U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Woke Virginia Democrat, Is a Traitor to Virginia’s History

ON JUNE 13, 2024, an amendment to the 2025 NDAA entitled "Relocation of Reconciliation Memorial to original location in Arlington National Cemetery" was voted on by the United States House of Representatives. It was submitted by Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia. The amendment lost 230 to 192 with 15 not voting. No Democrat voted for it because they stick together; 24 Republicans gave the middle finger to their voters and joined with Democrats to defeat the amendment.

Rep. Clyde is an American hero because he knows, as it stands right now, Arlington National Cemetery has been desecrated and the graves of 518 Confederate soldiers and family, who are by law American soldiers, are dishonored, and so are their descendants.

Those Confederate descendants have bled and died for our country since reconciliation after the Spanish-American War, and have traditionally made up 44% of our military. The Wall Street Journal confirmed the Southern plurality in our military by explaining how the Army met its recruiting goals in the past:

It did so by relying heavily on veterans and military families to develop the next generation of recruits, especially in the region known in the military as the "Southern Smile," a curving region from the mid-Atlantic and down across the southern U.S.ⁱ

Because of leftist extremists like Don Beyer who contributes to our recruiting crisis by supporting the destruction of monuments in cemeteries, many veterans are not recommending military service. It goes directly back to Biden's Wokeness in the military, DEI, CRT and other divisive hate. It is not fair to those serving today who have to carry a larger burden because of recruiting shortfalls. See the Wall Street Journal, Ben Kesling, "The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join, Pentagon scrambles to retain the main pipeline for new service members as disillusioned families steer young people away," June 30, 2023.ⁱⁱ

Also my article, "Elizabeth Warren and her naming commission add to military recruiting crisis". Woke Rep. Beyer, whose pronouns are "He/Him/His," posted the following on X along with this link to his two-and-a-half minutes of pablum on the House floor:

Republicans are pushing an amendment to the NDAA, supposedly a national security bill, to put a Confederate monument back in Arlington National Cemetery after it was removed. Congress has better things to do with our time and your money than honoring treason in defense of slavery.

Beyer knows there were no treason trials after the war so he is a liar. If there had been trials of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee or anybody else, it would have proven the right of secession and the North's guilt in starting a war for the economic domination of the country. That's why smart Northerners were not about to lose in a court of law what they had won on the battlefield.

The part about slavery is pretty silly too. No Northern official said they were fighting a war to free the slaves. In their official documents like Lincoln's First Inaugural, they said the opposite and supported things like the Corwin Amendment, which would have left blacks in slavery forever even beyond the reach of Congress. Lincoln supported Corwin along with sending blacks back to Africa or into a climate they could survive.

It was always about Union for Lincoln and the North because their wealth and power depended on it. Here is the War Aims Resolution that passed the Northern Congress in July, 1861, three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter:

. . . That this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions [slavery] of the States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution [which allowed and protected slavery], and to preserve the Union. . . .ⁱⁱⁱ

The case Virginia Rep. Beyer makes specifically against Virginia - that it was fighting for slavery - is false beyond the shadow of a doubt as the historical record shows. A shallow person like Beyer is not too familiar with the historical record but he doesn't care because he knows the leftist news media will regurgitate anything he says so truth is not necessary. All good Marxists know this.

Virginia entered the War Between the States for the most noble reasons imaginable and they had nothing to do with slavery.

When the war started, there were more slave states in the Union than the Confederacy and Virginia was one of them. There were eight slave states in the Union, soon to increase by one,^iv and only seven in the Confederacy.^v Some war to end slavery, huh.

When Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, only then did Virginia secede and the issue was clearly its disgust with Lincoln's declaration of war and unconstitutional, immoral invasion of sovereign sister states. Virginia's response was immediate.

On April 12, 1861, with Lincoln's warships and reinforcements almost to Charleston, the Confederates gave Lincoln's garrison every chance to evacuate Fort Sumter but they refused so it was bombarded.

On April 13, Fort Sumter surrendered.

On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South.

On April 17, Virginia seceded.

Virginia was followed over the next few weeks by the secession of Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. In these four Confederate states were 52.4% of white Southerners, so a majority of white Southerners seceded over nothing to do with slavery.

Also, and importantly, Virginia was one of three states that had reserved the right of secession before acceding to the United States Constitution. The other two were New York and Rhode Island.

The acceptance of the reserved right of secession of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island, gave that right to all the other states as well because they all joined the Union as equals with the exact same rights.

