Dear Ms. Lunelle,
As you know I would have been the Keynote Speaker for Memorial Day services at the Confederate Reconciliation Cenotaph in Arlington National Cemetery this year of 2024. And while the Cenotaph has been removed, after much consideration I have decided to publish the content of the address I intended to give….
Memorial Day - Arlington National Cemetery 2024
On June 7, 1903 the first Confederate Memorial Day Ceremonies were held in the Arlington Confederate section. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a floral arrangement, beginning a tradition continued by nearly every United States President. In 2009, President Barack Obama modified the tradition, sending 2 wreaths, one to the integrated Confederate Memorial, the other to Washington, DC's segregated American Civil War Memorial in honor of the U.S. Colored Troops here in section 27.
It is important that it was not until December 4, 1898 four days after the Spanish American War ended where former Confederate soldiers had so valiantly distinguished themselves, President McKinley kicked off his Peace Jubilee nationwide tour with a speech in Atlanta in which he proclaimed, "in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers...Sectional feelings no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. Nobility for the U.S.Colored troops in their segregated army did not apply. They would be buried alongside former slaves and poor whites in the lower Cemetery (27).
In 1906 with Secretary of War William Howard Taft approved the United Daughters of the Confederacy began raising funds to erect a Memorial here in the Confederate section. Unveiled in 1914 the Confederate Memorial was designed by noted American Sculptor Moses J. Ezekiel a Confederate Veteran and first Jewish graduate at Virginia Military Institute.
Standing on this 32' tall pedestal, this bronze classical female figure, crowned with Olive leaves representing the American South. She holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet: They have beaten their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks (the War is over).
The Cenotaph here on a pedestal with four cinerary urns, one for each year of the War, and is supported by a frieze with 14 shields, one for each of the 11 Confederate States and the Border States of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Thirty two life size figures depict mythical Gods alongside Southern soldiers and civilians.
Two of these figures are portrayed as a Mammy holding a infant child of a White Confederate soldier and there is a fully armed Black Confederate soldier. An inscription of the Latin phrase Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Cato (The victorious Cause was pleasing to the gods, but the Lost Cause to Cato construes the South's secession as a noble lost Cause. Sculptor Moses Ezekiel was buried at the first funeral ceremony in this newly built Memorial Amphitheater. Those other Confederate soldiers lie next to him. The renowned Lt. Commander Harry Marmaduke of the Confederate Navy, Captain John M. Hickey of the 2nd Missouri Infantry and Brigadier General Marcus J. Wright who commanded Brigades at the Battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga.
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