My great-grandfather was drafted and served four years. When he finally got home, he found that his wife had died and his father killed. Life was no picnic for some of our ancestors, in the middle of a war and aftermath they weren't responsible for.

My father, among other things, was a local historian and writer. Born in 1908, he heard many first-hand accounts of the war and conditions afterwards. According to him, the North was not exactly blameless, although our re-written history usually doesn't mention that. He said that, at least at the beginning, the Civil War was largely about commercial disputes between North and South. The South was raising and selling cotton and tobacco to England; the North wouldn't pay a fair price to buy Southern cotton for their mills. Of course, slavery was essential to the South’s crop production—there's no disputing the horrible realities of that system.

My white ancestors, who lived in the secluded Appalachians, had hard, often backbreaking lives. They had no slaves and couldn't afford them anyway. And relatively few black people lived in that area. When I was a child in the 50s, our way of life was about a generation behind that in cities. For example, my parents had no electricity until about 1950 and no indoor plumbing until 1956. Throughout my life, whenever I'd hear people 40 years older than me talk about their lives growing up, well, they were very similar to mine.

I guess my point is that I have very mixed feelings about all of this Charlottesville stuff. I'm not at all happy about our current national administration—in fact, I find what's happening in Washington very frightening. And I certainly don't support the white supremacists. But I really hate to see history twisted and revised. Our kids and grandkids are watching and listening. I don't want them to grow up feeling they're wrong if they're different, thinking that everybody is and must be the same in every way (not just in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of God), being judged if they don't always use politically correct language, and yes, disrespecting Southern generals who, from all accounts, were honorable men. I like the quotation from Orwell that another poster used—chilling!

I'd like to hear Dr. James (Bud) Robertson's viewpoint on all of this. I've met him (friend of my in-laws) but never heard him speak. Does anyone know what he thinks?

Just my two cents.

[Post edited by Mama Goose at 08/16/2017 10:29AM]