In Virginia's ordinance of secession, she quoted her reserved right of secession.

So, contrary to what Rep. Beyer says, Virginia did not commit "treason in defense of slavery" nor did any Southern state. They all had numerous grievances and voted peacefully and democratically to leave the Union they had voluntarily joined. The South was creating the wealth of the nation with cotton but was paying most of the country's taxes, then three-fourths of the tax money was being spent in the North. Robert Toombs called this arrangement a "suction pump" sucking wealth out of the South and depositing it in the North.

They were all disgusted with Northerners sending terrorists into the South like John Brown to rape, murder and steal.

They were fed up with the Republican Party printing hundreds of thousands of copies of Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis as a campaign document and distributing them coast to coast. It called for the throats of white Southerners to be sliced open in the night.

I wonder how long Rep. Beyer would put up with paying three-fourths of the taxes while three-fourths of his tax money was spent on his neighbors?

We can not allow virtue signalers like Beyer, Elizabeth Warren and Ty Seidule to cherry-pick events in history that help them politically but devastate the rest of the country.

We can not allow these hatemongers to repeal the reconciliation that the country was so proud of after the bloody war in which 750,000 died and over a million were maimed.

Despite being outnumbered four to one and massively outgunned, Confederate valor is unsurpassed in the history of the world. James McPherson writes in Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War:

[T]he overall mortality rate for the South exceeded that of any country in World War I and that of all but the region between the Rhine and the Volga in World War II.^vi

Click HERE to view 28 official United States Army photographs of the magnificent Confederate Memorial. Looking at these stunning photographs for one second shows you clearly that destruction of this monument was a barbaric, uncivilized act that only an extremist like leftist vice chair of the naming commission, Ty Seidule, along with fake Indian Elizabeth Warren and shallow Don Beyer, could be in favor of.

Seidule hated the Confederate Memorial, and the reconciliation of North and South after the bloody war, and said so in his screed, Robert E. Lee and Me.

The Confederate Memorial was NOT in the naming commission's remit, as they falsely claimed, nor did Congress specifically mandate its removal.

The naming commission's unverified report deliberately left out the primary history of the Confederate Monument, which is the reconciliation of North and South after the War Between the States. The reconciliation theme is irrefutable and stated repeatedly in Arlington National Cemetery's own application for its Historic District to be on the National Register of Historic Places. (download my PDF white paper "The Reconciliation of North and South After the War Between the States as Symbolized by the Confederate Memorial 'New South' in Arlington National Cemetery")

The Confederate Memorial symbolized peace, love, patriotism and the reunification of the United States of America. It does not commemorate the Confederacy.

The Confederate Memorial is one of the most significant monuments on earth, not only for its symbolism of reconciliation after a war in which 750,000 died and over a million were maimed, but because of its magnificence. Again, look at the Army Photographs and ask yourself what kind of person would want to destroy a monument like that?

Click HERE to view a United States Army video of the Confederate Memorial.

Art critic Michael Robert Patterson states that:

 . . . no sculptor, as far as known, has ever, in any one memorial told as much history as has Ezekiel in his monument at Arlington; and every human figure in it, as well as every symbol, is in and of itself a work of art.

Esteemed British art critic and historian, Alexander Adams, wrote in his "Testimony regarding Arlington National Cemetery Confederate Memorial submitted to the Advisory Committee on Arlington National Cemetery Open Session," 7-8 November, 2022 (download PDF):

Having viewed a large amount of public statuary from the beaux-arts era (1850-1914), it is my professional opinion that the Memorial is a serious, iconographically complex and technically accomplished piece of art. In my view, it is a handsome sculpture and an entirely appropriate funerary monument. I consider it an internationally significant piece of art of its type and era. Any nation should be proud to host such a magnanimous and dignified monument.

The inscription “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” provides a Biblical guidance to turning from war to peace. This is echoed by the personification of the South, which holds the wreath of glory and touches the plough of peaceful prosperity. The frieze below depicts the contributions of those who supported the war effort.

Here is some of the massive amount of history that the naming commission left out of their fraudulent report.

The monument was the idea of Union soldier and later president, William McKinley, after enthusiastic Southern participation in the Spanish-American War, and it was approved by Congress.

McKinley said:

. . . every soldier's grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers . . . The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in this year just passed by the sons and grandsons of those heroic dead.

President William Howard Taft spoke and was warmly received at the UDC ceremony the evening the cornerstone was laid.

