Paul Sassone

Do you have a hobby?

I have a hobby. I read about and study — to the best of my ability — our Civil War.

Right about now at this point in the conversation people’s eyes start to glaze over.

But, not lately. The Civil War has become a hot topic, thanks to a debate over whether to remove public statues honoring the Confederacy and Confederates.

The latest spark in the controversy came from John Kelly, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff and himself a military man. On a Fox talk show Kelly defended Robert E. Lee, saying, “He was a man that

gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country.”

Before making such a foolish and erroneous statement, all Kelly had to do would have been to open any U.S. history book written in the last 50 years to learn of thousands of Southerners who supported and fought for the Union during the Civil War.

And despite the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and many others, Kelly maintained “Lack of compromise led to the Civil War.”

Within limits, Robert E. Lee may have been a man to admire. But, does he deserve statues in his honor?

Lee said, “Slavery was greater evil to the white man than the black race … blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.”

During the war, Lee refused to exchange captured black union soldiers, saying “those belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange.” That “the Confederate government has an obligation to the owners of this species of property.”

Even after the war, Lee said, “I have observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find the white man you see everything around him improving.”

A statue to this man, and other Confederates, only salts wounds that still have not healed.

A greater man — though too optimistic — than Lee, Ulysses S. Grant said, “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 acknowledge the right of property in man.”

Thanks to people like John Kelly and the “alternate facts” foisted by Trump and Trumpites, that time that Grant prophesied has not yet arrived.

What a pity.

—Kelly, others ill-informed on Civil War–