This article first appeared in The Dallas Morning News, February 2, 2019
For over a century, monuments dedicated to Confederate icons and the Confederacy have spread lies about the cause of the Civil War. The massive building campaign of the United Daughters of the Confederacy between the 1890s and the 1930s spread the myth that Confederate leaders and soldiers had fought for a “just cause” of freedom and liberty similar to the principles and ideals of our nation’s Founding Fathers.
Moreover, Confederate monuments were symbols of the mythical “lost cause” that asserted that the values and principles for which Confederates fought a bloody Civil War were right and just. Thus, when the Confederacy lost the war, all of us lost our last opportunity to defend ourselves and to resist an oppressive federal government that continues to usurp our rights and freedoms.