President Woodrow Wilson (download PDF photograph) gave the dedication speech June 4, 1914 (download Wilson's address).^vii

President Theodore Roosevelt sent the first memorial wreath that started an annual tradition observed by all presidents including Barack Obama.

President Warren G. Harding sent a message of condolence (download PDF here) that was read at the funeral of the monument's acclaimed Jewish sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, who was a VMI Confederate soldier. Here are some of Harding's comments from The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., Wednesday, March 30, 1921:

'Ezekiel will be remembered,' the President wrote, 'as one who knew how to translate the glories of his own time and people into that language of art which is common to all peoples and all times. He served his state in the conflict that threatened to divide and that at last served to unify our country. He accepted the verdict of the civil war's arbitrament with all the fine generosity that has been characteristic of both the north and south; and the splendid product of his art, that here testifies to our nation's reunion, will stand from this day forth as guardian over his ashes.

'Every line and curve and expression carries the plea for a truly united nation that may be equal to the burdens of these exacting times. It speaks to us the ardent wish, the untiring purpose, to help make our people one people, secure in independence, dedicated to freedom, and ever ready to lend the hand of confident strength in aid of the oppressed and needy. Its long-drawn shadows of earliest morn and latest evening will always fall on sacred soil. The genius that produced, the love that gave, the devotion that will cherish it will forever be numbered among our ennobling possessions.

'[H]e wrought them into works which compelled the recognition of the chief art schools and won the honors of nations and cities that boasted of being the homes of sculpture's best traditions. Crowned with these honors, he turned his thoughts to his own country, and as the final and finest product of his talents gave to us the monument that from this day will mark his resting place. It is the memorial of reunited America the testimony to the tradition of indissoluble union, the shrine to which we are gathered today, and will gather through the years to come, those who would dedicate themselves to the ideal of unselfish, enlightened, upstanding Americanism as a force for our country's maintenance and all humanity's betterment.' (bold emphasis added)

You can not read President Harding's message without knowing that the Confederate Memorial represented reconciliation, peace, love and patriotism, all things the naming commission left out of its fraudulent, unverified report, and are things a historically ignorant leftist like Don Beyer can't comprehend.

Ezekiel created the Confederate Memorial in the City of Rome, Italy and was buried next to his monument before it was removed, along with two other Confederate soldiers and a Confederate sailor, which made the monument their grave marker as President Harding stated in his funeral message.

Grave markers were prohibited, in Warren's legislation, from being destroyed. Removal of the Confederate Memorial was ILLEGAL.

Rep. Beyer said an enslaved mammy was on the monument and another enslaved man was following his master to war.

That is a lie. There is no evidence that either of those blacks on the monument were slaves. Sculptor Moses Ezekiel did not state whether they were slaves or free. There were more free blacks in the South than in the North so the blacks on the Confederate monument were probably free, especially the black Confederate soldier.

Beyer, in his ignorance of history, does not know that several Northern and Western states had laws prohibiting blacks from living there or even visiting for more than a few days, and if they stayed longer, they were subject to arrest and whipping by the sheriff. Lincoln's Illinois was one of them.

Beyer does not understand that the South was an integrated bi-racial society unlike the North that was white supremacist and is where Jim Crow began. Jim Crow began in the North and was there for years before moving South at the end of the nineteenth century.

Blacks did fight for the Confederacy in large numbers so Beyer's support for the Confederate Memorial's removal and against its reinstallation is racist against them. Beyer is a racist. So is Elizabeth Warren and Ty Seidule. They are racist against black Southerners who voluntarily, of their own free will, marched off to war to defend their homes in the South. There were always blacks at Confederate Veteran Reunions and many drew state pensions.

Just one irrefutable example proves substantial black participation in combat on battlefields with the Confederate army. A Yankee official, Lewis H. Steiner, M.D., Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission, observed, firsthand, the exodus of Stonewall Jackson's army from Frederick, Maryland in 1862. Steiner writes in his official report:

Wednesday, September 10, 1862: At 4 o'clock this morning the Rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued until 8 o'clock P.M., occupying 16 hours. The most liberal calculation could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in the number. They had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and they were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy army. They were seen riding on horses and mules, driving wagons, riding on caissons, in ambulances, with the staff of generals and promiscuously mixed up with all the Rebel horde (emphasis added).

I named a two-DVD set featuring Professor Edward C. Smith, who, before he passed, was a well-known authority on black Confederates, Mixed Up with All the Rebel Horde, Why Black Southerners Fought for the South in the War Between the States.

