Words are important!

I was listening to NPR the other day about Southern Civil War monuments being torn down, and a great, great relative of Southern General Nathan Bedford Forest was bemoaning this fact and how they are fighting these removals.  He used the phrase the “War between the States” instead of the Civil War.  If you hear this, do not let people get away with this crap.  There was no “war between the States”.  The Southern States for the purpose of protecting their rights to own slaves seceded from the United States, and started their own country.  It was called the Confederate States of America.  There was a war between the United States and the Confederate States of America, a separate country.  Wikipedia states that “The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50,000 civilians.”  So when you hear that phrase “War between the States” don’t let it slide, it was a Civil War, started by the Southern States. Everyone who fought on the Southern Side was a traitor to this country.  Let me say it again, they were traitors, and they were traitors fighting for the right to continue to own black bodies.  Statues of Traitors should never have been allowed to be put up in the first place.  They should all be undone.

© words by Dan DeMarle 2018 – photo by Dan DeMarle 2017