CRIMES OF RECONSTRUCTION!

JUST SCRATCHING THE SURFACE ON THIS SUBJECT.

CRIMES OF RECONSTRUCTION

“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late... It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision... It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.” ~ Confederate Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, May 1864 (Emphasis mine)

General Cleburne was certainly a visionary; he saw correctly what would happen if the South should succumb to the military might of the Union Army. He understood the importance of the struggle for a government that operated only with the consent of the governed. He began his service to the Confederate Army as a simple militia solder from Helena, Arkansas and rose to the rank of Major General. This native son of the Emerald Isle paid the supreme sacrifice for his beliefs in the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864. His expertise on the field of battle earned him the sobriquet, “Stonewall of the West.”