Confederate Memorial Day

Today is the official Alabama, Florida, and Georgia Confederate Memorial Day, being the fourth monday in April. The date is based upon the surrender of Confederate General Johnston to U.S. General Sherman. Confederate Memorial Day is actually cited as an official holiday in the Alabama Constitution, Section 1-3-8(a).

The accepted history of the War Between the States is that the South was wrong and the North was right, the North won- end of story. It isn't nearly that simple. [Disclaimer: Before I say anything, I don't encourage anyone to resurrect the Confederacy and begin a rebellion, and I am not a racist. Slavery is wrong, a breach of basic human rights, whether practiced on white-skinned people, dark-skinned people, or people that have green skin with pink polka dots. There is only one race, descended from Adam and Eve.]

The South was not fighting simply to preserve slavery, although it was a Southern and not Northern interest. The South was fighting for several reasons, all a result of the fact that the South and the North had become distinctly different sections, with conflicting cultures and interests; the two sections were battling over control of the government to prevent the other from legislating them to death- and the South was losing. The War Between the States was in great part a result of a malfunction of the Constitution. Nobody, and no section, should have been battling for control anyway.

There were many godly men in the South, and there was a great revival in the Southern army. J. William Jones, Chaplain General to the Army of Northern Virginia, in Christ in the Camp, calls that Army "the noblest army (I hesitate not to confirm, after the lapse of years) that ever marched under any banner or fought for any cause 'in all the tide of time'." Also "But any history of that army which omits an account of the wonderful influence of religion upon it- which fails to tell how the courage, discipline, and morale of the whole was influenced by the humble piety and evangelical zeal of many of its officers and men- would be incomplete and unsatisfactory."

There is much more to the Confederacy than first meets the eye. There are many good books and tapes regarding the War Between the States that will paint a full, accurate picture of the Confederacy- of its godly officers and soldiers, and the actual situation that took place, as opposed to what is generally taught and believed. Today is a memorial to those men who fought, and often died, fighting for the Confederate States of America.

Robert E. Lee

Stonewall Jackson