Dear Ms. Lunelle,
How soon they forget. Fox News and their cohorts, and so many like them, have a double standard. They cry and wail about how demonic Hamas terrorists rape and kill when they came into Israel. But in literally the same breath, they extoll the so-called virtues of Abraham Lincoln and his righteous war and refuse to acknowledge the parallels. My Yankee friends need to look back in time and recall that we Southerners endured this same behavior at the hands of our own neighbors.
After Lincoln issued his "Total Warfare Policy" to Grant and Sherman, the Army of the Potomac did as he ordered; he took the theater of war to the front door of defenseless old men, women and children of the South. They burned down structures, they looted and stole, and raped Southern girls, little boys and women (old and young) and they murdered without cause. It was so bad in Athens, Alabama, that when his own men reported Union Col. John Turchin for turning a blind eye on the activities of his thugs including burning bibles and raping a slave and a pregnant woman. But when Lincoln received the report, instead of receiving punishment, he was promoted to General. Lincoln continued his evil, barbaric total war policy from his telegraph office to perpetrate more war crimes on the Southern people.
At the end of the War General Robert E. Lee continued to call for reconciliation. Many of his men would don the uniform of the Yankee blue and so distinguish themselves in the Spanish-American War. This, during the time when White Yankees and their US Colored Troops were being buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and former Confederate Veterans were not allowed to be burial there.
President McKinley jumped at the opportunity to try and lead the nation towards reconciliation by rewarding these men of the South whose meritorious services had led the Nation to victory. He asked the United Daughters of the Confederacy if would they build a Reconciliation Memorial to this Charge.
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