Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin agreed to implement the suggestion, and Arlington National Cemetery made plans for removing and relocating the Confederate Memorial by the start of 2024 at the latest.

For example, in 1865, General Meigs decided to build a monument to Civil War dead in a grove of trees near the flower garden south of the Robert E. Lee mansion at Arlington.

As Quartermaster General, Meigs had charge of the Arlington cemetery (he did not retire until February 6, 1882),[6] and he refused to give families of Confederates buried there permission to lay flowers on their loved ones' graves.

[13] President McKinley made a 2,000-mile (3,200 km) trip across the Deep South by train in December 1898 to promote Senate ratification of the Treaty of Paris and racial harmony.

[12]: 181  In his speech at the Atlanta Peace Jubilee on December 14, 1898, McKinley not only celebrated the end of sectionalism but also announced that the federal government would now begin tending Confederate graves since these dead represented "a tribute to American valor".

Lewis, a former Confederate States Army (CSA) surgeon who then practiced medicine in Washington, D.C., was the leader ("commander") of the Charles Broadway Rouss Camp No.

[b] Lewis had inventoried all Confederate graves at Arlington National Cemetery in early fall 1898 as part of the local group's historic documentation efforts.

[16] After June 1900, however, several women's groups—among them the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Ladies of the Hollywood Memorial Association[c]—opposed allowing any Confederate dead to remain at Arlington.

Critically, Lewis won the support of Hilary A. Herbert, an Alabamian and former colonel in the 8th Regiment Alabama Infantry who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1877 to 1893 and as Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland.

Once more working through his own veterans' group, the UCV convinced a number of government officials that the CSMA was too new (just a year old) to accurately represent Southern views.

[26] These tactics worked: In the late spring of 1901, a delegation from several Confederate veterans' groups visited Secretary of War Elihu Root and convinced him to proceed with the reburials at Arlington.

[27] The graves were laid out in a pattern of concentric circles,[16] rather than straight rows as elsewhere at Arlington, to emphasize the South's attempt to find its place in the new united country.

On March 4, 1906, Secretary of War William Howard Taft gave the UDC permission to erect a memorial in the center of the Confederate section at Arlington.

Former CSA Lieutenant General Stephen D. Lee strongly endorsed the memorial project in September 1907 and asked all UCV camps to contribute to the fund-raising drive.

McKim made the motion that the memorial should depict an event in which General Robert E. Lee attempted to ride into the Battle of the Wilderness to rally his troops.

[89] UDC historian Karen L. Cox, however, says that the ACMA design committee worked with Ezekiel to ensure that the memorial adhered to the theme of "peace for the living and honor to the dead".

[104] The 15th Cavalry Regiment Band provided music for the event,[104][111] and Bishop Robert Atkinson Gibson of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia delivered the invocation.

[104][111] On the spur of the moment, Herbert asked Corporal James R. Tanner, former Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (a veterans organization for Union soldiers) to briefly address the crowd.

The cornerstone contained a time capsule in which a large number of objects and documents were placed, including a certified copy of the Act of June 6, 1900; the letter from Secretary of War Taft giving the ACMA permission to build the memorial; membership rosters of the UDC and other organizations; flags of the states which joined the Confederacy; and examples of Confederate and modern paper money and coins.

[n] A ceremonial trowel of mortar was laid beneath the cornerstone by Herbert, Tanner, and Miss Mary Custis Lee, the 77-year-old only living child of Confederate General Robert E.

Funding was not the issue: By November 1913, the ACMA had paid $20,000 to Ezekiel to secure raw bronze, and almost $22,725 remained in the organization's coffers to complete the memorial, ship it to America, and assemble and erect it.

She called it a "disagreeable job", for it involved declining hundreds of requests from people who wanted to read speeches, sing or play songs, and recite poetry.

[136] Sculptor Moses Ezekiel included them because he wanted to undermine what he called the "lies" told about the South and slavery in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and wished to rewrite history "correctly" (his word) to depict black slaves' support for the Confederate cause.

Keith Gibson, executive director of the VMI museum system, says the Confederate Memorial is a "superb example of Ezekiel's style and imagery", and one of the artist's most significant works.

[150] In 2007, The Washington Post reporter Linda Wheeler found the memorial ornate and romantic and praised it as a vivid reflection of Victorian artistic taste.

[41] Kirk Savage, associate professor of art history and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, criticizes the memorial for being "clearly the product of white supremacist thinking and practice".

[152] In 2020, Arlington National Cemetery installed a plaque near the statue, informing visitors that the memorial features "highly sanitized depictions of slavery".

[153] In August 1915, Secretary of War Lindley Miller Garrison determined that the Confederate Monument should be cared for by the federal government under the authority granted by the Act of June 8, 1906.

The resolution which enlarged the memorial and increased the amount of money budgeted for it read: "...that the monument in Washington shall cost not less than $50,000, with the hopes of $75,000, and that a contract be made to this effect...".

The third burial was that of Captain Henry H. Marmaduke, the last known surviving officer of the ironclad warship CSS Virginia (which famously fought the USS Monitor in the Battle of Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862).