A disturbing trend has been taking place among the apologists for the old Confederacy. The latter have been using straw-man arguments against relocating of statues that honor the Confederacy.
What these apologists don’t understand is that the Confederacy was a shameful part of U.S. history and should not be honored. Nor should members of the Confederacy be honored for being members of the Confederacy.
That is why Americans all over the USA are calling for the removal of Confederate statues from places of honor. The same Americans have no objection to such statues being on museum property or on private property.
The aforementioned Americans aren’t wanting statues of Confederates relocated because the latter owned slaves. Instead, the former want the statues relocated because the Confederates declared war on the USA for the purpose of preserving slavery in the South.
The apologists for the Confederacy have been deliberately distorting what the aforementioned Americans are wanting.
No, the aforementioned Americans are not wanting to purge all references to historical figures who owned slaves. No, they are not wanting to do away with the novel and movie Gone with the Wind. No, they are not wanting to purge the nation of everything that pertains to the antebellum South. They are not wanting to purge every reference to the Civil War.
Although the Confederacy lost the Civil War, decades after the war ended, white southerners continued to glorify the Confederacy by erecting statues in honor of Confederates and by naming public property after Confederates.
Some people continue to glorify the Confederacy because the Confederates were their ancestors. For example, here is an excerpt from a story published by The Baltimore Sun:
No, the people who removed that particular monument aren’t rats, and Carolyn Billups’ great-great-grandfather did not fight for an honorable cause. Billups’ worship of her ancestor blinds her to the Confederacy’s shamefulness. The same can also be said for the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These groups have cause to be ashamed of what their Confederate ancestors fought for. Whereas Revolutionary War soldiers fought to liberate people from British rule, Confederate soldiers fought to keep people enslaved.
For the record, I am qualified for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. During the Civil War, one of my ancestors was a member of Company D of the Second Regiment of the Alabama Cavalry. Here is a picture of the guy.
Am I proud of my ancestor because he was a Confederate soldier? Answer: No. He fought for a dishonorable cause, and he shouldn’t be glorified for doing so. I certainly don’t want to erect a statue to honor his participation in the Confederacy’s cause.
As for Confederacy statues already in existence, those on public property should not be used to honor Confederates and the Confederacy. Instead, they should be used to teach people why it was right for Confederacy to lose the Civil War.
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