Confederate statues

In the Civil War, my great- grandfather B. W. Rimes served four years in the Confederate Army. He was proud of his service to his country, however short- lived was his country. He was with the legendary 4th Texas regiment that fought in most of the battles of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He would not comprehend why monuments to Confederate heroes are being destroyed. He would remind us the “War for Southern Independence” was about the right of the Southern states to form their own country, as did the original 13 colonies. He would say, “Ours was a noble cause!”

“Not so,” would reply my greatuncle Vincent Carter, who served in Grant’s Northern Army of Tennessee. To him the “War of the Southern Rebellion” was a terrible, vicious, brutal thing that killed and crippled hundreds of thousands. He would tell us the war was over the South leaving the Union. It was about preserving the fragile, fledgling American democracy and “whether this country or any country ( constituted as a democracy) could long endure.” The Northern victory preserved democracy as a viable form of government. “Tear down those obscene rebel statues.”

The Civil War was over much more than just slavery. In 1861, slavery was a given in both North and South. Three Northern states were slave states. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a “war measure” that only freed the slaves in the separated South. Lincoln would not have dared to free the slaves in his Northern states at that time. GEORGE H. BENJAMIN

Siloam Springs