Confederates were officially made American veterans by an Act of Congress in 1958 and even their headstones can be issued by the VA, and yet we have liberals destroying their statues and letter-writers describe them as Nazis and traitors.
The sacred memory of the descendants of those honorable and courageous men who defended their states against the invaders from the north ought to be respected, even by Yankees.
There was no Civil War but rather, a war against southern liberty. The Confederates no more wanted to control and operate the central government any more than George Washington (a legitimate traitor) wanted to gain control of England and be its leader.
Washington wanted to secede from control by the British Crown and the brave men who desired the same type of secession from the central government had every right to do so, as Abraham Lincoln said during a debate in the Congress in 1847:
“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
Yankee hatred for the south is based on the fear that it remains a spiritual and intellectual redoubt of liberty.
Larry Spencer, Wellington
Had Mr. Spencer (8/25/17) written his letter-to-the-editor as a Southern Gentleman in 1865-1870 one could have understood its contents. It would have been immoral then, but understanding about the Civil War Era could have explained it. For someone to have written it in 2017 is nothing less than amazing. He is basing his argument that the war was because the South wanted liberty. This is in error. It was based on them wanting to continue an immoral way of life – the keeping of slaves. His “South shall rise again” attitude shows that he knows almost nothing about American history. He doesn’t understand how this country was founded, who were its inhabitants prior to the Civil War, what the war was about, what happened after the war in the south (Reconstruction, birth of the Klan, Jim Crow Era, etc.), and the north (expansion of the Klan), the entire 1900’s, and now the 2000’s. Mr. Spencer is the sad face of the moral dilemma that we are seeing today. There is so much wrong with Mr. Spencer’s letter that volumes can, and have, been written refuting the things he says.
Mr. Spencer still feels it was “The War Between The States” (it was a Civil War), and his lack of understanding of history is stunning. He states George Washington was “a legitimate traitor”. To the British he was, and had the United States lost the war there probably would not be monuments to him, Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers in all states. This is not to say that the statues of Confederates (rebels) should be destroyed, but there is a place for them where they can be seen and explained in the context of history. Museums or Civil War battlefields where all the commanders/leaders are shown.
Most of the statues of the Confederate leaders were put up during the Jim Crow Era and designed to intimidate people. In this day and age do we, as a nation of diverse people, really want a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest (Confederate general), one of the early KKK leaders and a traitor to the USA, displayed as a hero ( He was not)?
We, as a unified people, should teach and research history, explain it, understand it. We should revere history itself. That, however, does not mean that we need to revere every person listed in the history books. While we have made many mistakes in the past we still need to “strive for a more perfect union” and that means coming to grips with those mistakes.