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The Confederate Memorial is a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, in the United States, that commemorates members of the armed forces of the Confederate States of America who died during the American Civil War. Authorized in March 1906, former Confederate States Army sergeant and sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in November 1910 to design the memorial. It was unveiled by President Woodrow Wilson on June 4, 1914 (the 106th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy). The memorial grounds have changed slightly due to burials and alterations since 1914. Some major changes to the memorial were proposed over the years, but none have been implemented. Since the memorial's unveiling, the President of the United States has almost always sent a funeral wreath to be laid at the memorial every Memorial Day. Some presidents have declined to do so, and the tradition is controversial. ==Creating a Confederate space at Arlington== Arlington National Cemetery was established in June 1864 as a cemetery for Union (United States of America) Civil War dead. The first military burial at Arlington (a white soldier, William Henry Christman) was made on May 13, 1864,〔Cultural Landscape Program. Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial Cultural Landscape Report. National Capital Region. National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. Washington, D.C.: 2001. Accessed 2012-04-29.〕 close to what is now the northeast gate in Section 27.〔(Dennee, p. 4. ) Accessed 2013-07-29.〕 However, formal authorization for burials was not given by Major General Montgomery C. Meigs (Quartermaster General of the United States Army) until June 15, 1864.〔 Confederate military personnel were among those initially buried at Arlington. Some were prisoners of war who died while in custody or who were executed as spies by the Union,〔Parzych, p. 43.〕 but some were battlefield dead. 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.〔 The bodies of 2,111 Union and Confederate dead within a radius of the city of Washington, D.C., were collected. Some of the dead had been interred on the battlefield, but most were full or partial remains discovered unburied where they died in combat. None were identifiable. Although Meigs had not intended to collect the remains of Confederate war dead, the inability to identify remains meant that both Union and Confederate dead were interred below the cenotaph he built.〔Heidler, Heidler, and Coles, p. 78.〕 The vault was sealed in September 1866.〔 Other Confederate battlefield dead were also buried at Arlington, and by the end of the war in April 1865 several hundred of the more than 16,000 graves at Arlington contained Confederate dead.〔〔Jacob, p. 157.〕 The federal government did not permit the decoration of Confederate graves at the cemetery, however. As Quartermaster General, Meigs had charge of the Arlington cemetery (he did not retire until February 6, 1882),〔Brown and Bushong, p. 580.〕 and he refused to give families of Confederates buried there permission to lay flowers on their loved ones' graves.〔 In 1868, when families asked to lay flowers on Confederate graves on Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day), Meigs ordered that the families be barred from the cemetery.〔 Union veterans' organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR; whose membership was open only to Union soldiers) also felt that rebel graves should not be decorated.〔Trout, p. 126.〕 In 1869, GAR members stood watch over Confederate graves at Arlington National Cemetery to ensure they were not visibly honored on Decoration Day.〔Marling, p. 25.〕 Cemetery officials also refused to allow the erection of any monument to Confederate dead〔 and declined to permit new Confederate burials (either by reburial or through the death of veterans).〔Mayo, p. 176.〕〔Martinez and Harris, p. 177.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Confederate Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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