Confederate Memorial Day

A group of academics sent a letter to President Obama requesting that he not, as had been the tradition since Woodrow Wilson, send a wreath to the Confederate Soldiers Memorial on Memorial Day. Somehow, they decided that Confederate Soldiers were not deserving of a memorial. That got me to thinking about the men who made up Bobby Lee’s Army.

The Confederate soldiers were not slave owners. That should be obvious to the casual observer who looks at old photos. They were poor farmers themselves. They had little hope of ever attaining a status in life where they could afford slaves. Therefore, they had no dog in the fight to preserve slavery. They must have taken up arms for other reasons.

A major difference between the mindset of people today and the average person during the Civil War was the idea of loyalty to your State versus the Country. The Civil War changed that focus from loyalty to your State to loyalty to Country, but before the war, a person’s loyalty was to his state. Hence, Robert E Lee opted to defend the State of Virginia rather than accept a high position in the Union Army.

Most of the leaders of the Confederacy had relatives that had fought in the Revolutionary War. Independence was not a remote concept to them. They had family that had fought for it. Robert E Lee’s father was Light Horse Harry Lee, a hero of the revolution. Jefferson Davis’ father fought in the war in Georgia. They grew up with living proof of the concept that if you do not agree with your government, it is your right, and even duty, to change it.

And that brings us to the real reason that the Confederate soldier fought. It wasn’t a fight over slavery. Slavery by itself couldn’t make a bunch of poor Southern farmers take up arms against the government. The reason for the Civil War was an issue over states rights and who had the right to tell a state what it could and could not do. And that just happened to be the issue of slavery.

The Confederate soldier believed that their state had sovereign rights. When faced with a federal government they felt was usurping their right to self determination, they followed the lessons of their fathers and decided that a change in government was necessary. In their mind, they were fighting for their freedom. Therefore, they were fighting for the same ideals that made America a land of freedom and liberty. They deserve recognition as much as any soldier-patriot and the movement to disavow them is wrong.