Honoring Confederate Flags and Symbols

During Vietnam, while at Fort Benning, Georgia as a young enlistee, I witnessed a parade with Army historical color guards and colors from our nation’s history being paraded.  I still have photos of it.  As a young Southerner I was proud of the fact that a Confederate Army color guard marched with a Battle Flag in review.  This color guard represented the valor and courage of soldiers who were my ancestors. Under President McKinley, a series of four acts of Congress from 1900-1958 restored Confederate soldiers’ standing as “American” soldiers ---- part of “reconciliation” of the North and South.  That’s why Confederates have VA headstones. That reconciliation is now being undone by haters and people with a lack of cultural historical knowledge and appreciation despite a comprehensive national poll by Lou Harris. That poll shows that 82% of Americans have no problems with Confederate emblems.  In an age of PC, the tyranny of the minority appears to be the rule.

I have taught logic and critical thinking courses at the Army’s Command and General Staff College for years. I taught in the graduate history department prior to retiring from the US Army.  What amazes me is the lack of historical knowledge by graduate students.  Former Under Secretary of the Army, Norm Augustine (retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin) in a recent ARMY magazine article stated that “…it’s not primarily the memorized facts that have current and former CEOs like me concerned.  It’s the other things that subjects like history impart: critical thinking….”.  Dr. Bruce Cole (Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission) stated in a column entitled “American Amnesia” that a:

“…study of students at 55 elite universities found that over a third were unable to identify the Constitution as establishing the division of powers in our government, only 29% could identify the term "Reconstruction" and 40% could not place the Civil War in the correct century….[and]…that over half of high school seniors couldn't say who we fought in World War II.”

The poll represents “educated” Americans.  Some of these are the same people mindlessly criticizing Confederate monuments, symbols and flags that they know virtually nothing about.

When Army students (mostly majors) ask me if Confederates wore gray, or blue uniforms, I know that even we, as a professional military institution, reflect the history ignorance of our society at large.  In the graduate course on the Civil War that I taught, more than half of the military students were at the high school, or lower, level of knowledge about the Civil War. Unfortunately, the best educated on US history are many times our foreign military students.  So what?  Well, if US students don’t know the basic facts of the war, how can they understand the more complex ones?  They can’t.  They parrot mindless mantras like “The Confederate flag is a symbol of racism!”  I guarantee they don’t know the difference between the “Stars and Bars” and the “Battle Flag”.

Granted, some racists have misused the Battle Flag. They misuse the US flag just as much, yet, under the (il)logic of Confederate flag haters, it gets a total “pass”.  A number of photos of KKK rallies with US flags can be easily found online.  One of the largest KKK rallies occurred in Washington, D.C. and not a single Confederate flag can be seen in a sea of US flags. This logic fallacy of stereotyping everyone with a Confederate emblem as a racist is ignorant and totally illogical except for some like Louis Farrakhan.  He uses the same criteria to condemn the US flag.  His logic is perfect----even if his premise is wrong.  Yep, the US flag is a RACIST emblem.

Cultural cleansing is wrong.  Our version of the Taliban is trying to cleanse our Southern heritage because of ignorance.  The Sons of Union Veterans (descendants of Union soldiers) proclaim in a 2000 resolution that they support the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag and our Confederate monuments.  They recognize the history and truth of why Southerners honor their ancestors.  President Eisenhower, who recorded his views in a letter to a concerned citizen, told why he honored General Lee with a portrait in his White House office.  In their convoluted reasoning, haters believe Eisenhower was a racist for doing that as well.

LtCol (ret) Edwin Kennedy is a retired US Army infantryman.  He was invited to speak at the Army’s Equal Opportunity Conference at Fort Gordon, Georgia about black Confederate soldiers.  He has given that presentation around the country.  The views expressed in this column are his personal ones and do not reflect the official views of the US Army’s Command and General Staff College or those of the US Army.

BEFORE THE CARPETBAGGERS...

