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In an Aug. 24 letter to the editor, Mark Kahn presents a revisionist view of the causes of the Civil War in arguing against removal of Confederate “heroes’” statues.
I have neither space nor time to refute his errors, and the question is rather beside the point. Whatever sparked the war, by the end it was about slavery. It’s indisputable legacy is the South lost and slavery ended.
Even if we ignore (which I cannot) the appalling decades of Jim Crow legislation, segregation, lynchings, bombings, etc. — the “Southern heritage” that these statues have come to represent — their presence is unacceptable.
Let us merely take Kahn’s own words: “What happened 153 years ago cannot be changed.”
He — a self-proclaimed historian — should know that his heroes violated their oaths “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Honoring traitors is intolerable. These statues should be removed to museums where the history can be explained.
Frederick C. Sauls, Ph.D.
Mountain Top