VA Flaggers adn SCV Responds to I-95 Flag Nay-Sayers

Blowback on the Confederate flag issue

 

In response to the letter in your paper dated Jan. 8, 2014, “I-95 Confederate Flag: legal but not wise” by Delwyn D. Logan of Petersburg, it is a shame that those like Mr. Logan choose to base their opinions on what others tell them rather than studying a little history before publishing an opinion on a subject of which he has so little knowledge.

Fact: “The War of Northern Aggression” was not started because of slavery and socalled oppression. It was started because of states’ rights issues, large government and high taxes on the South. Check it out. The flags are not and were not symbols of oppression.
You are right, Mr. Logan, about it being time to get the facts straight. I question where you got the 13 percent figure of county residents who view the flag as a symbol of oppression. I believe that is a matter of opinion – yours.

It is true that the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia was used throughout the state — because most of the war was fought in Virginia — and was the Confederate soldier’s flag. There were more than 12 different Confederate flags, only two of which have white fields: they were the second national and the third national.
After doing a little research you will find the war ended in April of 1865 and “most” of these hate groups you refer to were formed long after that. How dare you compare our Confederate flag, under which our forefathers fought, to the evils of the German swastika, under which 8 million Jews were killed and an entire race was almost annihilated. We cannot control who uses any banner for their purpose. Our U.S. flag has been used by these groups also. They burn our U.S. flag, defecate on it, wipe their feet on it – which we condemn. By the way, the U.S. flag has far more blood on it than the Southern cross ever had. The Confederate flags only stir controversy among the uninformed. It is part of our history.

I am the past commander for the Chester Station Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) and am dedicated to helping present the true history of the South to future generations. I am also dedicated to rebutting the ignorance and falsehoods perpetuated by those like you, Mr. Logan. So, study a little more history and stop looking for excuses and meanings that aren’t there.
I am proud of my Southern heritage and my ancestors who were hard-working, Godfearing, good and decent people and we will always honor and respect them and the flags they fought and died under.

Jerry L. Jennings
Past Commander Chester SCV
Chester


Regarding the letter from Delwyn D. Logan purporting “to set some facts straight and correct some of the erroneous statements perpetrated by the Virginia Flaggers” about the display of the Confederate flag on I-95, elicits this response: The flag displayed is not the Stars and Bars, but the Saint Andrew’s cross, and the acknowledged battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. The former flag is the first national flag consisting of three horizontal (two red and one white) stripes with a blue canton containing seven white stars.

Mr. Logan offers no explanation of his disagreement regarding the Virginia Flaggers position that the displayed flag is that of the Confederate soldiers. The eminent Museum of the Confederacy historian, John M. Coski, in “The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem,” makes the better argument that, by 1863, the flag was completely embraced by the armies in both theaters of the war, the Confederate Navy, and the Confederate government, which incorporated the St Andrew’s cross design in both subsequent national flags.

Mr. Logan is on firm ground with his third assertion, that the flag has been tarnished by its adoption by various groups promoting nefarious agendas. The flag has different meaning to different groups. One treads on shaky ground impugning the motives of the Virginia Flaggers. Some take them at their word about their motives. If so, they should be commended for reminding us that the battle flag also represents the courage and duty of those who defended it.

Dexter E Oliver
North Chesterfield


I take exception to Mr. Logan’s contention that the Confederate Battle Flag is a “banner of evil.” He also states that the flag “remains a symbol of oppression to 13 percent of our nation’s population.” The flag remains a symbol of honor, duty, and defiance to centralized statist oppression, to at least three times that number of our nation’s population — and has been used internationally as a symbol of rebellion against tyranny and subjugation by oppressive governments. In attempting to “set some facts straight,” Mr. Logan goes on to enumerate three statements, all of which are in error:
First, the Stars and Bars banner. The flag on display is the St. Andrew’s cross battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, not the Stars and Bars, which is the first national flag of the Confederate States of America.

Second, “Spokesmen … claim that the flag being flown is a monument to southern Civil War soldiers because ‘this was their flag.’ We know this to be untrue. …” Seven of my eight great-great-grandfathers were called to duty and fought under that flag while serving in Virginia regiments of the Confederate Army. They were called to arms to defend their families and homes, and their state and nation, against an armed invasion. If it is not their flag, then whose flag is it?

