Erected as a memorial to those Confederate sons of Alexandria who died during the American Civil War. The figure is a model of a soldier from a painting by John A Elder, entitled “Appomattox”. The Confederate soldier is surveying the scene of the battlefields after Robert E Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, VA, in April 1865.

Dedicated in May 1889 in an address by Governor Fitzhugh Lee (nephew of General Robert E. Lee), the Statue sits on the intersection of Washington and Prince Streets in Alexandria, the point from which the Alexandria troops left the town.

The South Side of the statue reads, “Erected to the memory of Confederate dead of Alexandria, Va. by their Surviving Comrades, May 24th 1889” while the North Side reads “They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed”. The West Side has the names of 100 soldiers from the 17th Virginia Infantry and Alexandria Artillery.