Rosamond Press

Pete Hesgeth Is Destroying Republican Brand

fremont flag

Frémont was widely known for his mapmaking expeditions to the west before he was court-martialed for mutiny in 1848. Library of Congress 

I am asking a great team of attorneys to launch a lawsuit against Pete Hesgeth for destroying the Republican Brand, that was established in large part, by my relative, John Fremont, a co-founder of the Republican Party, and its first Presidential Candidate. Fremont was surrounded by Foreign Fighters, many of them Forty-Eighters. Some of these officers were Socialist and Marxists – who also surrounded President Lincoln. The Secretary of War uses the term “leftists” to cast blame on Americans who are destroying American – and Republican Party History! Why should Confederate History – survive?

I am asking $10,000,000 dollars, the amount that my Government is going to spend on putting fake history near the restored statue – that is being used in an evil football game to mark the advance of the Neo-Confederate Racists who took over – my families party! I will spend millions preserving my family history, once Lady Liberty sees things – my way!

What does Crusader Pete mean by “woke lemmings”? Is he suggesting black people don’t have the brains white folks do, and are being led by a clever Leftist? Like who – Barack Obama?

Two years ago I asked Broccoli to back my campaign for Governor of Oregon. I think she should have established a public forum to allow the People of Oregon to cast opinions about the sale to Amazon. I have resurrected James Bond in the only way he can be – brought back from the Land of the Dead!

John Presco

I am asking Broccoli and Michael to back my run for Governor of Oregon. I just sent this email to Eon Productions, and, left a phone message as well.

“Hello! My name is John Presco and I am running for Governor of Oregon as a Republican. Over three years ago I began a James Bond novel starring Victoria Rosemond Bond. I am kin to Ian Fleming thru Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor.  Would you like to contribute to my campaign?

John Presco”

I Am James Bond – Candidate!

The phrase “woke lemmings” is a derogatory term used by some to describe individuals or groups perceived as blindly following what they deem to be “woke” ideology. 

The term is often used in political discourse, particularly by those on the right, as a criticism of individuals or groups perceived as promoting progressive social justice causes or being overly concerned with issues such as race, gender, or inequality. Those employing the term suggest a lack of independent thought and a propensity to conform to a particular viewpoint without critical examination. 

The use of “lemmings” in the phrase draws on the popular misconception of lemmings as animals that mindlessly follow each other, even to their own demise. This imagery is employed to portray the “woke” individuals as adopting and promoting ideas without thinking through their implications or consequences. 

It’s important to note the term “woke” itself has undergone significant semantic change and carries different meanings depending on the context and who is using it. Originating in African-American English to signify an awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, it has more recently been adopted and reshaped by some conservative circles as a catch-all phrase for progressive or inclusive ideas, often with negative connotations. 

With support for a Confederate monument, Pete Hegseth’s culture war crusade intensifies

The secretary might claim to be “laser-focused” on fighting wars, but his record suggests he’s far more interested in fighting the culture wars.

Aug. 7, 2025, 9:46 AM PDT

By Steve Benen

Albert Pike was a Confederate leader who fought to protect slavery, and according to some critics, he even joined the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War. When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the nation’s capital in 2020, a statue honoring Pike was torn down and set on fire.

Five years later, the Trump administration, which has been quite eager in recent months to restore symbols related to Confederate forces that took up arms against the United States, announced that the statue celebrating Pike will be restored and reinstalled.

A day later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a related announcement. The Washington Post reported:

A Confederate memorial removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023 will be reinstalled, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday. The sculpture had been removed as part of a congressionally mandated effort to rid military bases and sites of Confederate names and images.

The beleaguered Pentagon chief described the Confederate memorial as “The Reconciliation Monument,” adding that this is part of some kind of ideological campaign. “Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it,” Hegseth said, apparently indifferent to the fact that he’s in a powerful position that’s supposed to serve everyone, including “the Left.”

The Post’s report, however, noted that critics have made the case that the memorial “glorified the Southern cause and glossed over slavery, with elements such as a frieze showing an enslaved Black man following his owner and an enslaved woman — described on the cemetery’s website as a ‘mammy’ — holding the baby of a Confederate officer.”

