Moses Ezekiel: Forgotten Master Artist

Moses Jacob Ezekiel (October 28, 1844 – March 27, 1917)

Virginians should know his name. His works grace the lawns and corners of universities, Arlington National Cemetery, and numerous museums. Between 1879 and 1884, he created eleven statues of artists, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Van Dyke, and others that first filled the niches of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the District of Columbia, but now stand in the Statuary Vista of the Norfolk, Virginia Botanical Garden. His Bust of Thomas Jefferson (1888) graces our United States Capitol building and his Jefferson Monument (1901) is at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Ezekiel should be better known for his amazing sculpture entitled Virginia Mourning Her Dead (1903) which dominates the small cemetery at Virginia Military Institute. Every year, at the foot of this statue, roll call is conducted for the brave cadets who fought—and those who died—at the Battle of New Market. Moses Ezekiel was one of those cadets.

Battle of New Market and its Re-enactment

 Although the flag they died to save

Floats not o'er any land or sea,

Throughout eternal years shall wave

The banner of their chivalry.

                                                         (John Wayland, 1926)

     May brings the smell of musket fire and the volley of cannons across the Valley.  Civil War

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re-enactment camps spring up in the fields from Lexington to Winchester.  The most memorable and the oldest annual re-enactment held on its original 1864 ground is the Battle of New Market, or, the "Field of Lost Shoes" as it is commonly known because of the participation of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) cadets.
     The first ceremonial remembrance of the battle was held at VMI in 1866 and continues every year on May 15th.  All of VMI turns out at the graves of six fallen cadets to hear the roll call of all ten cadets who lost their lives on that fateful day.  Their graves are marked by the statue of Virginia Mourning Her Dead, sculpted by Moses Ezekiel, who also was a cadet who fought on that same battlefield and who read the bible through the night to his fatally wounded friend and fellow cadet, Thomas G. Jefferson.[1]   Eighty miles away, on June 15th, New Market held its first memorial service and the following year, the Women's Memorial Society was formed.
            On May 21^st, 1914, the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of New Market, the wheat field saw its first re-enactment of VMI cadets.  Under the leadership of Commandant Col. Wise, son of former New Market cadet John Wise, 327 cadets re-enacted their charge across the orchard and up the hill. [2]
            On Sept. 20^th, 1923 Brigadier General Smedley Butler brought about 3,500 real U.S. Marines to New Market to represent Gen. Seigel’s Union troops.  This is considered the first “modern” re-enactment and “the VMI cadets were there.”[3]