(06-12-2020, 06:38 AM)jj82284 Wrote:

(06-10-2020, 06:36 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: People have a right to be proud of their heritage, but they need to be a little more selective about what part of their heritage they're proud of.  Confederate soldiers were fighting for a government that seceded from the United States because they thought slavery was under threat from abolitionists in the North.   The proof of this is in the Articles of Secession where the Southern states stated their reasons for seceding.  Articles of Secession are declarations of independence.  Five of the most important states that made up the confederacy passed and published Articles of Secession.  

You can read them here: 

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/prima...ing-states

Mississippi: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove."

And here is Alexander Stevens' speech about secession:  

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/libr...ne-speech/

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."

I'm a southerner, and I'm descended from southerners, some of whom fought in the Confederate armies.  But that part of my heritage, the part that includes slavery and fighting to preserve slavery, is not something I would be proud of, and I certainly don't think we should have monuments to the army that fought to preserve slavery.  

"...that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse." Ulysses S Grant

I wish that the republican party actually had the messaging to use Alexander Steven's as proof-text that our nation's founding was and forever will be based on the idea that "all men are created equal"