What’s more, the Confederate memorial’s original removal in 2021 was endorsed by a commission led in part by Ty Seidule, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general.

Asked about Hegseth’s latest move, Seidule told the Post, “The idea of putting that monument back up is just wrong. This is not some woke thing, it’s the will of the American people that Secretary Hegseth is going against.”

The monument, Seidule added, “is the cruelest I’ve ever seen because it’s a pro-slavery, pro-segregation, anti-United States monument. It’s not a reconciliation monument. It’s a Confederate monument and it’s meant to say that the white South was right and the United States of America was wrong.”

Let’s not overlook the inconvenient fact that the defense secretary’s effort will cost roughly $10 million, to be paid for by American taxpayers, not private donations.

But stepping back, it’s also worth taking a moment to note Hegseth’s curious list of priorities. To hear the Pentagon chief tell it, his principal focus is emphasizing “lethality” and a “warrior ethos” in the armed forces. During one recent “expletive-laden address” at the Army War College, the secretary concluded, “We are laser-focused on our mission of warfighting.”

And while that rhetoric might resonate with some partisan audiences, it’s worth asking whether he actually means it. After all, in recent months, Hegseth has invested a considerable amount of time and energy in library books. And scrubbing Defense Department websites of articles and images about Jackie Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers. And renaming military bases. And renaming Navy ships. And restoring racist monuments that celebrate those who fought a war against Americans.

How do these efforts advance the nation’s national security goals? They don’t.

And therein lies the point: Hegseth might claim to be “laser-focused” on fighting wars, but his record suggests he’s far more interested in fighting culture wars.

Restoration of torn-down Confederate monument will cost $10 million over 2 years, military says

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday on social media that the statue in Virginia “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings.”

Confederate Memorial

A Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., in 2023.Kevin Wolf / AP file

Aug. 7, 2025, 9:02 AM PDT / Source: The Associated Press

By The Associated Press

Restoring a memorial to the Confederacy that was removed from Arlington National Cemetery at the recommendation of Congress will cost roughly $10 million total, a U.S. Army official said Wednesday — the latest development in a Trump administration effort to combat what it calls “erasing American history.”

Once back in the cemetery, the monument — described a few years ago as “problematic from top to bottom” — will also feature panels nearby that will offer context about its history, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity about a project still in progress.

The Pentagon expects it to take about two years to restore the monument to its original site, the official told The Associated Press. The base that it sat on needs to be replaced and the monument itself will be refurbished as well.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the Pentagon would reinstall the memorial at Arlington — an expanse just outside Washington that once contained the land of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee — less than two years after it was removed on the recommendation of an independent commission.

On social media Tuesday, Hegseth said the Arlington statue “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it.”

It was erected more than a century ago

The Confederate monument, erected in 1914, was the creation of sculptor and Confederate veteran Moses Ezekiel. It features a classical female figure, crowned with olive leaves, representing the American South, alongside sanitized depictions of slavery.

In 2022, a congressionally mandated commission recommended that the memorial, along with scores of other military assets that bore Confederate references, be either removed or renamed. Retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, the vice chair of the commission, said that the group found that Ezekiel’s memorial was “problematic from top to bottom.”

Arlington National Cemetery’s page on the memorial noted that aside from the sanitized depictions of enslaved people, the statue featured a Latin phrase that equated the South’s secession to a noble “lost cause.” That’s a false interpretation of the Civil War that glorifies the conflict as a struggle over the power of the federal government and not the institution of slavery.

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Hegseth has made a point of circumventing the will of the commission several times now by reverting the names of several Army bases back to their original, Confederate-linked names, though by honoring different figures.

For example, following the recommendations of the commission, officials renamed Fort Bragg, a name that honored Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, a slave owner who lost several key Civil War battles, to Fort Liberty. In February, Hegseth reverted the name back to Fort Bragg but honoring Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II soldier who earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge.

The effort is part of a larger Trump initiative

In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It decried efforts to reinterpret American history, stating, “rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.”

The order targeted the Smithsonian network of museums as having “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” It also instructed the Interior Department to restore any statue or display that was “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”

This has been an active week when it comes to the dispute over how American history and culture are portrayed. On Monday, the National Park Service announced that the statue of Albert Pike, a Confederate brigadier general and a revered figure among Freemasons, would resume its previous position in Washington’s Judiciary Square, a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. It was the only outdoor statue of a Confederate military leader in the nation’s capital.

