Sanibel Journal

This past Spring, I had the honor and pleasure of getting to know my great-great-grandfather, William McAdams, as I studied and transcribed letters that he wrote while in the Union Army during the Civil War. I frequently wonder what he’d think of things the way they are now:   how much farming has changed since his days, how big our cities have become, how quickly and easily we travel.   Except for his 3 and a half years in the Army, he stayed at home or nearby.   Home was a busy, multifaceted, yet simple farm on the prairie of central Illinois, near a town called Kansas.   William McAdams, Sr. I know that he would be perplexed, to say the least, to know that monuments to Confederate officers stand in places of honor in many public squares, and that schools and military bases are named for Confederate generals.   Throughout his letters, he referred to the enemy as “rebels,” “Secessionists,” and “Secesh.”   He considered them to be treasonous...

The removal of Confederate statues and memorials is nothing new.  This has been going on for decades.  According to Jane Dailey , associate professor of history at the University of Chicago, “Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past.  But were rather, erecting them toward a white supremacist future."  A white supremacist future goes against core American values such as liberty, equal rights, and justice.   When we decide to take down these monuments and statues, relegating them often to museums, we are deciding to uphold these core American values.   We are not erasing history; we are accurately portraying who we are as a country. Statue of Liberty, photo by Matthis Volquardsen  In America, we have a strong union, unlike the sometimes seemingly tenuous union in Europe.   Our union was forged by the Civil War – the deadliest war in our history.   Whe...