Steiner writes that there were "over 3,000 Negroes." That number could be much higher. Steiner was observing from a distance starting well before dawn and he would not be able to distinguish light-skinned African Americans from white Confederate soldiers.

So it's not unreasonable to think that 3,000 to 5,000 of every 64,000 Confederate soldiers were black meaning, from this one example, there could have been 50,000 or more armed Confederate blacks, at one time or another, marching with whites against the Union army. Of course, thousands of blacks served in the Confederate army in other capacities.

To get at the truth about the past, you have to read the words of the people of the past and make up your own mind. Academia and the news media are so politicized, most of them are worthless as historical sources.

Southerners fought to the bitter end for independence and lost only after four bloody years because of overwhelming Northern resources, as General Lee said at the end of the war; resources such as the North's pipeline to the wretched refuse of the world to feed Union armies. Some 25% of the Union army was not born here.

The truth is, blacks suffered enormously at the hands of the Union army. It has now come out that a substantial number of Union blacks were coerced into joining, and when they did, their families back home were not taken care of in the least despite Yankee promises. Many suffered mightily, were cold, ragged and starved to death.

There are accounts of dead blacks being buried by Yankees in mass graves along with dead horses and mules, all thrown together in wagons then thrown into unmarked ditches dug for that purpose. These are documented in Jim Downs' excellent book, Sick from Freedom: African American Death and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction, which Samuel Mitcham says "should have won a Pulitzer Prize."^viii

The whole story of blacks in the War Between the States is a half-truth, which makes it a lie. Thousands of Confederate blacks are ignored because that does not suit political liberals in academia and the news media, and ignorant racist politicians like Don Beyer, Elizabeth Warren and Ty Seidule.

Sam Mitcham called Downs' book "his masterpiece." Mitcham writes and quotes Downs that the war:

'produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century . . . wreaking havoc on the population of the newly freed.' Tens of thousands of freed slaves died due to the 'exigencies of war and the massive dislocation triggered by emancipation.' Downs estimated that 1,000,000 of the 4,000,000 freed slaves suffered serious illness or death. We do not know how many died, but there were tens of thousands of deaths, especially among black children.^ix

As a result of the war, Southerners lost 60% of their capital and "one in four of its young men of military age killed; one in four others crippled."^x

For Americans to forgive each other and come together for the good of the nation made America exceptional in world history, which is the opposite of the Woke hatred of Elizabeth Warren, Ty Seidule, and Don Beyer. Woke hatred guarantees our country will be divided forever. Democrats think hate and chaos will benefit them politically because they have enough of the news media to regurgitate anything they say. They have given up on political ideas that benefit the entire country, which is why they have imported 20 million new Democrat voters across our open southern border since Biden took office.

Rep. Clyde wrote a good piece June 11th that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It explains the Confederate Memorial's history and his motivation for wanting that world class monument by Moses Ezekiel back in Arlington National Cemetery. Ezekiel was one of the greatest sculptors in history.

Here is Rep. Clyde's piece:

National Unity Should Not Be Controversial

That’s why I’m asking the Reconciliation Monument be restored at Arlington National Cemetery.

June 11, 2024

By Andrew Clyde

As a 28-year Navy combat veteran, it pains me to see the fabric of our nation unraveling and the history of our country crumbling by the day. Many founding principles and symbols that make the United States the greatest country in the world have been demonized to sow discord for nefarious political gain.

After all, it is far easier to divide and conquer when the values, history and liberties that unite us are destroyed.

A powerful example of this deliberate division is the recent removal of the Reconciliation Monument from Arlington National Cemetery.

Following the Spanish-American War — where Union and Confederate veterans fought side-by-side under one flag — President William McKinley declared that the U.S. government would commit to properly burying Confederate soldiers. In 1898, McKinley passionately asserted, “Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. The old flag waves over us in peace with new glories.”

In this spirit, Congress authorized Confederate remains to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in 1900. Six years later, Secretary of War William Howard Taft permitted the construction of a memorial honoring our country’s new shared reconciliation from its troubled divisions. Finally, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson unveiled the new memorial of national unity. Designed by a Jewish American sculptor, the monument is topped with a woman crowned by an olive wreath to symbolize peace.