Third, “… The adoption of this symbol by hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan has tarnished the image of the Confederate battle ensign. …” Mr. Logan then goes on to make the obligatory straw-man argument, and historical cheap shot, that the 19th-century battle flag is somehow equivalent to the 20thcentury Nazi swastika. Apparently he is unaware of the Jewish Confederate Cemetery on Shockoe Hill in Richmond. I acknowledge that the misuse of the battle flag a century later by hate mongers has led some to see it as a tarnished banner, but how about Old Glory? If we are to be consistent in interpreting our symbols, should it not be “legal but not wise” to display the U.S. flag?
It is not my intent to disparage Mr. Logan personally. I simply want to correct inaccurate statements of fact, and to make the point that symbols, as well as histories, are complicated things. Flags have different meanings to different people at different times. The U.S. flag stands on its own, and I pledge allegiance to it. But I have also accepted the charge to defend my ancestors’ good names, and to guard their history, and in writing this letter to continue to do my small part to remove any perceived tarnish from their banner.

Richard Lee Baird, Jr.
Charter Member
Old Brunswick Camp No. 512
Sons of Confederate Veterans


Regarding the Jan. 8 letter “I-95 Confederate flag: legal but not wise,” I respectfully submit the following corrections and clarifications.The flag that was raised alongside I-95 near the Old Bermuda Hundred overpass is the 3rd Bunting Issue of the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, not the Stars and Bars as stated. The Stars and Bars was the name for the first national flag of the Confederacy, created in 1861, but later discontinued. The battle flag was used throughout the war and it was the flag of the Confederate soldier. The Confederate battle flag used at this location is historically accurate to honor the Confederate soldiers engaged in this area during the Bermuda Hundred Campaign.

Further, the statements made before, during and since the raising of the Chester I-95 Memorial Flag by the Virginia Flaggers made our intent and purpose perfectly clear — to pay homage to those brave Confederate veterans, who fought and died to protect Virginia’s citizens and soil. Mr. Logan’s accusations that he “knows” this to be untrue, are, at best, misguided and false, and at worse, slanderous, as he has, to my knowledge never met or known any of those who make up our group to be able to make such incendiary assumptions.

We also take exception to his claims that the Confederate battle flag is forever “tarnished” by certain hate groups that have displayed her. A cursory glance at the history of these various groups show that they have also used (and with the same frequency) the U.S. flag, the Bible and the Christian cross, just to name a few items, in their demonstrations and activities. By Mr. Logan’s logic, should these symbols also be banned, shunned and forbidden from future use? As Christians, we refuse to allow them to “hijack” our faith. As Americans, we refuse to allow them to “own” the Stars and Stripes. And as the descendants of Confederate soldiers, we will not allow them to tarnish our banner. We suggest, instead, that these people should be dealt with accordingly, based on their deeds and actions, instead of assigning blame to certain symbols they use.

Finally, Mr. Logan tosses out the inflammatory “connection” of the Confederate Battle Flag to the Nazi swastika. This analogy can only be based on ignorance or a desire to incite. At no time in its existence did the Confederate Army take part in the murder of 6 million people because of their race. Any comparison is an insult to Holocaust victims, survivors, and their families. The grandsons of the same Confederate soldiers we honor, fought and defeated the Nazi army, many of them carrying the Confederate battle flags of their grandfathers with them overseas.

Perhaps instead of lecturing us about inaccurate facts and false motives, Mr. Logan should endeavor to further his education on the War Between the States, and search his own heart for the seed of hate that would lead one to write such a letter.

Susan Hathaway
Virginia Flaggers

http://www.chesterfieldobserver.com/news/2014-01-29/Opinions/Blowback_on_the_Confederate_flag_issue.html
 

LEE - JACKSON REMEMBERED IN FACE OF PC OBSTICALS

Lee-Jackson marchers in Lexington bristle at new restrictions

    DON PETERSEN | Special to The Roanoke TimesA statue of Stonewall Jackson overlooks ceremonies during Lee-Jackson Day at Stonewall Jackson Cemetery held in Lexington.

 

 

LEXINGTON — The long post-war continued Saturday as hundreds gathered to pay tribute to the two greatest generals of the Confederate South — and gray-clad marchers grumbled about restrictions on their marking of Virginia’s Lee-Jackson holiday.

