U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that a Confederate memorial will be returned to Arlington National Cemetery, following its removal in 2023.
The controversial sculpture, also called the “Reconciliation Monument,” is being returned as part of President Donald Trump’s administration’s broader effort to bring back statues and other memorials honoring the Confederacy.
“It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it,” Hegseth said in a statement posted this week on social media.
The sculpture, unveiled in 1914, was created by Confederate veteran Moses Ezekiel.
The top features a bronze woman standing on a pedestal and below her are various representations linked to the South, including soldiers and a Black “mammy” holding a child of a white officer.
It also includes what appears to be a slave following his owner to war.
The “Confederate Memorial” was taken down in December 2023 after the Congressional Naming Commission said the memorial was a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
When will it go back up?
The base of the monument was not removed from the cemetery, so that graves nearby wouldn’t be disturbed. The rest of the monument is being refurbished and the Army says the cost will be about $10 million over two years, according to Stars and Stripes.
Once back in the cemetery, the monument — described a few years ago as “problematic from top to bottom” — will also feature panels nearby that will offer context about its history, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity about a project still in progress.
The monument is expected to fully return to the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery in 2027.
Hegseth’s decision follows an announcement earlier this week from the National Park Service to restore and install a statue of Confederate General and Freemason Leader Albert Pike in D.C.’s Judiciary Square, a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
Hegseth has also made a point of circumventing the will of the commission by reverting the names of several military bases back to their original, Confederate-linked names.
Monument comes down in wake of racial justice protests
Efforts to take down Confederate statues and memorials grew in 2020 after nationwide protests that took place after George Floyd died as a Minnesota police officer pinned him to the ground.
The statue had been brought down by demonstrators in the summer of 2020, in response to the killing of Floyd.
That year, over the objection of Trump, Congress created the Congressional Naming Commission that reviewed military assets and facilities that honored the Confederacy.
Republican lawmakers sought to return the Reconciliation Monument to Arlington National Cemetery, but legislation was voted down.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican who represents Georgia’s 9th District, publicly thanked Hegseth for his decision. Clyde sponsored a bill to return the monument to the cemetery, arguing that “commemorates national unity after the Civil War.”
Democrats have countered that it tried to sanitize slavery.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
