Vestiges of the Old South
From: byrdchar@aol.com
To: karen.trout@roanoke.com
Ms. Trout,
If your recent column is a sample of your understanding of American history, North and South, I would suggest you keep you comments brief lest you continue to incite hatred between the races.
If you have not visited the 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church in your home town of Roanoke, I invite you to set aside time for a visit.
Ask the Pastor how a black congregation paid for and dedicated this beautiful stained glass mural almost 100 years ago to "Stone Wall Jackson"- a Confederate General!
My wife is from the OSAGE Nation of Plains Indians. When a final head count (headright) was taken by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1929 there were only 2,229 men, women & children who answered the roll.
I wonder what happened to these aboriginal people.
Extermination was the answer; just read the records of Union General Sherman and Custer et al.
The head of the Minnesota abolitionist movement (a woman) said the answer to the "Indian problem" was "extermination of every man, women, and child " they almost succeeded!
If the TRUE record that is ignored by our children’s history books (written by the victors) could be told, even Lincoln would not be anything but a footnote and described as the white supremacist and racist he was-just read his 1858 speeches and even those AFTER he declared war on a people who simply; as our President Davis wrote, wanted nothing but to be " left alone".
The truth is a terrible swift sword but it takes courage, morality and unyielding dedication to that principal to wield its weight.
Are you up to the task?
DEO VINDICE
Charles Byrd
Fredericksburg, VA