          

“We do it for the heritage and to keep the memory alive,” said Butch Shouffler of Berkley Springs, W.Va., a member of a re-enactor honor guard that fired three volleys after wreaths were laid at the statue of Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in the Lexington cemetery. “It’s about the people who fought.”
 Shouffler and his friend Lee Hall of Waynesboro, another member of the honor guard, wore gray uniforms and carried working replicas of the .58-caliber, 1853-vintage Enfield rifles that would have been typical Civil War weapons. They said they’d been coming to the Lee-Jackson commemorations in Lexington for at least a decade to show their appreciation for the sacrifice of the Southerners of the early 1860s, whom they described as battling out of a sense of duty to their states rather than as defenders of slavery.
 “The states meant more to people than they do now,” Shouffler said.
“Honor was a word that meant more,” echoed David Meisky of Buena Vista, who wore the wool clothes of a 19th-century country gentleman Saturday but who often dresses in uniform to portray William “Extra Billy” Smith, a Confederate officer and two-time governor of Virginia.Hall said he was at Saturday’s ceremony for a religious reason as well. “Stonewall Jackson is the man who led me to Christ more than anyone else,” he said, explaining that his life was transformed by reading in historian and former Virginia Tech professor James Robertson’s best-selling biography about Jackson’s faith.
 The onlookers at the cemetery included the merely curious, motorcyclists in leather “motorized cavalry” jackets and also Kelly Hinson of Jackson Springs, N.C., who strode between the grave markers in a black veil and hoop skirt. It was an exact copy, she said, of the mourning clothes worn by Jackson’s widow, Mary Jackson, and also a costume from Hinson’s one-woman play “Mrs. Stonewall Jackson,” which she performs about 50 times per year.
 Saturday’s events were shadowed by the conclusion last year of a two-year court battle over a Lexington ordinance that allows only the Virginia and United States flags — and an as-yet-undesigned city flag — to be flown from the city-owned light poles. In 2010, the Stonewall Brigade Camp 1296 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which organizes Lee-Jackson Day events, had received city permission to drape downtown in Confederate flags.

“As soon as we got them up, they moved to restrict it,” Camp Commander Brandon Dorsey recalled Saturday.
 Lexington Councilwoman Mary Harvey-Halseth, who has sought to relax the rules on flags and banners, was the sole city official to speak at the wreath-laying.

I’m so pleased you come here every year,” she told the crowd, then delivered a brief history lesson on Lee and Jackson’s careers. After the war, Harvey-Halseth reminded her audience, “Lee knew that prolonging the conflict was in nobody’s best interest.”
 The flag dispute attracted national attention. On Saturday, members of the Virginia Flaggers group from Richmond waved Confederate flags from Lexington street corners to show their opposition to the city ban.
 Also this year, Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson taught for a decade before the Civil War and whose campus had been part of a route for Lee-Jackson marchers in recent years, said period weapons would not be allowed on university property this year. The march that followed this year’s wreath-laying did not go to VMI’s campus.
 Wayne Carlson of Dublin and Jeff Frye of Radford did not wear Civil War-era garb to the wreath-laying, but carried flags — Carlson had the third national flag of the Confederacy, Frye the more familiar “Stars and Bars” battle flag. Former members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, they said they had been attending Lee-Jackson events in Lexington for 15 years to pay tribute to the generals.Both were critics of the light pole restriction and VMI’s weapon ban. “We think it’s a pretty sad chapter that they can’t bring themselves to honor these men,” Carlson said.
 It was hard to count the crowd circling Jackson’s statue as temperatures hovered in the mid-20s Saturday morning. But participants’ estimates of 300 to 400 people seemed reasonable. “We wish there were … 3,000 to 4,000,” Carlson said.
 After the wreath-laying, the gray-garbed, flag-waving ranks moved out along Lexington’s Main Street to the sound of a bagpiper playing “Dixie,” heading to Washington & Lee University, where Lee was the school president after the war and where a midday lecture would discuss Lee and Jackson’s relationship.
 The marchers passed the Museum of Military Memorabilia and the Robert E. Lee Building, and the rows of United States and Virginia flags on light poles. The few onlookers scattered as soon as the marchers passed.
 Dorsey guessed that probably 500 people attended either the wreath-laying or the lecture at W&L’s Lee Chapel.

