Why are they vilified? Because they are Southern white Christian men…
“This was a recognition of American terrorists.”
That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.
Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing that Gov. Bob McDonnell had declared Confederate History Month in the Old Dominion. Virginia leads the nation in Civil War battlefields.
So loud was the howling that in 24 hours McDonnell had backpedaled and issued an apology that he had not mentioned slavery.
Unfortunately, the governor missed a teaching moment—at the outset of the 150th anniversary of America’s bloodiest war.
[snip]
In 1862, Lincoln wrote Horace Greeley that if he could restore the Union without freeing one slave he would do it. The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, freed only those slaves Lincoln had no power to free—those still under Confederate rule. As for slaves in the Union states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, they remained the property of their owners.
As for “terrorists,” no army fought more honorably than Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Few deny that.