Most of eastern North Carolina lay open to the Union troops from early 1862, and by degrees they stripped the entire region of everything of value that was moveable and whole shiploads of booty were sent north. New Bern-native Edward Stanly was appointed military governor by Lincoln in late May 1862 and sent to occupied Morehead City to govern his subjects, but even he lost hope of restoring the Tarheel State to the Union after watching shiploads of loot heading northward. He resigned his appointment a year later.

Stanly wrote: "Had the war in North Carolina been conducted by soldiers who were Christians and gentlemen, the State would have long ago rebelled against rebellion. But instead of that, what was done? Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of property were conveyed North. Libraries, pianos, carpets, mirrors, family portraits, everything in short, that could be removed, was stolen by men abusing flagitious slave holders and preaching liberty, justice and civilization.

 I was informed that one regiment of abolitionists had conveyed North more than $40,000 worth of property. They literally robbed the cradle and the grave. Family burial vaults were broken open for robbery; and in one instance (the fact was published in a Boston newspaper and admitted to me by an officer of high position in the army) a vault was entered, a metallic coffin removed, and the remains cast out that those of a dead [northern] soldier might be put in the place.” (Hamilton, pp. 94-95)

Georgia’s likely last ‘real son’ of a Confederate veteran dies

H.V. Booth, likely the last surviving “real son” of a Georgia Confederate veteran, has died at age 96 in Elberton, according to a local funeral home.

Mr. Booth was the son of Isham Johnson Booth, a guard at Camp Sumter, also known as Andersonville, the nightmarish Civil War prison compound where nearly 13,000 Yankee prisoners died.

“While there are thousands of men in Georgia and across the South who proudly wear the name “Sons of Confederate Veterans,” the number of literal sons of the war veterans, themselves, has dwindled down to fewer than half a dozen across the South,” said the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans.

PHOTOS: Georgia’s likely last ‘real son’ of a Confederate veteran dies

Berry Funeral Home & Crematory in Elberton confirmed Mr. Booth’s death. He died June 7.

Henry Victor Booth took his bit of celebrity with humility and humor.

When, in 2012, another real son of a Georgia Confederate veteran was buried, John McDonald, word circulated that there were no more.

Some called it “the end of an era.” Turned out it wasn’t. Mr. Booth remained.

I am a good ole rebel (Novorossiya version)

The forces of Novorossiya (New Russia) have already adopted a version of our Southern battle flag. Now, they have adopted perhaps our best “rebel” song, appropriately entitled “I’m a good ole rebel.” Listen for yourself>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TECQy5GLQZQ

American or Southerner?

Choose this day whether you be an American or a Southerner. You cannot be both. If you are an American you must become a propositionalist who believes all men–and their cultures–are created equal. You must profess fealty to the progressivist trinity of multiculturalism, diversity, and tolerance. You must speak well of homosexuals and actively support “gay marriage.” You must believe in an all-inclusive “gospel.” You must confess the grievous racial and cultural sins of white Europeans. And you must sit in the seat of everlasting repentance for the transgressions of your ancestors.

As for me and my house, we chose to be Southerners standing for our God, our folk, and our homeland.

Kentucky LS says “Feds Out” in Alexandria

On Saturday, 30 May, the Kentucky League of the South held a demonstration in Alexandria. The demonstration’s objective was to spread the messages “Feds Out of Kentucky” and “Secede to Survive.” These two message are of course geared toward The League’s overarching goal of Southern independence. Our congratulations go out to Kentucky LS State Chairman Coleman Lacy for organizing this event and the Southern nationalist patriots who stood with him for our cause.

Reports from Mr. Lacy indicated that fourteen men and women participated in the demonstration and that the reaction from the general public was overwhelming positive to our message. We invite the public to stand with us at future demonstrations to let the powers-that-be know that there is growing resistance to bad government in Washington, DC.

It’s time for some truth

 Will things return to this in the South (see photo at right)? Let’s hope so. De-segregation and integration have been abject failures, just as our Southern forebears in the 1950s and 1960s said they would. Leftist policies have destroyed whole cities, schools systems, and other once-healthy institutions. It’s time to force the left to admit the truth and turn back the clock, as it were, to a more sane time and policy. The survival of our civilization depends on it.

Michael Hill