“We don’t typically have huge crowds of onlookers,” he said afterward. “It’s not necessarily designed to draw large crowds.”

http://m.roanoke.com/news/virginia/article_c8a19bee-80a5-11e3-9068-0019bb30f31a.html?mode=jqm#.UtyK_bJSPwo.facebook
 

NAACP CONTINUES ITS AGENDA OF HATE AGAINST HISTORY

SC marchers demand removal of Confederate battle flag

By ADAM BEAM

January 20, 2014        

TIM DOMINICK — tdominick@thestate.com                             

 

Mary Ann Williams has been bringing her church youth group to the annual King Day at the Dome rally for 10 years, and, every year, they always sit in the same spot: the statue of Benjamin Tillman.
The former governor and U.S. senator from South Carolina was a staunch white supremacist, known for his inflammatory quotes about lynching African-Americans and keeping them from voting. Williams said she had never told the students who Tillman was or what he stood for – until Monday.
“I told them he was prejudiced and wasn’t for the blacks,” she said. “Some of them wanted to get up.” Those students, sitting at the feet of the Tillman statue, were just one of many contrasting images at the annual King Day at the Dome rally, sponsored by the S.C. chapter of the NAACP.

More than 1,000 people marched on the State House beneath the Confederate battle flag, flying at the state’s monument to Confederate dead. The event, now in its 15th year, touched on several issues – including voting rights, education and health care. But the flag remained the central issue, with marchers holding signs urging tourists not to visit South Carolina until it comes down.
“To hell with that flag,” boomed the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, during his “spiritual charge” to the crowd.

State officials put the Confederate battle flag atop the State House dome in 1962 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. The flag stayed there for 38 years. In 2000, after years of protest, state lawmakers agreed to remove the flag from the dome and place it at the Confederate war memorial in front of the State House. The state then adopted two official holidays – Martin Luther King Day and Confederate Memorial Day – and erected an African-American history monument on the State House grounds.

But the compromise has not satisfied state and national civil rights leaders, who continue to press S.C. officials to remove the flag, which supporters say represents the state’s heritage.
The Rev. Nelson B. Rivers, an NAACP vice president, announced Monday a nationwide petition that people could sign to bring down the flag by texting the word “flag” to 62227. Rivers also criticized Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, the Charleston Republican and former state Senate president pro tempore, for his role in the compromise that kept the flag on the State House grounds.
“To consider that man as president of the College of Charleston – have we gone crazy? Have we lost our minds?” Rivers asked the crowd, referring to McConnell’s plans to not run for a four-year term as lieutenant governor so he could concentrate on applying to be the Charleston college’s next president.
Lorraine Miller, interim president and chief executive of the national NAACP, told the crowd the best way they can make a difference is to vote.

“The NAACP mobilized 1.2 million voters to the ballot box in 2012. And we are on the way, already beginning our efforts for 2014. We need you. We want you. We must have you,” she said.
While 2014 is an election year, only one elected official spoke – state Rep. Leola C. Simpson-Robinson, D-Greenville – a reflection of S.C. NAACP president Lonnie Randolph’s wishes to not let politicians use the rally to further their political careers. Yet politics were front and center for most of the rally, with speakers criticizing Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and the GOP-controlled state Legislature for not expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Haley and other Republican lawmakers said the state cannot afford to expand the health insurance program for the poor, citing the rising cost of health care and the state’s host of other needs, including roads and education.

The Medicaid expansion issue was the catalyst for a State House protest last week dubbed “Truthful Tuesday,” modeled after the “Moral Monday” protests that Barber started in North Carolina. The Truthful Tuesday group plans to hold more protests, with an organizational meeting scheduled for next week.

“It’s encouraging to see that people are rising up. People are not accepting that just because people have temporary political power or the majority at the moment in the Legislature that they have the final say,” Barber said. “The people have the final say.”

http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/20/3217626/mlk-marchers-demand-removal-of.html

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/20/3217626/mlk-marchers-demand-removal-of.html#storylink=cpy

Confederates in Lexington, VA

HERE COME THE CONFEDERATES!         

