Confederate Memorial Day

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Happy Confederate Memorial Day!  Today is the day we honor the service of the Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War.  The tenth of May marks the end of the Civil War because Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia on this day in 1865.

The tenth of May, Confederate Memorial Day, and the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, were made regular state holidays in 2000.   This year, since May 10th is a Saturday, the holiday was scheduled for yesterday, Friday May 9.

If H-3588 were made law, yesterday the Confederate flag would have been hoisted up the flagpole on the Statehouse grounds, and there would have been a big event to watch it go up and another to watch it come down. The whole day would be a celebration of duty, sacrifice, honor, courage, and the rebirth of our great nation, the United States of America.

At the Confederate Memorial Day events, which I hope we hold next year — state legislators, please pass H-3588! — I suggest that we have people read Lee’s Farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia and Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address.

Lee Bids Farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia
After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
…
You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.
…

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
Fellow countrymen:
…
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Today we remember the “arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude” of the Confederate soldiers and all the soldiers who died in “this terrible war,” and we “strive on … to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan….”

And, with “malice toward none” and with “charity for all,” let us rejoice in the ending of slavery and in the reuniting of our country, the United States of America.

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