Moses Jacob Ezekiel was born on October 28, 1844, in Richmond, Virginia, to Jacob and Catherine Ezekiel. His father was a cotton merchant. Ezekiel grew up and attended school in Richmond, and by 1860, he was working as a clerk.

 

Ezekiel sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. He enrolled in the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1862, becoming the school’s first Jewish cadet. He took part in the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864, and later helped defend Richmond against Union forces. He graduated from VMI in 1866.

 

After the war, Ezekiel worked in his father’s dry goods store. He studied anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia but apparently abandoned his studies soon afterward. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the late 1860s and began studying sculpture. He sailed to Berlin in 1869 and attended the Prussian Academy of Art. He quickly established a reputation as a famous sculptor. He also served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald during the Franco-Prussian War. He moved to Rome in the 1870s and established a studio there.

 

He remained committed to the mythology of the Lost Cause. He submitted designs for monuments in Richmond honoring General Robert E. Lee and Confederate soldiers and sailors. In 1903, VMI installed his statue of Virginia Mourning her Dead, which honored the VMI cadets who died in the Battle of New Market. In 1910, the United Daughters of the Confederacy unveiled his statue of Confederate prisoners of war at Johnson’s Island in Ohio. Then, in 1914, Arlington National Cemetery unveiled his monument honoring the Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery.

 

Ezekiel died of pneumonia in Rome on March 27, 1917.

 

Image: Moses Jacob Ezekiel (courtesy Wikicommons)

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