Confederate Memorial Day In Dixie By Calvin E. Johnson Jr.

 

 

Confederate Memorial Day in Dixie by Calvin E. Johnson Jr. over at Canada Free Press

 

Did you know that the first Memorial Day in America was held in the South in honor of both the soldiers of Union Blue and Confederate Gray?

 

Some folks call the War Between the States, 1861-1865, a lost cause but stories of the heroic—brave men and women who stood for Southern Independence are still cherished in the hearts and souls of many people throughout the South.

 

Why do people remember?

 

Senator Edward Ward Carmack may have said it best in 1903;

“The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history; nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the Confederate dead. We have the right to teach our children the true history of the war, the causes that led up to it and the principles involved.”

That may be why….

 

The South still remembers the men and women of the Confederate States of America who came from all races and religions that include: Cuban born Confederate Colonel Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, Irish-born General Patrick R. Cleburne, Black Confederate drummer Bill Yopp, Mexican born Colonel Santos Benavides, Cherokee Born General Stand Watie and Jewish born Confederate Nurse Phoebe Pember who was the first female administrator of Chimboraza Hospital in Richmond, Virginia where she served until the end of the war.

 

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