When flow’ry Summer is at hand,
And Spring has gemm’d the earth with bloom,
We hither bring, with loving hand,
Bright flow’rs to deck our soldier’s tomb.Gentle birds above are sweetly singing
O’er the graves of heroes brave and true;
While the sweetest flow’rs we are bringing,
Wreath’d in garlands of red, white and blue.With snowy hawthorn, clusters white,
Fair violets of heav’nly blue,
And early roses, fresh and bright,
We wreathe the red, and white, and blue.“Soldier’s Memorial Day”External
Mary B. C. Slade (words)
W. O. Perkins (music)
The most important monuments in Washington are not the grandest, flashiest, or most adorned ones. They don’t need gold lettering or a grandiose scale. Above anything else, their power comes from restraint and symbolism.
When standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and looking east, the view extends along the long civic axis of the National Mall, the Reflecting Pool, the World War II Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol in the distance.
Slightly to the left stands the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, while the Korean War Veterans Memorial is on the other side of the iconic Reflecting Pool.
To the southwest, across the Potomac River, Arlington Memorial Bridge carries the eye and the nation toward Arlington National Cemetery. Beyond the bridge lies the former estate of Robert E. Lee, now surrounded by the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers alike.
Neither the sightline, nor the physical connection provided by the bridge is accidental.
It’s one of the most carefully composed symbolic landscapes in the United States: Lincoln, the Union, the Civil War, the Confederate general who rebelled against his own country. It’s about treason, sacrifice, death, and memory. It’s also about reconciliation.
The National Park Service describes the view from the Lincoln Memorial toward Arlington as one of the memorial’s defining vistas, calling it an “incomparable panorama [that] lies before one’s eyes.”
This is a view “of the mighty Potomac River, beyond which lies Arlington National Cemetery and the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. From Lee’s house, Arlington Memorial Bridge spans the river and symbolically links Lee—the very symbol of Virginia and the Confederacy — with Lincoln, the preeminent symbol of the north and the Union.”
The image below, looking from Lee’s House to the Lincoln Memorial, shows this direct connection beautifully.
Arlington Memorial Bridge itself was intended to join North and South both physically and symbolically, creating a monumental passage between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery—between the victorious Union and the rebellious South.
That’s what makes this landscape different from an ordinary urban view. It’s not merely scenic. The Lincoln Memorial’s moral and physical connection to Arlington National Cemetery is arguably the nation’s most important symbolic architectural design.
Abraham Lincoln, the president from the West and the North who stepped up and saved the nation, watches over the former home of Robert E. Lee, the general from the South and the East who betrayed his country, which is now surrounded by the graves of the men who died in the Civil War fought between both leaders.
The symbolism is off the charts.
And there’s more, which is especially fitting for a day like today: Memorial Day.
The first national celebration of Memorial Day in U.S. history took place on May 30, 1868, at Arlington National Cemetery.
It was originally known as Decoration Day, a day designated by Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day in 1922, a fact that, especially today—in this day and age—is worth taking a moment to contemplate.
The National Park Service calls it a “temple to our reunification as a people,” designed in the form of a Greek temple and adorned with symbols of unity and strength. Inside, Lincoln sits not as a conqueror or almighty ruler but as a burdened witness, his hands clenched and open, his face marked by the cost of holding a broken country together.
Across the river, Arlington National Cemetery gives that cost its human scale. Its simple white headstones do what grand speeches or golden plaques cannot. They show, tangibly, that democracy sometimes requires sacrifice—that democracy is fragile and needs defending.
The headstones at Arlington also show that Americans love their country so much that—if needed, if it’s under attack, including from within—they’re actually willing to step up and die defending it.
Today, May 25, 2026, Arlington is again the center of the nation’s Memorial Day observance. The cemetery’s official schedule includes a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a national observance in Memorial Amphitheater with veterans’ organizations, music, dignitaries, and remarks.
The ritual is familiar because it needs to be. Every year, the nation returns to the place where the tradition started, repeats the same gestures, and tries again to remember what it owes to the dead.