And late last week, the Smithsonian Museum of American History announced that it would revert an exhibit on the presidency to the 2008 era, eliminating any mention of the two Trump impeachments.

After that move sparked discussion about how history is portrayed by government-backed institutions, the Smithsonian said it had come under no pressure from the White House and had been planning all along to update that part of the exhibit, which it said was temporary, to 2025 specifications.

The Associated Press

Moses Jacob Ezekiel, also known as Moses “Ritter von” Ezekiel (October 28, 1844 – March 27, 1917), was an American sculptor who lived and worked in Rome for the majority of his career. Ezekiel was “the first American-born Jewish artist to receive international acclaim”.[1][2] Ezekiel was an ardent supporter, in both his writings and in his works, of the Lost Cause view of history, asserting that in the Battle of New Market he had “never fought for slavery, but for states’ rights and for free trade.”[3] In a eulogy, President Warren Harding described him as “a great Virginian, a great artist, a great American, and a great citizen of world fame.”[4]

He was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, including at the Battle of New Market.[5]

After the war, he completed his degree at VMI, and a few years later went to Berlin, studying at the Prussian Academy of Art. He subsequently moved to Rome, where he lived and worked most of his life, selling his works internationally, including several commissions in the United States.

He has been described as a “Confederate expatriate“[5] and a “proud Southerner”,[6] and the Confederate battle flag hung in his Rome studio for 40 years.[5] The most famous of his monuments is the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, which he thought of as the “crowning achievement of his career.”[7] The monument was removed on December 20, 2023;[8] on August 5, 2025 it was announced that the monument would be reinstated.

Early life

Ezekiel was born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Jacob Ezekiel (1812–1899), an Ashkenazic Jew. His mother, Catherine de Castro Ezekiel, was Sephardic.[9][10] His grandparents had emigrated from Holland in the early 1800s, settling first in Philadelphia and later in Richmond.[11]: 3  His father was a cotton merchant[10] and bookbinder, “a good writer and a well-read man, who possessed the complete works of Maimonides“.[12]: 76  While in the book-binding business in Baltimore (1833–34), Jacob founded the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Baltimore.[13] Jacob moved to Richmond in 1834, entering the dry-goods business with first one, then another brother-in-law.[14]: 16 n. 10  He was secretary of the synagogue Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome “and spokesman of the Jews of Richmond”.[14]: 16 n. 10  In Cincinnati, Jacob served as Secretary of the Board of Hebrew Union College. He was a charter member of B’nai B’rith.[15]

The seventh child,[11]: 3 [nb 1] Moses had three brothers and eight sisters,[16][nb 2] at least one of which was stillborn.[12]: 88  He was brought up as an observant Jew by his grandparents, to whom his parents sent him to live due to financial difficulties.[6][11]: 3 [nb 3] They owned a dry-goods store that sold suits and women’s dresses for slaves about to be sold. They also owned a few slaves.[5][7] Moses “was sent to a ‘pay’ school”, that of “old Mr. Burton Davis”,[12]: 91  and he attended dancing school.[12]: 85, 101 

Virginia Military Institute and the Civil War

Ezekiel’s most famous work, the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

When Fort Sumter was fired upon and Virginia seceded, Ezekiel enrolled in the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia,[10] the first Jewish cadet to do so.[17] He was Corporal of the Guard that accompanied the coffin of Stonewall Jackson (a Virginia Military Institute instructor) at his burial in Lexington in 1863.[11]: 43 [14]

He and other cadets from VMI marched eighty miles north and fought at the Battle of New Market, providing crucially needed reinforcements against the army of Union General Franz Sigel. Wounded in the fight, he recovered and was reassigned with other surviving cadets to serve as drill instructors for new Confederate recruits. Shortly before the end of the war, he joined a last-ditch effort to defend Lexington during Grant’s Richmond-Petersburg campaign.[18] When peace was declared, he returned to VMI to finish his education, graduating in 1866.

