Sons of Confederate Veterans, a thought.

My great Grand daddy carried a rifle and trudged all over the south with the South Carolina Confederate Forces during the war of Northern Aggression. I know of five or six others, of my family, who did the same. The conditions they lived in were appalling. Yet, the security of their family, their farms and their country was at stake. Men will fight when everything they love and cherish is on the line as it was during the period of April 1861 thru April of 1865.

My great Grand daddy had no slaves. None of my relatives who donned the gray uniform of the Confederate soldier had slaves. I doubt they knew anyone, except in passing, who did.

The men of my family were yeoman farmers. Oft times the slaves’s welfare was better than that of their own families. They had hardscrabble farms. They made ends meet as best they could with what they had. They did what they had to do to provide for their families. Family lore has it that, on occasion, they would make, and sell, some of the famous Southern corn liquor, later to be known as “white lightening”. They were a hard, no compromising, steadfast, people who loved their families and their home.

Then the blue-coated Yankees came.

My ancestors did not fight, nor would they have fought, to keep other men in bondage. They did, however, fight to protect their families and their farms.

I became a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for a number of reasons…. to pay honor to my Confederate ancestors…to see that what they did was not forgotten… to see that the real story of those days is preserved against the innumerable attempts to bury it and to change it to suit the “politically correct” history our children are being taught in school today.

I am not interested in compromise, at all. What those men did is legendary. It is the stuff of classic stories. It is unbelievably true. It is worthy of being told, as it happened, time and time again. It is a part of who we as Southerners are. It is our heritage. It is in our blood, in our DNA. It is our family!

The true history of the War Between the States deserves to be told and told exactly. If you find a part of it troubling, hey, that’s life.

Historians used to be bound by honor to tell it as it happened, not to add to it, nor take away from it, but to present the facts, as they happened. Sadly, those days are far behind us. The vast majority of Americans have no idea of the truth behind the cause of that war. If you are relying on your public school education for the facts on that period in our history, you are sorely lacking.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is sworn to uphold the good name of the Confederate soldier and to safeguard his history and the Southern Heritage. But today the Sons of Confederate Veterans is in peril. Factions in the organization are tearing it apart. The “in-fighting” has drawn our attention away from the very things we are supposed to be doing. It must stop. We have an immeasurably important job to do and we must be about it.

I close with this thought from Gen. Robert Edward Lee, late of the Confederate Army:

"Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret." .... Robert E. Lee

I remain,

Your Obedient Servant,

“Longstreet”