Prior to the completion of the monument, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a floral arrangement to the Confederate section of Arlington National Cemetery. This established a tradition of sending a wreath to the Reconciliation Monument, a custom that has been carried out by nearly every U.S. president — including President Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, the now-disbanded Naming Commission, which was authorized by Congress through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, recommended the removal of the Reconciliation Memorial. The Naming Commission was charged with recommending the removal of “all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America.”

[Publisher's Note: See my article "Naming commission's report on the Confederate Memorial is a historical FRAUD", https://www.charlestonathenaeumpress.com/naming-commissions-report-on-the-confederate-memorial-is-a-historical-fraud/]

However, the Reconciliation Monument does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; it honors and commemorates national unity. Additionally, the Naming Commission’s authority explicitly prohibited the desecration of grave sites. I simply cannot fathom how removing the monument built to recognize our country’s journey to reconciliation does not desecrate the hundreds of graves encircling the marker.

For these reasons, I led an amendment to the fiscal year 2024 Defense Appropriations bill to prohibit the Department of Defense from using funds to remove the Reconciliation Memorial. Notably, my amendment passed by voice on the House floor and was included in the House-passed Defense spending bill.

Regrettably, my amendment was stripped out during budget negotiations with the Senate, and the memorial was removed from Arlington National Cemetery.

In a renewed attempt to protect the memorial and bolster its intended purpose of national unity, I recently introduced an amendment to the fiscal year 2025 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies bill to return the Reconciliation Monument to Arlington National Cemetery.

My effort to preserve a structure representing the United States’ healing from a dark chapter in history drew outlandish but unsurprising ire. Specifically, my work to honor and safeguard this period of reconciliation led critic Jamie Dupree to label me as “the unofficial champion of the Confederacy on Capitol Hill.”

This is dishonest, disingenuous and patently false.

Mind you, support for the Reconciliation Monument is not partisan. Former Secretary of the Navy and former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a decorated Marine Corps officer who served combat tours in Vietnam, published an inspiring piece detailing his opposition to removing the memorial.

Is Webb also an “unofficial champion of the Confederacy”? No. He is a patriot who loves his country. Though we bear different political stripes, we share the same concern of erasing our nation’s history — especially our history of reconciliation from deep, divisive wounds.

National unity should not be controversial. As bad actors revel in tearing our country apart, it is up to patriotic Americans to stand firm in preserving our history, protecting our freedoms and promoting a more perfect union.

Rep. Andrew Clyde represents Georgia’s 9th Congressional District and serves on the House Appropriations Committee.

Please support Defend Arlington's ongoing legal efforts to have the Confederate Reconciliation Memorial restored to Arlington National Cemetery.

NOTES:

ⁱ Ben Kesling, "The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join, Pentagon scrambles to retain the main pipeline for new service members as disillusioned families steer young people away," June 30, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-recruiting-crisis-veterans-dont-want-their-children-to-join-510e1a25, accessed 6-30-23.

ⁱⁱ Ibid.

ⁱⁱⁱ The War Aims Resolution is also known by the names of its sponsors, Representative John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee: the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, or just the Crittenden Resolution. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives July 22, 1861, and the Senate July 25, 1861. There were only two dissenting votes in the House and five in the Senate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden-Johnson_Resolution, accessed March 29, 2014.

^iv The eight Union slave states when the guns of Fort Sumter sounded were Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. There were still some slaves in New Jersey but I'm not counting New Jersey. West Virginia came into the Union in early 1863 as a slave state, ironically, just weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. Lincoln did not require West Virginia to abolish slavery before joining his Union.

^v The seven states that seceded and formed the Confederate States of America were South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas.

^vi Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), xii.

^vii The fake news Washington Post covered up the fact that President Woodrow Wilson gave the dedication address at the Confederate Memorial's dedication, June 4, 1914. In their article "Majority of House GOP, including 3 Black Republicans, vote for failed Confederate memorial measure" by Gillian Brockell, June 14, 2024, all the Washington Post said was: "It was installed in 1914, almost 50 years after the Civil War ended, by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in a ceremony attended by President Woodrow Wilson, who was noted even at the time for his racist view." The Washington Post is noted today for ITS racist, bigoted views in addition to its fake news as it proved by its malicious, fraudulent story against Covington Catholic High School's Nicholas Sandmann. Sandmann sued the Washington Post and other fake news outlets like CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, the New York Times and Rolling Stone. See "Washington Post settles lawsuit with family of Kentucky teenager" by Paul Farhi, July 24, 2020.

^viii Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 174.

^ix Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 175.

^x Mitcham, It Wasn't About Slavery, 174.