A Call to Action
Don’t let Arlington National Cemetery, the Pentagon, and the “Naming Commission” erase history
Not long after returning to northern Virginia a couple of years ago after a 20-year hiatus to Pennsylvania, my wife and I decided on a morning walk in nearby Arlington National Cemetery. It’s hilly, winding, and serene landscape that not only exercises the legs, but also one’s heart, mind, and soul.
The Cemetery is quiet, yet a busy place. Millions of visitors solemnly walk along and amidst row after row of headstones from soldiers who paid the ultimate price, some sporting maps to locate certain graves. Walking near the gate where Fort Myer’s chapel is located, you are likely to see a funeral procession, a horse-drawn caisson leading mourners to bury a loved one who is qualified to be interred there, accompanied by The Old Guard, the US Army’s storied 4th Batallian, 3rd Infantry Regiment.
As with other monuments in Washington - Congress and the White House come to mind - Arlington National Cemetery is a walk through history. It is America’s story, warts and all. An assassinated President and his two brothers. War heroes, such as Audie Murphy. Former US Senators and Congressmen who served our country in other ways, some more distinguished than others. And of course, its highest point is the Custis-Lee Mansion, better known as “Arlington House,” which was the final home of Robert E. Lee before he and his family headed south, leaving behind George Washington’s Revolutionary War command tent, which can now be found at the Museum of the American Revolution in downtown Philadelphia, steps away from Independence Hall.
It doesn’t take long on a walk through the Cemetery to find Section 16, which stands out for three reasons. Four, actually. First, it features some 400 Confederate veterans from the Civil War; second, it is arrayed in a semi-circular manner around (third) a monument designed by a famous former Confederate soldier; and, fourth, with pointed headstones, compared to the rounded ones seen elsewhere.
Why is there a monument to Confederate dead at Arlington National Cemetery? Former US Senator, Navy Secretary, author and Civil War historial James Webb (D-VA) explained it in terrific op-ed this week in the Wall Street Journal.
In 1898, 33 years after the end of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War brought a sudden, unanticipated harmony and unity to a country that had been riven by war and a punitive postwar military occupation, which failed at wholesale societal reconstruction. In the South, American flags flew again as the sons of Confederate soldiers volunteered to fight, even if it meant wearing the once-hated Yankee blue. President William McKinley presciently seized this moment to mend a generation’s sectional divide.
McKinley understood the Civil War as one who had lived it, having served four years in the 23rd Ohio Infantry, enlisting as a private and discharged in 1865 as a brevet major. He knew the steps to take to bring the country fully together again. As an initial signal, he selected three Civil War veterans to command the Cuba campaign. Two, William Rufus Shafter, given overall command of the Cuban operation, and H.W. Lawton, who led the Second Infantry Division, the first soldiers to land in the war, had received the Medal of Honor fighting for the Union. The other, “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, the legendary Confederate cavalry general, led the cavalry units in Cuba, after being elected to Congress in 1880 from Alabama and working hard to bring national reconciliation.
Yet as Senator Webb laments, a “naming commission” created by the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, recommended its removal. The National Commission on Modernizing Military Installation Designations was included with a focus on renaming the dozen or so Army bases, three of them located in Virginia, and one naval ship named after confederate officers or, in the case of the navy ship, a Civil War Battle won decisively by the Army of Northern Virginia, led by Gen. Lee (Chancellorsville).
Part III of the Commissions recommendations took advantage of an open-ended clause in the legislative language - “Any other matters the Commission deems relevant” - to deem jurisdiction over the Cemetery and specifically the confederate monument.
And they took full advantage of it. “The Commission finds the Confederate Memorial located at Arlington National Cemetery is within its remit,” it asserted.
While Arlington National Cemetery does fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Army, despite the rather broad catch-all clause that was incorporated, the intent of the legislative language is focused on renaming military bases that currently feature the names of Confederate officers. As Senator Webb noted in his excellent op-ed, wokeism ran amok at both the naming commission and a Department of Defense that only too enthusiastically embraced the recommendation.
To be clear, this is not a partisan issue. US Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) claimed credit for the language and was one of a handful of Republicans who voted for it, including former US Reps. Adam Kinzinger and John Shimkus, both of Illinois. “Our military bases should bear the names of America’s war heroes who went above and beyond to answer the call of duty, and who represent the best ideals of our Republic, such as Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipients, or other national heroes,” said Rep. Bacon, a retired US Air Force Brigadier General. “Right now, many of our military bases are named after Confederate leaders who betrayed their Constitutional oath and caused the death of over 600,000 people because of slavery.”
How profoundly ignorant and a whitewashing of history. The vast majority of Confederate soldiers didn’t own slaves, a point made by Senator Webb. US Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) served as a member of the naming commission, as did Dr. Kori Schake, a senior State Department and White House official in the George W. Bush Administration, and is now at the American Enterprise Institute. Senator Webb, again:
McKinley’s fellow soldiers understood that during the Civil War, four slave states remained in the Union—Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky—and none of them were required to give up slavery during the entire war. And that in every major battle of the Civil War, slave owners in the Union Army fought against non-slave-owners in the Confederate Army. They understood that President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves in those states or in the areas of the South that had already been conquered. The proclamation freed only slaves in the areas taken after it was issued. And in the eyes of a Confederate soldier, if Lincoln had not freed slaves in the union, why should the soldier be vilified for supposedly fighting on behalf of slavery?
Arlington National Cemetery is collecting comments from the public on what to do with the statue. They should be encourage to leave it where it is and allow people to learn from history, instead of erasing it. That accomplishes nothing, misses the point why it was placed there, and promotes ignorance over historical context and understanding. What is is about government bodies that consistently seek to overextend their missions and boundaries? If we’re going to remove statues and imagery that offends someone, I have some recommendations of my own. This won’t end well.
Side note: The cemetery’s guides are doing much the same thing with Arlington House. They are now claiming that Lee has but a minor connection to the house and they have redirected resources towards the presense and role of slaves. I’m all for teaching about slavery and actually like some (but not all) of the new names for many Army bases, especially renaming Fort Benning for the late Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, a Vietnam War hero. But the Arlington House was Lee’s home - he inherited the property and its slaves from his father-in-law, George Washington Custis, stepson of our first President - where he made the fateful decision to lead the Army of Northern Virginia. And the fact that it was Lee’s home is why the Union decided to turn his former property into Arlington Cemetery.
You have until September 2nd to express your view, whatever it may be. Here is the link to submit your comments:
https://anmc-confederatememorialpubliccomments.com/
I tweeted about it….
https://twitter.com/andrewhymanesq/status/1693554187341041712?s=46&t=NVUkmE2Q23e90Q57t--TXQ