Why Confederate monuments were erected

Fourteenth-century Scottish King Robert the Bruce stated with absolute certainty: “Historians from England will say that I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes,” meaning the victors of war write the history.

This quote is every bit as true in today’s world. Case in point. Had we lost the American Revolution in 1776, the English would have hanged George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry as well as all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Our youth would be taught that the above-mentioned men were treasonous to the Crown, that secession and the God-given right of self-government were blatantly illegal, the American flag would be depicted as a symbol of sedition, and millions of manipulated minds would agree. Another case in point.

Had Texas failed in its secession from Mexico in 1836, Sam Houston and his followers would have been treated in the same identical manner as were their revolutionary forebears, along with their “misguided political ideology” of self-government and the history of that conflict would have been written from a Mexican point of view.

In comparison, the Southern states in 1861 acted in the same identical manner as they did in 1776 but were denied the God-given right of self-government by brute military force and the history of that conflict is still being written by slanted Northern historians. Basically, when it pertains to that conflict, American history textbooks proclaim that the North was right and the South wrong despite the fact that our founding documents say otherwise, which by the way were all idealized and authored by Virginians.

According to Article VII, the several states are the only parties to the Constitution and they created the federal government by delegating limited powers to it for their mutual benefit. The power to coerce the states by the federal government was unanimously rejected by the Committee of the Whole on May 31, 1787, which in turn prompted the insertion of Article III, Section 3 which reads: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to THEIR Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The all-important words here are “them” and “their,” signifying the free and independent states and not the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. They defined treason in this way to assure that the powers of the federal government, which was created to protect the states, would not be used against them by means of a military invasion.

Now fast-forward to 1861 and compare this to Abraham Lincoln calling forth 75,000 troops to militarily invade the Southern states which violated no law. This is precisely why Arkansas voted to secede, as did other states since it was a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and a violation of which they would not be a party. For what it’s worth, secession is not connected to war and is a mere civil process for a political divorce that the colonists declared in 1776 and likewise Texas in 1836. The Arkansas May 6, 1861, Ordinance of Secession focuses entirely on the very issue of coercion and the word slavery is nowhere to be found. The men of Arkansas defended their Southland against an unconstitutional federal invasion and nothing more! Furthermore, the Southern states had no grievance toward the Constitution or Bill of Rights and instead they were those documents staunchest defenders due to the fact they incorporated them into the Confederate Constitution of 1861. In other words, they fought for the continuance of constitutional government and certainly not its destruction!

Immediately after the war, the South lay in utter ruin, physically and economically. There was simply no money for monuments. Hundreds of towns and thousands of homes destroyed by the union army’s barbarism had to be rebuilt, and that took the few pennies Southerners had. Lincoln’s Army even burned Hot Springs twice! This in turn made the women of the South determined that their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers who fought so valiantly and died so horribly to defend them from barbaric invaders, would not be forgotten. The longing to remember is understood by anyone who has lost family in war. So they raised the money in nickels and dimes, no matter how long it took, sometimes 20 years in some instances. The Confederate monument in downtown Hot Springs exemplifies this very remembrance and there is nothing historically, morally, or constitutionally wrong with it as with the rest of all Southern memorials across the country.

For all the naysayers and haters, I challenge you to stand over the mass graves of the Confederate dead at battlefields as I have done, where the bodies of young men were pushed into a pit and covered with dirt with no notification to their families, and then ask yourself if you still demand the removal of their memorials, the only headstones those men will ever have. Do later generations have the right to determine other war memorials such as those of the World Wars, Korean, Vietnam, Desert Storm etc.? Should they be removed from public or private property because they do not fit the liberal narrative of so-called historians? Whatever happened to the America I grew up in where we respected our nation’s veterans, the police, firefighters, and the president, regardless of our political differences?

Will the removal of Confederate monuments actually improve the day to day lives of the average American? Will violent crimes, teen pregnancies, and government corruption decline one iota? To this I say to those who wish to erase our history: Get your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. In today’s America, the liberal-left history departments of our colleges rely on falsehoods so they can further their radical agenda, which is to transform this nation into a socio-Marxist state, by continuing “to hang heroes” as Robert the Bruce so truthfully stated.