To the editor:
Joe Earle recently wrote a column about a Yankee transplant named Bill Browning who has joined a Sons of Union Veterans heritage group. [“These ‘Sons’ honor the Union,” Reporter Newspapers, April 15-28.] I took offense at a transplant moving to the South and joining a Union heritage group given what Union forces did to the South.
Remember, American history books are written by the victorious North. Thus, Americans get a distorted view of the Civil War which should more accurately be called the War of Northern Aggression. The bottom line is the Southern states freely joined the Union and wanted to exercise their free will and freely leave the Union and there was nothing in the Constitution that prevented the South from leaving. Southern secession was no more treason than the 13 American colonies seceding from Britain.
In response and despite the fact that South never threatened the North, Lincoln sent savage Union troops to utterly and completely destroy the South. This was followed by waves of Yankee carpetbaggers who exploited the devastated South. The South’s devastation was so complete it gave rise to the Klu Klux Klan in the same way that a devastated Germany gave rise to the Nazis.
This set the South back at least a century. The South’s wanton destruction by the North is greatest American evil surpassing the evil of slavery and the abuse of the Native Americans. The Civil War was fought by the North, not to free the slaves, but to forcibly keep the South in the Union. This was America’s greatest act of imperialism. You will not find this truth in American history books.
- Keith Watkins