Over the weekend, one of the suburbs of the city in which I live held a founder's day event complete with a parade. Although I live in a western, not southern, state, one of the parade's contingents was a group representing the "Sons of Confederate Veterans" complete with gray-back uniforms and a Confederate battle flag.
The group's presence, and particularly the flag, raised some hackles, and when challenged, one member characterized his ancestors as having "fought for freedom," and the rebellion as having been "the second American revolution."
Those, of course, are complete lies.
The real game was explicitly revealed by Confederate vice president Alexander H. Stevens in a March, 1861, speech, in which he stated that African slavery was "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."
Stevens went on to repudiate the Declaration of Independence in its assertion that "all men are created equal." Stevens asserted: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."
And there you have it in all its ugliness. The Confederacy was based on racism, white supremacy, and oppression of people of color. It was a thoroughly ignoble and evil cause, and the Confederacy and those who fought for it deserved to lose. The "stars and bars" represents that disgusting cause, and it is high time the South finally recognizes that and removes that symbol from any place in public life.
The post-war attempts to frame the cause in any other terms is tantamount to smearing lipstick on a pig. For too long have southern politicians, with the tacit collaboration of right-wing northerners, pretended the pig is lovely. It is high time the pig is recognized for what it is.
I have Kentucky relatives who fought for the Union. I suspect I have other Kentucky relatives who fought for the Confederacy. I revere those relatives who, at the battle of Chickamauga, stood on Snodgrass hill, with Union General George H. Thomas, and covered the retreat of the Army of the Cumberland. And I should note that Thomas was a Virginian who honored his oath as a United States Army officer and served his country nobly, in contrast to the oath-breaker and traitor Robert E. Lee.
As to those other Kentucky relatives, I don't wish to know anything about them. Let them rest in the obscurity they earned. My relationship is certainly nothing I would boast of, much less march in a parade.