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U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston on Monday had ordered a halt
to the removal as he considered a lawsuit against the work.
In his Tuesday ruling, he rejected the arguments from the group
Defend Arlington, who claimed in their suit that the Pentagon
had skirted federal environmental law in its rush to take down
the monument, and that the work would disturb nearby graves.
Alston wrote that "this case essentially attempts to place this
Court at the center of a great debate" between those who extol
"the virtues, romanticism and history of the Old South" and
people who say the monuments glorify the slave-owning culture of
the Confederacy.
Erected in 1914, the Confederate Memorial is the latest of
scores of statues seen by many as monuments to racism. They have
been singled out for demolition by state and local leaders
around the U.S. since a nationwide public uproar stirred in 2020
by the killing of George Floyd.
Congress formally mandated elimination of all names, symbols and
statues commemorating the Confederacy throughout the U.S.
military in 2021, creating a commission to oversee the endeavor.
Kerry Meeker, head of public affairs for Arlington Cemetery,
said in a written statement that the Army would resume removal
of the monument "immediately" and that great care would be taken
to preserve "the sanctity of all those laid to rest" nearby.
The cemetery's own online critique describes the monument's
imagery and inscriptions as sanitizing pre-Civil War slavery,
romanticizing secession of the Southern pro-slave states, and
perpetuating the noble "Lost Cause" myth of the Confederacy.
The monument features a classically robed woman cast in bronze
representing the American South standing atop a three-story
pedestal adorned with life-sized figures of deities, Confederate
soldiers and civilians.
Among those figures are an enslaved African-American "mammy"
character holding the infant child of a white Confederate
officer, and an enslaved African-American man following his
owner off to war, according to the cemetery's description.
The monument overlooks Confederate graves in a special corner of
the sprawling cemetery, which stands in Arlington, Virginia,
just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., on the
grounds of a former plantation seized from Civil War General
Robert E. Lee, commander of Confederate forces.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado, and Steve
Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Michael Perry)
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