Sculpture

He then studied anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia in 1866–68, thinking of becoming a doctor.[12]: 127–128 [11]: 17  In 1867–68, he was superintendent of the Richmond Hebrew Sunday School.[19] He moved in with his parents in Cincinnati in 1868; his parents had moved there, where their oldest daughter Hannah lived, after losing their business in Richmond to fire.[12]: 128 [11]: 17  While not there long, in his memoirs he called Cincinnati his home.[20]

In Cincinnati he began the study of sculpture[5] at the Art School of J. Insco Williams and in the studio of Thomas Dow Jones.[12]: 130 [18] Moving to Berlin in 1869, he studied at the Prussian Academy of Art under Professor Albert Wolf.

Needing money, in 1873, during the Franco-Prussian War, he was a war correspondent for the New York Herald,[21]: 4  and he was arrested and imprisoned “for a time” as a spy for France.[9] He was admitted into the Society of Artists, Berlin, and at age 29 was the first foreigner to win the Michael Beer Prix de Rome, for a bas relief entitled Israel. The prize of $1,000 provided for two years of study in Rome,[22]: 229  but he traveled to Rome by way of the United States, where he had not been for five years,[12]: 166  as he had “unexpectedly” received a commission from B’nai B’rith for a monument to religious liberty.[12]: 164 [11]: 41 

Rome studio

Arriving in Rome in 1874, Ezekiel fell in love with the city, which he soon made his home. It was there that he completed the sculptures and paintings for which he is famous.

Ezekiel’s life and studio in Rome were lavish. “He dressed like a dandy and spent extravagantly on entertaining friends, clients, and potential clients.”[10] His studio in Rome was in the former Baths of Diocletian, where every Friday afternoon he had open house.[22]: 233  It was called “one of the Show Places of the Eternal City, magnificent in proportions and stored with fine art works.”[23] and many visitors left descriptions of it.[21]: 24 

Among the visitors to his studio were:

Here also he made the acquaintance of Franz Liszt and Cardinal Gustave von Hohenlohe, the Papal representative of Austria. Thus, naturally, busts of these two famous men are included in Ezekiel’s oeuvre.[22]

A lecture in his studio was attended by 150 people.[12]: 275  He also hosted musicales there,[24]: 42  where could be heard “the finest music by the greatest talent”.[12]: 233 

Ezekiel occupied this studio from 1879 to 1910.[24]: 42  After 30 years, the government “demand[ed] the possession of this part of the ruins as an adjunct to the National Roman Museum. On leaving there he was given by the municipal authorities the Tower of Belisarius on the Pincian Hill overlooking the Borghese Gardens, which furnished him a home for the rest of his years, while he took a studio and work rooms in the Via Fausta and just off the Piazza del Popolo.”[22]: 226–234 

Personal life

Fedor Encke. Drawing by Moses Jacob Ezekiel.

Although Ezekiel never married, he had a daughter, Alice Johnson (1859–1924). According to a census document of July 14, 1860, Alice Johnson was 10 months old, suggesting she was born in September 1859. She would therefore have been conceived at the beginning of 1859[25] when Moses was 14. Her mother was Isabella, a “beautiful mulatto housemaid” of his father.[25]: 148  After graduating from Howard University, Alice became a schoolteacher and married Daniel Hale Williams in 1898, who was also mixed race. He became a prominent, pioneering heart surgeon. They lived in Chicago for much of his career.[26][27][28]

Isabella visited Moses in Rome with Alice, but returned shortly thereafter. Moses never refers to Alice in his Memoirs, and there is no record of any other contact between them.

In 1872, in Berlin, he met Fedor Encke (1851–1926), the “illegitimate grandson of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia.”[6] Encke was a portrait painter later commissioned to do portraits of Theodore Roosevelt and John Pierpont Morgan, among others; he also painted Ezekiel.[11]: i  The pair “traveled together often and socialized with Europe’s elites, including Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Queen Margherita of Italy.”[6] Encke accompanied Ezekiel on a visit to the United States.[11]: 49  According to writer Michael Feldberg, Ezekiel and Encke had “a forty-five year homosexual relationship…that neither acknowledged publicly.”[10] About this relationship, Ezekiel was always circumspect in his letters and memoirs, referring to Encke only as his “traveling companion” and “my dear friend.”[12]: 209 [29]

