The Confederate Battle Flag At Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte, N.C.

The Confederate Battle Flag at Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte, N.C..

I am unashamedly Southern.

When I heard the Community Relations Committee of Charlotte, NC, intended to recommend to the Charlotte City Council that the Confederate Battle Flag now flying over a monument to Confederate dead in the Old Elmwood Cemetery, be removed and, possibly, replaced by one of the lesser known National Flags of the Confederacy (or the 1861 NC flag) , I fired off the letter below to the Mayor, and City Council, of Charlotte.


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Dear Charlotte City Councilperson:

I just learned, yesterday, of plans of the CRC to recommend to your Council that the Confederate Battle Flag at Elmwood Cemetery be taken down.

With all due respect, I ask that you do not remove that flag. It is a symbol of who we are. It is a symbol of who we were, and it is a marker on our journey as Southerners.

The Battle Flag is much maligned. Many misunderstand it. The Battle Flag was never the National Flag of the Confederacy. It was, as the name implies, a flag to be used on the battlefield.

If I may, I’d like to point out to you some of the some of the things that trouble me about the ongoing attack on the symbols of the South. Please indulge me for a few moments.

A part of who we Southerners are has been buried, and is being buried, as though it never existed. That is wrong. Good, bad, or indifferent, the history of this nation is sacrosanct. Even that portion of the United States, which chose to leave and create their own country, is as much a bona fide part of the true history of this country as is, say, the Revolution against Great Britain, which set us free to become the great country we have become.

I think it is important to remember that the grandfathers of many of the generals of the Confederate forces fought against the British for Independence. The first Commander in Chief of the Continental Army was a Virginian. The First President of the United States of America was a Southerner, that same Virginian. The man who wrote the Constitution was a Southerner. A goodly number of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Southerners. Southern blood is woven inextricably into the fabric of this great nation.

I’m writing to you because I fear that we are losing something very dear and very precious to us as Southerners. I fear we are losing our identity. Our children and our grandchildren no longer know who they are. And the really sad thing about this is, they don’t know that they don’t know who they are.

Nearly every time I stand before e a group to speak I quote the poet who said: “Poets may write of things as they wish they had been, Historian must write of things as they were.” Unfortunately that is no longer true.

Sad to say, young minds are being molded into unquestioning acceptance of a history that is flawed, inaccurate, and in many instances just plain wrong.

Consider what our ancestors, who put their very lives and fortunes on the line, were really fighting for.

We have to go back to the Revolutionary war when the grandfathers of these Confederates fought to gain their freedom from Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence declares that the colonies are "free and independent States."

Hollywood, and many elitist historians refer to our ancestors as traitors. In fact, it isn’t so, not because I feel it isn’t so, because it is a fact. They have chosen to forget that in order to be a traitor, one must be a citizen of the country one is betraying. At the time hostilities broke out, our ancestors were not citizens of the United States. They were citizens of the Confederate States of America. There is no way they could possibly be considered traitors.

Yet modern historians choose to forget that the CSA ever existed. They prefer to refer to our ancestors as “Rebels”. The war we call the Civil War was a lot of things, but it was not a rebellion.

In an address before Congress on January the 12th, 1848, Abraham Lincoln said: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

The Confederacy was, in fact, a sovereign nation. It had a President, a Congress, a Supreme Court, a Constitution, an Army and a Navy (One of the Largest Confederate Naval Bases was located at Charlotte, N.C.) as well as several million citizens. Furthermore, it never rebelled. A rebellion is an insurrection against one’s government and usually includes an attempt to overthrow that government. At no time, did the Confederacy ever attempt the overthrow of the government of the US. Never. On the other hand, the US did invade and overthrow the government of the Confederacy and forced it back into the Union at bayonet point.

The first anti-slavery laws were passed in the Confederacy. Slavery was on the way out. The Constitution of the Confederacy made the importation of slaves illegal. So, that awful institution was finished. It even made the transporting of slaves across state lines for the “purposes of sale” illegal. (Remember, there were 5 northern slave-holding states. Lincoln did not free the slaves in those states. It was some years later before they were given their freedom. At the beginning of hostilities, the two cities with the most slaves, per capita, were Charleston, SC, and New York City.)

Men from all over the Confederacy donned the uniform of the Confederate Soldier and placed themselves in harm’s way to defend her from those who would take her from him and bend her to the social patterns they, not the South, subscribed to. Men left their farms, homes, businesses, schools and even hospitals, to stand along side their neighbor as they tried valiantly to stem the oncoming tide of the invading army from the north. They fought bravely. They died in honor. They were defending their homes, their homeland, and that thing which all men cherish most, their families.

