WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT: US Grant was Right

US Grant/ Words by F LoBuono

It's an understatement to claim that the removal of Confederate memorial statues from public spaces, primarily in the South, has become a devisive issue. And, it's understandable. Many Southerns have ancestors that fought in the war and died for what they believed was a just cause. Again, remember, most Southern soldiers were NOT slave holders. So, it's hard to tell someone that not only did their ancestor die in vain, they did so for a cause not worth memorializing.

It's also reasonable for the rest of America to want them gone. To the majority of Americans, especially those who do not live in the South, the statues are symbols of not only hate and bigotry, but treason, as well.

While I do see both points of view, I cannot support the former. Although I sympathize with the South's sense of history, their is NO place in contemporary America to memorialize such a flawed sense of duty. In other words, its damned difficult for Southerners to rap their heads around the idea that the fought so valiently against such difficult odds only to have their sacrifice wind up on the trash heap of history.

Many people consider General Ulysses S. Grant the savior of the Union. Working with President Lincoln, they devised a brilliant plan that, with GREAT sacrifice, would bring the South to its knees and preserve the Union. And, it worked. The South was defeated and reflecting Grant's terms of surrender, he became know as Unconditional Surrender Grant.

Near the end of his life, Mark Twain encouraged Grant to write his memiors and wound up publishing them - to great critical success. Within the memoir, he wrote this about his Southern opponents. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, he couldn't have been more right!

“As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.” 
― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes

Kind of says it all, don't you think? We're just waiting for the day it finally happens.