Biographer Peter Adam Nash, in The Life and Times of Moses Jacob Ezekiel, describes Ezekiel as homosexual, but Nash does not produce any direct evidence for this; Nash’s assumption is made from his research of Ezekiel’s papers and of their social and historical context.[30]

Awards and honors

In his lifetime, Ezekiel received numerous honors: he was decorated by King Umberto I of Italy, the “Crosses for Merit and Art” from the German Emperor, another from Prince Frederick Johann of Saxe-Meiningen, and the awards of “Chevalier” (Cavaliere) and “Officer of the Crown of Italy” (1910) from King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Ezekiel received the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Palermo, Italy; the silver medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri; and the Raphael Medal from the Art Society of Urbino, Italy.

The honorific “Sir” by which Ezekiel is often referred is technically incorrect, as Ezekiel was never knighted by the monarch of the United Kingdom. More properly, his title was “Cavaliere” Moses Ezekiel, because of his Italian knighthood, or Moses “Ritter von” Ezekiel, because of his German honors. Ezekiel translated his Italian title into the English “Sir” on his visiting cards, resulting in the honorific by which he became known in English-speaking countries.[31]

In 1904, he was presented the New Market Cross of Honor at VMI by the Government of Virginia as one of the 294 cadets who fought at the Battle of New Market.

Grave

Ezekiel’s grave on the north side of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Ezekiel died in his studio in Rome, Italy during the First World War,[32] and was temporarily entombed there. In 1921, he was reinterred at the foot of his Confederate Memorial in Section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery. The inscription on his grave reads “Moses J. Ezekiel Sergeant of Company C Battalion of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute.”

Legacy

Critical assessments

Compared to Michelangelo in 1876,[12] Ezekiel’s fame has not stood the test of time. “Famous in his day, he is almost forgotten now” (1986).[20] According to his biographer Peter Nash, “You wouldn’t go to Rome to make new, progressive art.”[6] “He could not accept modern art”, and “rejected” Rodin, whom he considered “pretentious”.[12]: 61, 399–400 [33] After noting the awards he received during his life, Sue Eisenfeld wrote in 2018:

But in death, the art world ignored and forgot him because he never innovated; he emulated the classical style of the previous masters, focusing on the full human figure and historical and allegorical subjects, even when the time for that style had come and gone.[5]

“As was his custom with his monuments, Ezekiel proceeded meticulously to reflect historical accuracy,”[12]: 37  according to the editors of his memoirs.

[But his works] are utterly devoid of innovations or daring new modes of representation. His prime concern was the literary and historical idea behind the work…. But he failed to realize, like other 19th-century artists, that noble thoughts alone do not guarantee that the works they inspire will be great art… he frequently sacrificed his design to accurate depiction and photographic truth.[7]

“Lost Cause” movement

Main article: Lost Cause of the Confederacy § Statues of Moses Jacob Ezekiel

Another factor possibly contributing to his relative obscurity may be his devotion to the Confederacy.[6]

Ezekiel’s sculptures of Confederate heroes are the most visible manifestation of, and a significant factor in the legitimacy of, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, which he espoused.[6]

Ezekiel’s work has been identified as integral to this sympathetic view of the Civil War.[6] He depicted Confederate leaders, like Stonewall Jackson, or fallen soldiers like the VMI students, as heroes. “But no monument exemplifies the Lost Cause narrative better than Ezekiel’s Confederate Memorial in Arlington, where the woman representing the South appears to be protecting the black figures below.”[6] According to his relative Judith Ezekiel, “This statue was a very, very deliberate part of revisionist history of racist America.”[6] According to historian Gabriel Reich, “the statue functions as propaganda for the Lost Cause.… It couldn’t be worse.”[6]

On August 20, 2017, in the aftermath of the Unite the right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — members of Ezekiel’s extended family sent a letter to the Washington Post, asking for the Arlington monument’s removal:

Like most such monuments, this statue intended to rewrite history to justify the Confederacy and the subsequent racist Jim Crow laws. It glorifies the fight to own human beings, and, in its portrayal of African Americans, implies their collusion. As proud as our family may be of Moses’s artistic prowess, we — some twenty Ezekiels — say remove that statue. Take it out of its honored spot in Arlington National Cemetery and put it in a museum that makes clear its oppressive history.[34]

As of December 2023, plans were under way to remove the statue from Arlington, with plans to relocate it to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park.[35] Ezekiel had a personal link to the New Market site as he fought for the Confederacy and was wounded at this battlefield.