They cared not for the institution of slavery. It was, indeed, beside the point. This was their home and the enemies booted feet were trampling its sacred soil. The mailed fist of the US government, a government they had legally left, was enforcing someone else’s standards upon the Confederate soldier’s loved ones, upon his beliefs, upon his society, which had been so lovingly created and based on a solid platform of HONOR.

Honor is that thing which causes a man to stand his ground and defend his belief system, his home, and his country, even in the face of insurmountable odds. Many times he left the battlefield victorious. There were many who never left the battlefield.

Never in the history of this country have so many Americans given their lives on the field of battle. You can add the figures of the dead from all the wars America has fought together and the total killed will not be greater that the total killed as a result of the American Civil War.

Brother fought brother, father fought son, and cousin fought cousin. The soil of this land is soaked with the blood of patriots. But, it was not a war between a country and a bunch of rebels; it was a war between two great countries. The USA and the CSA. Look for that little fact in today’s history books. To admit that is to admit that the Southern states were, in fact, a great nation. It is as though the CSA never existed. The country that never was.

As Southerners I believe we have a duty, indeed our prime duty, is to see this is not forgotten, that THEY are not forgotten. The new, revisionist, history taught our children and grand children in school today does not tell the story as it happened. Remember always, the victors write the history books. It is a spoil of war.

As Southerners we must tell our children and grandchildren what those men did. We must tell of their exploits on the battlefields of our beloved South. We must tell of their belief that a government sworn to protect their rights was denying them their rights. We must tell them of the Treaty of Paris which allowed the right of succession to any state. We must tell of the great war in which the CSA fought desperately to repel the invasion by the armed forces of the USA. For that was what really happened. We must tell them the fact that in 1860 less than 5% of Southerners owned slaves. We must tell them the Confederate Constitution outlawed the importation of slaves and the transporting of slaves across state lines for sale. We must tell our children the South was not in rebellion, it was fighting for its Country, the Confederate States of America! No Southern soldier sought to overthrow the government of the United States…. ever! Those men wanted only the right to be “let alone”, allowed to live in peace in their new country, which reflected their Southern values, Duty to one’s God, Duty to one’s family, and Duty to one’s country!

As Southerners the legacy of the valiant men of the “Confederacy” still flows in our veins and the veins of our children and our grandchildren. I pray God it may ever be so.

We owe so much to those men. We cannot repay their sacrifice. The least we can do is honor them for it! We can honor their families who bore the horrors of war as all families left behind in the South did. As Southerners and descendents of those valiant men, that must be our mission.

It has been almost 140 years since the guns were silenced at Appomattox. And once again, we find ourselves in a nation divided. I don’t believe this nation has ever been as “Balkanized”, as divided, as it is today, since the years just prior to the Civil War. I’m afraid we are headed, again, for an internal conflict. How it will all end I cannot say. The symbols of our former great nation, the Confederate States of America, are being banished from public view as icons of hate. Groups, which hate our very existence, as Southerners, are at the forefront of the battle to destroy all things Southern. Yet we Southerners are continually accused of being involved with “Hate groups”.

Despite misappropriation by hate-mongers, our Southern Heritage is hanging on by a thread.

The Battle Flag at Elmwood Cemetery is necessary. The men who lie at peace beneath it put their lives on the line to protect the very soil, which embraces their bones as they sleep in eternal peace. They never thought their very own people would be ashamed of their efforts to protect the land we, their descendents walk upon today. Yet, here we are, publicly decrying their sacrifices instead of honoring them. We declare our shame every time we ask for the flag to be taken from public view. Even though thousands of Black men fought, and died, under that flag, for the Confederacy, even though thousands of Hispanics fought, and died, under that flag, for the Confederacy, even though Native American Indians fought, and died, under that flag, for the Confederacy (Including the Catawba Indians and the Cherokee)

With respect, I ask you this…. if the Battle Flag offends, because it has been misappropriated by hate groups, how long do you think it will be before a lawsuit is filed to remove the Stars and Stripes of the US because it offends someone. The same hate groups, too, have misappropriated it.

As a Southerner, whose native home is just 38 miles south of Charlotte, I respectfully ask that consideration be given to what I have said here. I further ask that the City Council of Charlotte demonstrate the fortitude I know exists there. I ask that you proclaim to the world your respect for the sacrifice made by so many men from Mecklenburg County, and North Carolina, and the unimaginable hardships visited upon their families as a result of the bloodiest four years in the history of this great nation. It is an indelible part of who we are.

Thank your for your kind consideration.
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Your Obedient Servant

“Longstreet”