Date: 8/31/2017
Just for the record: My ancestors were in the Union Army. I am no fan of the Confederacy, nor the attempts to revise history. It was about slavery. If I had it my way there would be a statue of General Sherman next to the Confederate monuments. Some of the monuments should be moved, but not destroyed. The proposed removal of the monument on Deer island is nothing less than vandalism of a cemetery.
Judging from the comments I am getting on Facebook the so-called anti-fascists are the ones who will not discuss issues. They appear to be historically illiterate and the monuments may be the only education that they have. Some of them had never heard of things like the Industrial Revolution nor the Magna Carta. I do not understand how one goes to school in this country and does not learn about these things.
I think there should be additional signs and monuments to educate people about the Civil War. In Quebec there are monuments to just about every group, including the British and the French during the conquest of Quebec.
We are now on a slippery slope where no one’s monuments are safe. It has been expanded to include slave owners and explorers. There are few saints in the history of the world. Now I read that a newscaster has been reassigned because his name is Robert Lee, he is of Chinese ancestry. I see no intelligence what so ever in this movement.
The Civil War was the costliest war this country had. As we can see, we are still suffering from the aftermath. Most of the casualties were white people, both immediate and deaths after the war due to injuries and illness, poor examples of “white privilege.” Some legal scholars think that states had a right to secede and had they sued in Federal Court they would have won. But being led by their “intellectuals” they fired on Fort Sumter and thus made themselves armed rebels. And now the “other side” is using stones and sledge hammers.
Robert Joseph Underwood
Springfield
