The Charleston Post and Courier recently ran nothing more than a very brief listing of Confederate Memorial Day events planned around the low country.
The comments from Yankee PnC readers were harsh but predictable.
From a poster who calls himself ARealAmerican:
"Celebrating a morally bankrupt past, disgusting. There was nothing honorable about the confederacy."
And another Virmat90:
"We do not need to celebrate confederate memorial day. Yes, I left it lower case for a reason - I don't recognize it, and most reasonable people don't as well. We do have memorial day already that remembers all veterans."
Tossed in the mix are the time honored "You Lost Get Over It" and the various references to "Rednecks" all come as no surprise, nor does the common but always polite retort, "need a map?
Confederate Memorial Day which is officially in South Carolina, May 10 and observed on Monday is for the most part over looked in the modern south.
Yet it hard to forget that so many, on both sides lost their lives in a war that was pointless no matter what your perspective. Pointless because we are the only country in the world that needed a war to end the practice of slavery, as progress and mechanization alone made slavery impractical.
If you travel to Sharpsburg, (Antietam to most northerners), Gettysburg or any other civil war battlefield in the "North" you'll find that noticeably absent are memorials or monuments to fallen Southern Soldiers.
After the war, countless large and grand memorials were erected across the country to remember the Union Army dead. In the South however money was tight and elaborate memorials were never an option. Accordingly it was felt the least that should be done was to hold a ceremony, maybe even a small parade and thus the tradition of "Confederate Memorial Day" was born.
Families who managed to hold on to their land and jobs erected small grave markers and modest monuments.
One such small monument belongs to Lieutenant Cotesworth Pinckney Seabrook, H Company 1st South Carolina Volunteers, Killed in Action at Chancellorsville at the age of 23.
The back of his marker says much about Southern values.
Heroic in Battle.
Beloved in Everything.
The Model Of A Christian Soldier.
His grave is located at St. John of the Wilderness Episcopal Church Cemetery in Flat Rock, North Carolina along with many C.S.A. war dead the names are familiar to Charleston, names like; Middleton, Rutledge, and Drayton.
Now often mocked by the uneducated, misinformed or just simple minded, Confederate Memorial Day in the south preceeded our National Memorial Day, and which us southerners gladly honor both.
To many of us in the South, Confederate Memorial Day is still valued as a way of honoring our Southern Heritage and those of generations past who stood up for their families, the land, their honored traditions of Southern Life, loyalty to states rights and the belief in total self governance.
8 comments:
Thanks for the posting.
I copied it to my far-flung relatives..as a reminder that this too IS part of our heritage
Funny that much of what draws people to the South is what they resent.
Hendersonville, Saluda, Flat Rock as well as Asheville were once the summer retreat from the hot and humid Low Country.
The Saluda Grade a rail line between Greenville and the Mountians was abandoned years ago, but back in the day well heeled Charlestonains would flee the heat and head to the Mountians via the train.
Women and childern would stay in the mountians all summer long with the men returning as needed to tend to business making Charleston one of the first rail commuters cities in the nation.
Good Post!
Some people around here could use a little history lesson.
The Charlotte Observer had to close the comments section on the short story they ran on CSA Memorial Day.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/717907.html
Too many mornons have moved to Charlotte. I wish they would go home.
Thank you for taking the time to post this.
Southern history, like Northern history, black history, Native American history, etc., is all part of American history and deserves respect.
Hey Cedar I bet you even stand when they play Dixie you dumbass redneck!
Excellent post. Thanks for reminding us of the sacrifices some of our relatives made.
I grew up a few blocks (literally) from Camp Chase, one of the few memorials in the north I can ever remember seeing. (Maybe the only one?)
There is an astounding 2260 Confederate graves there.
The same people who disrespect the Southerners who fought and died in the Civil War are probably also the same type of people who refuse to say Columbus "discovered" America and teach their children that saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school is a bad thing.
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