The removed text described the sculpture as presenting a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy”
Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty; Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Language describing slavery and the Confederacy has been removed from a historical marker accompanying a Confederate monument
- The Confederate Memorial, removed in 2023, is set to return to Arlington National Cemetery in 2027
- The changes follow broader efforts to reconsider Confederate symbols on military property recommended by the Naming Commission
The Trump administration has removed language from Arlington National Cemetery that was critical of a Confederate memorial that was taken down in 2023.
The changes were made to both a marker at the memorial’s former location and a Department of Defense (DoD) website that provided historical context about the monument.
The 32-foot bronze Confederate Memorial was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and unveiled at Arlington in 1914. The statue was removed in December 2023 after Congress directed the military to remove names honoring the Confederacy and its leaders from U.S. military property, according to The Washington Post.
The memorial drew criticism for the way it portrayed the Confederacy and slavery. Among the figures shown in the sculpture were an enslaved black woman carrying a white child and an enslaved black man following a Confederate soldier. Critics of the statue argued that it presented a romanticized version of the Confederacy’s brutal history.
When the statue was removed, a marker at the memorial’s former site offered context for that history, as did its accompanying DoD website.
The marker’s text described the sculpture as presenting a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy” and said its depictions of slavery were “highly sanitized.” It also identified the black figures as enslaved people and discussed the way the imagery reflected the “Lost Cause” interpretation of the Civil War.
The website previously explained that the “Lost Cause” narrative romanticized the pre-Civil War South while downplaying or denying the role and horrors of slavery. It also connected that narrative to opposition of Reconstruction and to the expansion of rights for Black Americans following the Civil War.
That historical context has now been removed. The original marker has been replaced with a new sign that does not include the previous descriptions of slavery or the Confederacy. Archived versions of the DoD website also show that the language was removed online.
The changes come as the administration moves toward restoring the Confederate Memorial at Arlington. The statue was relocated to the Virginia Military Institute after it was removed from the cemetery.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in 2025 that the memorial would eventually return to Arlington, and the new marker at the site says the Army expects to display the sculpture there again in 2027 after conservation and refurbishment work, according to the Associated Press.
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The administration has also taken other steps involving Confederate history and monuments. A statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike that was torn down during protests in 2020 was restored to its original location in Washington in 2025, the Washington Post reported.
In August 2025, the Pentagon ordered a portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee returned to the West Point library after it had been removed following recommendations from a congressionally mandated commission, The New York Times reported at the time.
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