Works

Religious Liberty (1876) in Philadelphia.

In the early 1880s, Ezekiel created eleven larger-than-life sized statues of famous artists. These were installed in niches on the façade of the Corcoran Gallery of Art‘s original building (later the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery). In the early 1960s, they were removed to the Norfolk Botanical Garden in Norfolk, Virginia.

Among his other works was a memorial at VMI, Virginia Mourning Her Dead (1903), for which he declined payment.[10] It was installed in the small cemetery where six of the 10 VMI cadets killed at the Battle of New Market are buried. He also created a Confederate memorial which he called New South (1914); it was installed at Arlington National Cemetery. Many of his works were of famous leaders.

One word frequently used by Ezekiel as well as others to describe his statues[12]: 139, 164, 409, etc.  is “colossal”: his “genius often asserts itself in colossal figures and emblematic monuments”.[36] His never-built statue of Johns Hopkins, founder of Johns Hopkins University, was to have been over 15 feet (4.6 m) high, with a “colossal” bust of Hopkins, in bronze, 21⁄2 times life size.[37] His most important statues are huge, and in one case he claimed that it was the largest statue ever made.

Lists of Ezekiel’s works are found in the introduction to his Memoirs,[12]: 70–73  in an obituary in Art and Archaeology,[22] and in the New York Times.[9]

Ezekiel was a postwar friend of Robert E. Lee, who recommended he become “an artist”,[5][6][12]: 124  and Ezekiel once remarked “the one work I would love to do above anything else in the world”[12]: 171  was a public sculpture of Robert E. Lee. But, despite entering at least four contests to do so, this ambition was not realized.[5]

Statues

Reliefs

Busts

Archival material

The American Jewish Archives, in Cincinnati, has a “Moses Jacob Ezekiel Collection.” It “includes original and photocopies of Ezekiel’s correspondence and writings, photographs of many of his works, biographies, genealogies, memorial tributes, correspondence of Ezekiel’s biographers, articles and newsclippings concerning Ezekiel and miscellaneous items.”[60]

Virginia Military Institute has two boxes of Ezekiel papers. “Included is correspondence to Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Edward West Nichols and others, 1867 – 1917, some relating to the design of the Battle of New Market memorial sculpture Virginia Mourning Her Dead; pen and ink sketches by Ezekiel (ca. 67 items); the typed manuscript of Ezekiel’s autobiography, Memoirs from the Baths of Diocletian, and miscellaneous printed material.”[18] Ezekiel’s Memoirs, a fundamental source, were unknown until they were rediscovered in the Hebrew Union Archives by the two rabbis, who after much editorial work, prepared them for publication in 1975. They were called “gossipy” but “readable” in a review.[1]

Some additional material is in the archives of Congregation Beth Ahabah, of Richmond,[14] which contains the archive of Jacob Ezekiel’s synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome, the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, on whose board of directors Jacob was secretary, and the organizations such as B’nai Brith and United Daughters of the Confederacy that commissioned sculptures.

‘

Ezekiel was portrayed by Josh Zuckerman in the 2014 film Field of Lost Shoes, which depicted the Battle of New Market.

Ezekiel is the sculptor Askol in Carel Vosmaer‘s novel The Amazon, in which Ezekiel’s studio is described in detail,[12]: 15 [61] It is also described in Mary Agnes Tincker‘s The Jewel in the Lotus;[12]: 66 [62] “the opening pages depict the studio of Salathiel, the sculptor, the original of which character in the novel was Moses Ezekiel.”[21]: 27 

A poem about his Israel was written by Pietschmann, of Berlin.[21]: 10–11 

Gabriele d’Annunzio wrote a poem, “To Moie Ezekiel,” in 1887.[12]: 459 

A description of his studio by Lilian V. de Bosis was published in the May 1891 issue of ‘kTye Esquiline.[21]: 25–26 

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