• 

Traditional Confederate and other period Civil War flags were in evidence in downtown Lexington on Friday as visitors swept into town to commemorate Lee-Jackson Day and to protest the city’s flag ordinance. Passers-by either honked their approval or offered less than welcoming greetings to the flaggers. An estimated 60 people came to hold the flags along Main Street and on street corners because the city will no longer allow flags other than the Virginia or United States flags to be flown from city flag standards. (Stephanie Mikels Blevins photos)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.thenews-gazette.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1068%3Ahere-come-the-confederates&catid=77%3Abreaking-news&Itemid=395

 

S.D. Lee Institute Scholarships Available!

 TO ALL TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

 

 SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE FOR HISTORICAL SEMINAR

 

  From the staff of the Stephen Dill Lee Institute. The Institute is very desirous to invite college and high school teachers and students to our unique educational experience. We will be willing to provide scholarships to as many teachers and deserving students as we can accommodate.. We do not pay for travel or hotel but will pay for the Institlute itself. The scholarship allows a recipient to attend all activities on Friday and Saturday, February 7-8, 2014, and will provide breakfast, lunch and a banquet meal on Saturday. Anyone desiring information may call Brag Bowling, Director of the Institute, at 804-389-3620 or go to our website for further information (www.StephenDLeeInstitute.com)

 

 THIS IS TO NOTIFY ALL PEOPLE WHO ARE POSSIBLY CONSIDERING ATTENDING THAT WE ARE OUT OF HOTEL SPACE UNDER OUR CONTRACT AND THAT ANYONE WHO IS TRYING TO STAY AT THE DOUBLETREE SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CONTACT BRAG BOWLING AT THIS EMAIL OR AT HIS PHONE---804-389-3620.

 

DONT MISS A CHANCE TO ATTEND THE SOUTH'S TOP EDUCATIONAL SEMINAR.

 

                                     

     The Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Nathan Bedford Forrest Camp #3 of Chattanooga want to remind everyone that on February 7-8, the Stephen Dill Lee Institute will take place at the Hilton Double Tree Hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our outstanding speaker roster includes--

 

 

     David Aiken    Monsters of Virtuous Pretensions

     Marshall DeRosa   Living in the Ruins: The American Civil War and the Subverson of Christian Civilization

     Donald Livingston   Total War and the Creation of American Nationalism

     James Russell  My Family's Personal History and the Devastation of our South Carolina Plantation

     Kirkpatrick Sale  Violating the Lieber Code: The March From the Sea

     Muriel Joslyn  The Effect of Total War on Prison Policies

     Douglas Bostick  Violation of the Law of Nations in the Siege of Charleston

 

 

     Costs for the conference are $150 per person. Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and families will be charged $125 per person. Your registration fee includes breakfast, lunch and Banquet on Saturday. Please visit our website at www.StephenDLeeInstitute.com  for registration and hotel information. Also, registrations can be secured by calling Ms Cindy White at SCV Headquarters in Columbia, Tennessee (1-800-MY DIXIE).

 

     Hotel reservations are $109/night and include parking. reservations can be obtained by contacting reservations at the Downtown Hilton Double Tree Hotel (407 Chestnut Street) at 1-423-756 5150.

 

     The Stephen Dill Lee Institute also has a limited number of scholarships for deserving students and teachers.

 

      Anyone desiring information should contact Brag Bowling at 804-389-3620.

 

NOW IS THE TIME TO PLAN ON ATTENDING THE PREMIER INSTITUTE FOR SOUTHERN SCHOLARSHIP

ROBERT E LEE - HERO AND PATRIOT

  ROBERT E LEE: AMERICAN HERO AND PATRIOT        

Do you remember when….
Fess Parker played “Davy Crockett” on TV, American school and military bands played “Dixie” and the late country music legend Johnny Cash sang “God Bless Robert E. Lee” that includes these words:

“I won’t ever stop loving you my Dixie till they put me in the ground. And the last words they probably hear from me are God bless Robert E Lee.”

What was General Robert E. Lee’s favorite war horse? See answer at end of article.

January is a historic month of history when students, teachers, parents, Joe and Jane America and the world will hear much praise in memorial tribute to the Civil Rights leader and Baptist Pastor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was born on the 15th day of January, in the year of our Lord, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia…. But, shouldn’t local, state and national news institutions also give fair and equal treatment and coverage to those who will remember the birthdays of General’s Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee who were also born during the month of January?

