Reply #18: My sentiments echo yours

[carolinayellowdog]

A few blocks from my house in one direction is the "last capital of the Confederacy," to which Jeff Davis and company fled after the fall of Richmond. A few blocks away in the other direction is a federal cemetery with more than a thousand graves of boys from Michigan, Ohio, Vermont, and every other northern state. They died not in battle but from disease and starvation in the Confederate prisons here. Nothing to be proud of around here regarding the Civil War; only a legacy of folly and shame. That of does not dawn on of those who glorify the memory of the greatest disaster ever to befall Virginia, and those who made it inevitable. Virginia was the only state literally and permanently divided by the war, the state that experienced the greatest destruction of property and reputation. More of my Southern CW veteran ancestors fought for the Union than for the Confederacy and this is true of many millions in the Upper South. The way McDonnell "honored" the Confederacy dishonors descendants of all Virginians who were enslaved in 1860, as well as descendants of all Virginians who supported the Union, fought and died to save it.