Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

by Ty Seidule

The Confederate monument at Arlington isn’t the only one in cemeteries maintained with U.S. government money. All told there are thirty-four monuments that honor Confederate soldiers and politicians in cemeteries maintained by the federal government. Some predate the United States’ magnanimous gesture to maintain Confederate war dead, but the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Military Order of the Stars and Bars, and other neo-Confederate organizations emplaced five new monuments since 1988. The obelisk in Rock Island Confederate Cemetery in Illinois on the east side of the Mississippi River dates to 2003. The inscription finishes with this phrase: “They died for a cause they believed was worth fighting for.”