Let’s Celebrate Confederate History Month

Well then again maybe not exactly.

The latest misstep from the “moderate” Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell. On Friday the governor’s office issued a seven paragraph declaration that called for Virginia’s to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” (More on that in a moment.)

In this document there absolutely no mention of slavery at all. McDonnell said Tuesday that he included issues that he thought were the most “significant” to Virginia. The idea behind the proclamation was to promote tourism as we near the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

Now a little history on this proclamation. From the Post:

McDonnell had quietly made the proclamation Friday by placing it on his Web site, but it did not attract attention in the state capital until Tuesday. April also honors child abuse prevention, organ donations, financial literacy and crime victims.

It seems to me the idea was to try and sneak this past everyone. Post it on a Friday. Post it on a Friday that just happens to be Good Friday. Post it so it will attract as little attention as possible. I have to assume it didn’t attract any attention until Tuesday is because many people took a long weekend for Easter. I also assume that this is exactly what the McConnel administration had in mind. To make sure people didn’t notice but that didn’t happen.

And since the shit has hit the fan, the proclamation has been amended to include slavery. McDonnell admitting “a major omission.” Yeah you can say that one again.

Here are a couple of points from a column by Robert McCartney in the Post:

It said they “fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth.” It urged reflection on their “sacrifices.” It implied it was too bad they were “ultimately overwhelmed” by the North’s “insurmountable” resources.

Nowhere did the original statement condemn or even acknowledge the fact that the South was fighting primarily to defend a society based on slavery, as the Confederacy’s own leaders said at the time. It neglected to mention that the state joined the Lost Cause without consulting the one-fourth of Virginians in bondage because of their race.

This brings me back to trying to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” These people rebelled against their country. The leaders were well, no two ways about it, traitors to this country. And that's a sacrifice I'm not interesting in understanding.