There will be memorial tributes to honor Dr. Martin Luther King in January and….
General Robert E. Lee was memorialized in Lexington, Virginia, with a tribute to both him and Stonewall Jackson on January 17th and 18th.

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans again sponsored their annual Robert E. Lee Birthday Commemorative on Saturday January 18, 2014 at the Old Capitol Building, 201 E. Greene St., Milledgeville, Georgia. The parade route will assembled at 10:30 a.m. at the Old Governor’s Mansion on W. Hancock Street and proceed through downtown to the Old Capitol on East Greene St.

The ceremony began around 11:00 a.m. at the Old Capitol where Georgia voted to secede from the Union in 1861.

During Robert E. Lee’s 100th birthday in 1907, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., a former Union Army Commander and grandson of United States President John Quincy Adams, spoke in tribute to Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee College’s Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia. His speech was printed in both Northern and Southern newspapers and is said to had lifted Lee to a renewed respect among the American people.

Could you imagine the President of the United States, members of Congress or A Northern Veteran speaking publicly today in tribute to General Lee like Commander Adams and President Theodore Roosevelt did while touring the South in 1905?....The president told an aged group of Confederate Veterans in Richmond, Virginia:

“Here I greet you in the shadow of the statue of your Commander, General Robert E. Lee. You and he left us memories which are part of the memories bequeathed to the entire nation by all the Americans who fought in the War Between the States.”

Who was Robert E. Lee?
Robert E. Lee was born on Jan. 19, 1807, at “Stratford” in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The winter was cold and the fireplaces were little help for Robert’s mother, Ann Hill (Carter) Lee, who suffered from a severe cold. Ann Lee named her son “Robert Edward” after her two brothers.
Lee was educated at the schools of Alexandria, Va., and also received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York in 1825. He graduated in 1829, second in his class and without a single demerit.

Robert E. Lee’s first assignment was to Cockspur Island, Georgia, to supervise the construction of Fort Pulaski.

Robert E. Lee wed Mary Anna Randolph Custis in June 1831. Robert and Mary had grown up together. Mary was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and the adopted son of George Washington.

In 1836, Lee was appointed to first lieutenant. In 1838, with the rank of captain, Lee fought valiantly in the War with Mexico and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec.
He was appointed superintendent of West Point in 1852 and is considered one of the best superintendents in that institution’s history.
General Winfield Scott offered Robert E. Lee command of the Union Army in 1861, but he refused. Lee would command the legendary Army of Northern Virginia for the South during the War Between the States.
The answer to the question of what was Lee’s beloved war horse is “Traveller” who is buried near Robert E. Lee and his family at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
Do our schools teach the young folks about Robert E. Lee and his farewell address to the troops?

Robert E. Lee,
Farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia
Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia
Appomattox Courthouse, April 10, 1865
(General Orders No. 9)
After four years’ arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them, but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss which would have attended the continuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.  You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God may extend to you His blessing and protection.  With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
Robert E. Lee
General

Let’s not forget our heroes!

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/60554

Bill Filed to Stop Monument at Olustee

Rep. Baxley seeks to block Union monument at Florida Civil War battlefield

Saying Confederate descendants in North Florida have accommodated the differing perspectives of millions of people from all over the country and the world, Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has drafted a bill aimed at blocking a request by the Sons of Union Veterans to place a monument to their Civil War dead inside the 3-acre Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park.

The New York Times writes that the Florida chapter of the group last year asked the state Parks Department for permission to place an obelisk to honor Union soldiers inside the park, which is about 45 miles west of Jacksonville. The park holds three monuments commemorating Confederate soldiers.

Baxley, the Republican chairman of the state House Judiciary Committee and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, has drafted a bill to require legislative approval to alter commemorative sites.

“The descendants of these families have moved over and moved over,” said Baxley of the Confederate side. “You have 20 million people from all corners of the earth and the country. We have all these different perspectives here, and these descendants have accommodated that. But I think that diversity and respecting people’s ancestors applies to everybody.”
 

[Last modified: Friday, January 17, 2014 2:52pm] 

 

    http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/rep-baxley-seeks-to-block-union-monument-at-florida-civil-war-battlefield/2161561