It’s ‘War of Northern Aggression’
The Editorial Board
May 28, 2011
To the editor:
Boy, would I like to have been in the Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington when Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust spoke ("American Civil War still draws a crowd," May 8, page A10). I would have been wearing my battle flag tie with pride.
Shame on the first female president of Harvard University, who is from the South, who called Antietam the bloodiest day of the War of Northern Aggression. In my opinion, it was not a Union victory. It would have been if not for Gen. A.P. Hill’s division, which punished Gen. Burnside’s Union forces. The Yankees withdrew first from the battlefield, then Gen. Lee moved his forces back to Virginia. The battle was a draw. Lincoln’s subsequent Emancipation Proclamation was a war tactic. Another note to the column’s author, Marsha Mercer, is the Confederate States of America fought that first war against terrorism.
Foust said that the reenactment of the battle of Sharpsburg in 1962 was carnival without carnage, a battle stripped of content and context. This is liberal hogwash. Slavery has never been a missing context. It has always been used as the cover-up for invading the South. Faust speaks of race moving to the center of what she calls a "civil war."
As usual, the South is called racist because we owned slaves, but was it racist when the Union armies marched on the plantations in the South, raping all the slave women? Was it racist when the slaves on the plantations were shot when they would not tell Billy Yank where all the money and food was? Was it racist when those greedy New Englanders sold black flesh not just here in the South, but all over the world?
The reason why most historians agree that slavery was the root cause of the war is because of what Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne warned us about. He said if we lost our war for independence, in the South our children will be taught by invaders, and they will never be taught the truth as to why the Southern states left the Union. This prophetic utterance has come to fruition. The younger historians have been taught from Northern history books.
Does anyone really think that the colleges in this country are Southern friendly? No, they are not. Especially Harvard University. The books these teachers use are written by liberals with Northern sympathies. It has always been this way.
Thank God many people do not agree with these historians. And I’m glad about the 30-year-olds who say it was states’ rights. It tells me that these people are tired of the same old Northern bunk, and people are getting the right books to read and learn from.
I was glad to read that Robert K. Sutton, chief historian for the National Park Service, encountered controversy and resistance against his statement that slavery was the primary cause of the war. Does anyone think that the NPS is Southern friendly? It is not.
Here is some history that Mercer or President Faust will never admit to. Clara Barton who helped organize the Red Cross saw the horrors of Sharpsburg Battle Field after the battle was over. She saw those Confederate soldiers lying dead and wounded, starving, no shoes and in rags. She made the statement that the abolitionist have got it all wrong. There is something else going on here. As Gen. Stonewall Jackson said, it was the Second American Revolution and that was what was driving those Southern soldiers — love of country.
GEORGE EDWARD CLARK
Danville
