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What we choose to remember
What is it these people are memorializing? If you ask a 21st century unreconstructed Southerner he will say, "Family, the bravery and gallantry of my Confederate ancestors, etc." and some may even say "the Constitution as originally written." By the way, you can always tell the unreconstructed from the "other" Southerner. The unreconstructed Southerner uses the term "War Between the States" or "War of Northern Aggression," and the reconstructed one says "Civil War." But what did foreigners and the foreign media have to say about the Confederate Army and the government of the Confederate States of America? "The Confederate Army's fight against overwhelming odds is one of the most glorious moments in Anglo-Saxon history. It is to the eternal glory of the American nation, that the more hopeless became their cause, the more desperately, the Southerner fought." (Sir. Winston Churchill) "The more I think of all that I have seen in the Confederate States, of the devotion of the whole population, the more I feel inclined to say with General Polk---'How can you subjugate such a people as this?' And even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners have suggested, I never can believe that in the 19th century the civilized world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race." (Arthur J.L. Fremantle - touring British officer) "I saw in states rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction, but as the redemption of Democracy. I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo." (Lord Acton to R. E. Lee, 1866) And from the foreign media: "Such is the end of the great army, which organized by the extraordinary genius of one man, aided by several other commanders of eminent ability, has done such wonders in this war. Not even the Grand Army of Napoleon himself could count a series of more brilliant victories than the force which, raised chiefly from the highspirited population of Virginia, has defeated so many Northern generals. Chief and soldiers have now failed for the first and last time. They were victorious until victory was no longer to be achieved by human valor, and they fell with honor. (The London Times on Lee's Army, April, 1965)
And so in April, Southerners remember who we are and who they were.
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