this massacre is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who proclaimed during her failed presidential campaign she supported removing all Confederate symbols from federal land if she were elected. Fortunately, she had to drop out of her campaign, but that did not deter her from seeking the eradication of any honors bestowed upon Confederate veterans that were memorialized upon federal lands. She sponsored legislation in 2020 to this end, which was later passed with the help of 41 Republican House members who apparently were more concerned about elections than our history.
Zumwalt then tried an appeal related to the sculptor:
Interestingly, the architect the war victors engaged to design the memorial was noted sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel – a Confederate veteran and the first Jewish graduate of Virginia Military Institute. One would think there should currently be some sensitivity to the appropriateness of removing this historic memorial by a respected Jewish architect due to the astonishing wave of antisemitism triggered by the Gaza war. Of course, this appears to be of no concern to Warren as she recently criticized Facebook for censoring pro-Hamas posts.
In fact, Ezekiel’s descendants have endorsed the removal of the sculpture, pointing out that it’s “a relic of a racist past,” and that it should be put in a museum “that makes clear its oppressive history.” Nevertheless, Zumwalt continued to smear Warren as Taliban-like for wanting to address oppressive history:
Warren and the Taliban obviously drink from similar glasses of ideological extremism. The Taliban’s contains an elixir of religious zeal that blinds them from accepting any culture and religion other than their own. Meanwhile, Warren’s contains an elixir of progressivism, blinding her to the destructive impact she will have on our history. Sadly, she denies veterans who served on both sides during our Civil War the memorialization in history they sought in honor of America’s reunification in the aftermath of that divisive conflict.
A few days later, the bronze section of the monument was removed from its pedestal and his currently in storage as its ultimate fate is decided.The granite base will remain in place to avoid disturbing graves.There is still no evidence that the removal cost the $100 million Zumwalt claimed it would.