6. Moses Jacob Ezekiel created statues honoring the Confederacy
Moses Jacob Ezekiel, who created the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery, also created monuments which appeared across the South during the early 20th century. Moses Ezekiel, a Virginian, served in the Confederate Army during the war. Following the war, he expatriated to Prussia for a time, then to Rome, where he maintained his studio for the remainder of his life. The Confederate battle flag hung in his studio for over forty years. No doubt it served as partial inspiration for his works, which he sold to organizations including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other like-minded groups. Many of the statues he created were sold during the high point of the Lost Cause movement.
Among them were the statue of Stonewall Jackson, installed in the West Virginia State Capitol in 1910; Virginia Mourning Her Dead, installed at Virginia Military Institute (where Ezekiel once studied under Jackson); and The Southern, installed at the Confederate Cemetery, Johnson’s Island, Ohio. Ezekiel’s statues honored Confederate soldiers and leaders, but also presented the images of the Lost Cause, particularly at Arlington. There the symbol of the Confederacy, a woman, was positioned to appear to be protecting the other images on the monument, including the “loyal slaves” as well as the heroic Southern troops. Ezekiel’s statues faithfully reproduced the images of the Lost Cause, and were erected at the height of the Jim Crow era.