To Set the Record Straight
 
From: cliftonpalmermclendon@yahoo.com
To: mayor@las-cruces.org
 
According to information I have received, you find the Confederate Battle Flag offensive.
 
Anyone who seeks an offensive flag needs to look no farther than the thirteen-stripe United States flag.
 
Under that flag, many thousands of Africans were transported to slavery in the New World.
 
No Confederate-flagged ship ever made a slaving-run.
 
Under that flag, the African slave trade (importation of Africans to be sold into bondage) was authorized for 32 years (1776-1808).
 
The Confederate constitution prohibited the African slave trade.
 
Under that flag, slavery was authorized for 89 years (1776-1865).
 
Under Confederate flags, it was authorized for four years.
 
Under that flag, atrocities were committed against noncombatant civilians during the 1860s — atrocities to rank with those committed by the Germans and Japanese during World War II.
 
No Confederate unit ever committed atrocities against noncombatants.
 
Under that flag, Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
 
The Confederate States of America never practiced anti-Semitism. To the contrary — the Confederate forces included Jewish officers and enlisted men, and from the beginning, the Confederate cabinet included Judah Philip Benjamin, a Jew. (The first Jewish US cabinet member, Oscar Straus, served under Theodore Roosevelt.)
 
Under that flag, the military services were segregated until after World War II.
 
Confederate military units saw many different ethnicities – including thousands of blacks – serving cheek-by-jowl and receiving the same pay and allowances.
 
Under that flag, Native Americans/Indians were cheated, forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, and massacred wholesale.
 
Native Americans/Indians received no such treatment at Confederate hands. To the contrary — Native Americans/Indians played a vital role in the Confederate Army. General Stand Watie, a Cherokee, was the last Confederate general to sign a cease-fire with the US Army.
 
Under that flag, American citizens in the 1940s were forcibly removed from their homes and herded into concentration camps solely because their ancestors had been born in Japan.
 
The Confederate States of America never put anyone into a concentration camp based on his parents’ ethnicity.
 
That flag is the favored flag of the Ku Kluxers. See http://pointsouth.com/csanet/kkk.htm for pictures.
 
So – if you seek an offensive flag, go for Old Glory.
 
Clifton Palmer McLendon
Gilmer, Texas