Free Republic

Alabama state offices will be closed Monday for an annual holiday that some residents celebrate, others would like to eliminate and some just don't understand: Jefferson Davis's birthday. The Confederacy's first and only president was captured in Georgia in 1865 and accused of treason and helping to plot to kill President Abraham Lincoln. He was imprisoned for two years but never tried, and shortly before his death in 1889, he advised Southerners: "The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations."

Not much media coverage, not much fanfare, not much reflection. A war that carved over 600,000 lives from the nation when the nation’s population was just 31 million. To compare, that would equate to a loss of life in today’s population statistics, not to mention limb and injury, of circa 6 million. We are in the month of May, when 150 years ago Grant crossed the Rapidan to engage Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee stood atop Clark’s Mountain and watched this unknown (to the eastern theatre) entity lead a massive army into Lee’s home state. Soon there...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California state government departments will be prohibited from selling or displaying items with an image of the Confederate flag under a bill that passed the Assembly on Monday.

Memorial Day in America was first held in the South in honor of both the soldiers of Confederate gray and Union blue.

A group of seven multiracial Washington and Lee University (W&L) students are demanding the school remove all Confederate flags from campus and "acknowledge" General Robert E. Lee's "dishonorable side." According to the Roanoke Times, "seven multiracial students, calling themselves 'The Committee,'" have also demanded the school "acknowledge and apologize for participating in chattel slavery." They want recognition of "Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the undergraduate campus" and an end to "neo-Confederates" marching across campus "to the Lee Chapel on Lee-Jackson Day." The students say they will "engage in civil disobedience" if their demands are not met by September 1st....

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee accepted a position as president of what was then called Washington College. By all accounts, he served the school well and had a nice end of life. After his death, Washington College was renamed Washington & Lee. Today, many black people attend the university that bears Marse Robert’s surname, so I guess we won. But a group of black law students at Washington & Lee Law School is getting really sick of the university’s consistent, stars-and-bars waving support of Lee’s legacy and the whitewashing (no pun intended) of what that legacy represents. They’ve...

SOUTH HUNTINGTON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – Two Long Island high school students have been suspended for allegedly bringing a Confederate flag to school. Brother Gary Cregan, principal of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, said the two seniors walked in with a Confederate flag draped around their shoulders during an after-hours sporting event at the school. As CBS 2′s Kathryn Brown reported, there is outrage and disgust on Long Island. “The African-American students who immediately saw it really exercised heroic restraint and fortunately a teacher immediately confiscated the flag and took the students out of the gym,” Cregan said. The...

If you have not visited Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, Georgia and seen the beautiful Confederate Memorial carving of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson you should plan a visit for your family. Make your plans to attend the Annual National Confederate Memorial Day observance on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 1 PM in front of the magnificent carving.

17-year-old Gregory Vied was suspended for flying a confederate flag atop his pickup truck, "which was parked in the student lot at Steinert High School in Hamilton Township." According to News 12 New Jersey, Vied said he was suspended on March 25th after being repeatedly told he could not fly the flag.

<p>By FOX NEWS - A New Jersey high school student says he was suspended from school after refusing to remove a Confederate flag on his truck.</p> <p>Gregory Vied, 17, told News12 he was suspended for flying the flag on his pickup truck, which was parked in a student lot at Steinert High School in Hamilton Township.</p>

COLUMBIA, SC — Maurice Bessinger, who was as famous for his barbecue shops and sauces as he was for his diehard segregation stands, has died at 83. A Korean war veteran, a gentlemanly demeanor, a businessman who grew a restaurant business that employed 200 employees, a devout Baptist who supported missionaries abroad, Bessinger in many ways had a background as American as the finger-licking tasty Southern food his establishments were known for. "I'm just a fair man. I want to be known as a hard-working, Christian man that loves God and wants to further (God's) work throughout the world as...

JACKSON, Miss.–Thirteen years ago Mississippians voted to keep the state flag with the Confederate “Stars and Bars”. Lately there has been a new wave of calls for the legislature to take it off the pole. Sunday’s incident at Ole Miss, where a Georgia flag, pre-2003, with the “Stars and Bars”, was draped over the statue of James Meredith, has sparked some discussion from the state’s NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, who says he was part of a lawsuit in the 1990s to get the flag removed. He said Tuesday that he is still resolute about taking the flag down. “It’s a...

Bernd Osterloh, who is the Volkswagen AG General and Group Works Council chairman, said that future investments in the South might be hurt if workers will not unionize, according to Reuters. The comments come days after Volkswagen Chattanooga workers voted against representation by the United Auto Workers Union. After years of quiet work by union leaders and a contentious campaigning period, officials announced Friday night that Volkswagen employees opted against UAW representation with a 712-626 vote. But at that announcement, Volkswagen Chattanooga President Frank Fischer said the vote wasn't against the works council and that there is still support for...

Florida’s first state park has become ground zero for a raging political fight to establish a monument honoring Union Army soldiers who died during the Civil War. The three-acre Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park currently includes three monuments honoring Confederate soldiers who died fighting to secede from the country. The park, first established in 1912, was the site of Florida’s largest and bloodiest Civil War battle that killed 3,000 Union and 1,000 Confederate soldiers. It occurred on February 20, 1864, and raged on for four hours. With no marker respecting the sacrifice of so many northern men, the Florida chapter...

It seems fitting that the de facto anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War, which some people might still be shocked to learn the North won, turned out to be "Dixie." After all, since Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox there's been no shortage of looking away, looking away at the reality of history when it comes to the Civil War. Nowhere is that full flower of denial more apparent than among the followers of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is upset about a proposal to erect a monument to Union soldiers who died in the Battle...

President Lincoln has been all but deified in America, with a god-like giant statue at a Parthenon-like memorial in Washington. Generations of school children have been indoctrinated with the story that “Honest Abe” Lincoln is a national hero who saved the Union and fought a noble war to end slavery, and that the “evil” Southern states seceded from the Union to protect slavery. This is the Yankee myth of history, written and promulgated by Northerners, and it is a complete falsity. It was produced and entrenched in the culture in large part to gloss over the terrible war crimes...

“Here I greet you in the shadow of the statue of your Commander, General Robert E. Lee. You and he left us memories which are part of the memories bequeathed to the entire nation by all the Americans who fought in the War Between the States.”

This is a "revised and extended" re-post of an article I wrote in 2011 to mark an anniversary of General Lee's death. It celebrates instead the two hundred and seventh anniversary of his birth on January 19, 1807, a happier occasion. It's a couple days early, but I don't think he would mind. We have changed as a nation, often for the worse.We, as a nation, seem to have done with heroes of General Lee's type. Yet he inspired a fledgling nation, the Confederate States of America -- young, old, rich and poor alike. Those who reminisce about him do...

However if one truly wants to make such a big deal out of what we call the armed conflict which occurred in America from 1861 to 1865 , and if its historical accuracy and honesty that one truly seeks, then I think Douglas Southall Freeman is, perhaps, the truest to historical accuracy in coining the proper term . . .

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans will again sponsor their annual Robert E. Lee Birthday Commemorative on Saturday January 18, 2014 at the Old Capitol Building, 201 E. Greene St., Milledgeville, Georgia.