That is the key word: remember. Not celebrate. Not boast. Not brand.
Remember.
The axis between Lincoln and Arlington is one of the rare places in Washington where the country’s contradictions are on display through subtle symbolism. The bridge does not erase the Civil War. It crosses over it.
Crucially, Lincoln doesn’t face a triumphal avenue of conquest or boulevard of self-glory, which could easily have been the case. Instead, it’s the opposite. He faces a cemetery. Arlington doesn’t glorify war. It solemnizes service, grief, national duty, and the ultimate price paid by Americans with an undying love for their country.
In the image below, the Arlington Memorial Bridge runs southwest toward Memorial Circle on Columbia Island. The view extends to Arlington National Cemetery and Lee’s House.
The green lawn in the middle of Memorial Circle is the site for President Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch.
The proposal, recently approved in design by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, would place a massive granite arch near Arlington National Cemetery, at the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. The revised design reportedly retains a Lady Liberty-style figure on top, gilded eagles, inscriptions including “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All,” and a public observation deck, though earlier lion statues and a raised platform were removed.
This vanity project, dubbed the “Arc de Trump,” has not yet received final construction approval or funding. What it has received, however, are legal challenges and massive criticism from veterans and preservationists alike, particularly over its effect on the historic sightline between Arlington and the Lincoln Memorial.
The issue is not merely (bad) taste, though taste matters.
The deeper issue is interruption. Disruption, rather.
The proposed 250-foot arch—which would dwarf the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial—would also insert a new, gigantic triumphant object into a landscape whose meaning depends on humility, distance, and solemnity.
A triumphal arch says victory. It shouts dominance. It embodies empire, theatrics, and spectacle. It oozes self-aggrandizement. The Lincoln-to-Arlington sightline says something more difficult: survival, mourning, reunion, debt.
That distinction is so important, especially on a day like Memorial Day.
There are many places in America for patriotic exuberance. There are parades, fireworks, flyovers, campaign stages, stadium ceremonies, July Fourth celebrations, and boastful presidential speeches. But Arlington is not one of those places.
The Lincoln Memorial’s westward view is not vacant space waiting to be improved. It’s already occupied by incredibly deep meaning. Its emptiness is part of its design. Its restraint is part of its power.
Erecting a colossal arch would not simply add another monument to the Washington, D.C. skyline. It would change the meaning and symbolism of the entire area completely.
A 250-foot triumphal arch planted at the Arlington Bridge would sever the sightline from the memorial of the president who saved the Union to the resting place of those who served it.
Today, as wreaths are laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and flags mark the graves at Arlington, the country doesn’t need a massive triumphal arch to understand something about war. Americans already know what war means.
What the country does need—arguably now more than ever since the Civil War itself—is the very view it already has: Lincoln immortalized in stone, the Potomac flowing below, the bridge reaching west, and beyond it, the quiet white rows of those who gave everything for their country.
Despite of this, the president still voiced his commitment to erect his monumental arch.
“No, we’re doing it,” Trump said about building the arch, as reported by CBS News. “The land is owned by ... the Interior Department, we don’t need anything from Congress.”
In fact—in reality—the land “owned” by the Interior Department is actually owned by the American public. Interior manages it on behalf of all Americans, who tell them what to do with it through their representatives in Congress.
The land where the Arc de Trump is planned is your public land.
Thanks for reading!
See you on our public lands and waters,
Bram
Image 2: Marcy Frutchey / NPS
Image 3: Rachel Hendrix / NPS
Images 4, 5, and 6: Harrison Design / Department of the Interior
Much rather put that investment into protecting and preserving our National Parks and Federal Lands, paying the Park Service Rangers. This felon U.S. President continues to steal from the U.S.A. citizens and waste our National Monumentas quickly , with as much arrogance and disrespect for the living and the dead as speaking infinite numbers of dollars gives entitlement to the tyrant's imagination. Stop the plunder! No arch required or desired!
Please check out Charleston's Washington Race Course for the first Memorial Day commemoration. I think you will find it interesting and part of our history I did not know.