LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Three reasons to remove statues

Wed, Jul 1, 2020 (2 a.m.)

There are three very valid reasons for removing Confederate statues and monuments.

First, the leaders of the Confederacy were, quite simply, traitors to the United States. They engaged in armed rebellion against the legitimate government with the intention of destroying the Union. In no other country of the world will you find monuments honoring its traitors.

Second, their treason was intended, first and foremost, to ensure the continued practice of slavery. The myth that the Civil War was fought for states’ rights or Southern culture was created, like these statues, dozens of years after the war ended. At the time of the war, Southerners themselves, including Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, knew it was only about slavery. Stephens stated in the Cornerstone Address, “Our new government(’s) foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

Third, removal of these monuments does not “erase” history. This is an absurd argument, as the history remains whether or not the statues do. There is no full-figure monument of Benedict Arnold in the country and we certainly have not erased his traitorous history.

Removing Confederate statues and monuments will only erase from the public view these symbols which celebrate the oppression and enslavement of one group of human beings by another.

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