Heaven forbid that people would understand the War of Norther Agression, and actually get a truthful account of what happened.
Now granted, a marching band can't do alot, but at least they tried. Then the first thing that happens is an "apology" from the school. I am so tired of having to apologize for my heritage. I don't see the blacks apologizing for their forefathers selling them to others. I don't see the any other race/religion/people on this planet apologizing for their backgrounds. Why do I have to apoligize for mine?
Here's a truthful account:
On April 12, 1864, Confederates forces under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest stormed Fort Pillow, a small garrison held by some 600 Union troops. Half were African Americans from the Sixth US Colored Heavy Artillery and the Second US Colored Light Artillery.
Black soldiers who surrendered were murdered. Black sergeants were singled out, nailed to logs and set on fire. The tents of the black wounded were set on fire. Blacks escaping into the Mississippi River were caught in a crossfire. Black women and children were shot on sight. At the end of the slaughter, the Confederates had lost 14 men, but 331 Union soldiers had been killed. The number who were prisoners is unknown. Of the living Union prisoners, 168 were white, but only 58 blacks had survived.
Testifying on Fort Pillow, one Confederate sergeant reported:
"I with several of the others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded, but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued."
After the battle, General Forrest stated:
"It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that nigra soldiers can't cope with Southerners."
General Grant responded by demanding that black soldiers must be treated like whites or he would cancel the practice of prisoner exchanges that until then had been one of the rules of North-South engagement. That great paragon of the South, Robert E. Lee, refused.
Speaking of Lee, the neo-confederates love to spread the lie that he was opposed to slavery. However, when Lee invaded Maryland in 1863 he ordered all free blacks shipped back to the South as slaves.
Nathan Forrest - the great white hero of the neo-cons - had been a slave dealer in Memphis before the war; following the war he was one of the organizers of the Ku Klux Klan and reportedly served as its first Grand Wizard.
But of course, the Civil War had nothing to do with race, or slavery.