CALLING ALL MONUMENT SUPPORTERS

The South's Defenders Memorial Monument
LONG MAY IT STAND!
(Photo by M.D. Jones)

There will be a special meeting of the Lake Charles City Council at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 28, in City Council chambers on the first floor of City Hall in the Pioneer Building in Lake Charles, La. to consider a resolution to the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury to remove The South's Defender's Memorial Monument in Lake Charles. The city council has no authority to remove the monument and it has no business telling Calcasieu Parish Police Jurors what to do. Hopefully the majority of the city council will see this is a divisive and wrong-headed resolution and will reject it. All monument supporters are encouraged to attend the meeting to let their opinions be heard.
     The South's Defenders Memorial Monument was put up in a spirit of reconciliation, peace and unity as all the speeches, records, and documents show. The monument has always stood for honoring fallen soldiers and veterans and nothing else. It has never stood for slavery, racism, white supremacy, etc. -- that is all misinterpretation and misinformation. In addition, many local families are descendants of the soldiers who shed their blood and some lost their lives defending Calcasieu Parish and their ancestors deserve recognition as much as veterans of other wars. In addition, many Southern soldiers, black and white, have defended this parish, state and nation and it would be a terrible precedent to tear down any war memorial honoring veterans. This honorable war memorial has been part of the Lake Charles landscape for 105-years. It is in exactly the right place.
     In addition, the local Confederate company raised here in Lake Charles by Captain James W. Bryan --  who became the first mayor of Lake Charles -- was nicknamed the Calcasieu Tigers and was Company I of the 28th (29th) Louisiana Infantry Regiment. Captain Bryan personally enlisted a free black man into the company, Pvt. Jean Baptiste Pierre Auguste, who  served honorably throughout the war, was wounded in action at the Siege of Vicksburg, and after the war received a Confederate pension from the state of Louisiana. That fact is well documented and The South's Defender Memorial Monument represents veterans of all races.
      The monument is in the right place, stands for the right things, and should be left right where it is. Long may it stand!
      If you'd like to express your support for the monument, please call the Mayor's Action Line at 337 491-1346. LONG MAY THE SOUTH'S DEFENDERS MEMORIAL MONUMENT STAND!

Pro-Monument Letters

There are some outstanding letters to the editor defending The South's Defenders Memorial Monument in today's, July 19, edition of the Lake Charles, La. American Press edition. I counted 7 pro-monument letters to just two anti-monument. We are also approaching 6,000 visits to our monument defense web site since June, and well over 6,000 to my personal blog, The South's Defenders, which incidentally has over 262,000 visits over the entire history of the blog. I think these numbers indicate the Public of Calcasieu Parish has rallied to the defense of the monument. In addition, there is a great feature article in today's American a life-member of Capt. J.W. Bryan Camp 1390, SCV, in Lake Charles, Dr. Elwi n Cavin, M.D., noting his 100th birthday on July 28. The article concentrates on his outstanding World War II record in combat in the Pacific theater. He is the camp's very last World War II veteran. The article says anyone wishing to send him a 100th birthday card can mail them to 3142 St. Andrews Drive, Lake Charles, La. 70605.

Here are two of the Pro-Monument letters to the newspaper, both outstanding:

Toppling Confederate statues now a mob sport

Immense was the Confederate warrior’s sacrifice. About 300,000 died when the region’s population was only nine million. If today The United States were to suffer proportional casualties, losses would total 11 million — 26 times greater than in World War II.

Given such loss, the Confederate soldier’s surviving family members wanted to memorialize him. Federal occupation troops observed Southern women spreading flowers upon the graves of their husbands, sons and brothers. A year after the war the ladies of Columbus, Miss., strewed flowers on the graves of both the Confederate and Union dead in the town cemetery.

Their gesture started a movement that spread and May 30th was selected as National Memorial Day in 1868.

Impoverished by war, with no money, Southern ladies could only lay down flowers. Union veterans initially opposed Confederate memorials, but when the Sons of Confederate Veterans eagerly joined the U.S. Army to win the Spanish-American War, the aging Union soldiers saw their former rivals again as Americans, who deserved memorial recognition.

Thus, the 20 years from 1898 to 1918 witnessed the installation of 80 percent of the many signature courthouse square Confederate statues in Southern towns. During that period, the typical surviving Confederate soldiers aged from 58 to 78. Memorial placements — North and South — surged between

1911 and 1915 because it was the war’s semi-centennial and the old soldiers were fading away.

Removing, even toppling Confederate statues is now a mob sport, with impunity for the vandals. Such conduct, requiring the bravery of kicking a puppy, we may wonder what comes next.

Even statues of Columbus, Presidents Wilson and McKinley have been attacked. Anti-statue activists behave like the leaders of the former Soviet Union, where censorship and rewritten history was done to ensure that the correct political spin was put on their history.

George Orwell warned, “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

Michael S. Fuselier, Ragley

Historical ignorance apparent concerning war

Julius Caesar said, “The winning side will write history,” and Napoleon said, “History is just a collection of myths and lies that men have agreed upon” — and so it is with the current historical ignorance concerning the War for Southern Independence. On June 14, 2020, Mr. Brandon Shoumaker cited two common, and completely baseless and false claims — one accusing the UDC and SCV of “white-washing” the causes of the war; the other claiming there were no Black Confederate soldiers.

Most of the “Revisionist History” has come from the North and Socialist Left to try and make their illegal and unjust war sound noble and/or heroic. The slavery issue was indeed one cause, but probably would be No. 4 or No. 5 out of the 10 main issues; and mainly concerned the expansion, enforcing fugitive laws, preventing Northern Abolitionists from inciting slave revolts, how to count them, etc., and not in freeing them.

Lincoln said several times “he had no authority to free the slaves, nor do I have any inclination to do so.” Four times he declared in the war proclamations and to Congress his sole reason for waging war was the “collection of taxes and revenues” that were lost when the 11 Southern states seceded. Never did he say the war was to end slavery. He more than once offered the states a guarantee on keeping the institution unfettered, if the states would just return to the Union; and, of course, “pay their back taxes and revenue due to the government.” The “war to end slavery” justification didn’t start to be pushed until nearly 20 years after the war.

Why do the very first to claim and believe the government lied to them about Vietnam, WMD in Iraq, 9/11, etc., refuse to even consider that they may have been lied to about the war?

As to being there “no Black Confederate soldiers,” don’t just take the SCV’s or my word for it, look to the writings of Dr. Leonard Haynes III, former president of Southern University, Grambling University and American College, and for many years now a prominent educator who has held high positions in the U.S. Department of Education under several presidents. Look to notable men of the day such as Frederick Douglas and Horace Greeley who both wrote and spoke on “Black soldiers in the ranks, with a rifle on their shoulder, and bullets in their pockets.” Check out the surviving local newspaper accounts as Lee’s army was marching through Maryland and Pennsylvania and people were aghast seeing “Black soldiers in uniform with muskets intermingled in the ranks.”

Better yet, do some research in “The Official Record of the War of the Rebellion” published by the federal government. Read the After Action Battle Reports from the Union officers in combat against both Black units and racially integrated ones. Yes, many were slaves, but many were not; and many were not in combat roles (as were many whites), but their service was just as important and necessary as the infantryman in conducting a war. Some studies have put the total at over 70,000, with some being from here in Southwest Louisiana.

If you want to know the truth, quit getting your history from Wikipedia or other biased liberal left websites that hide the truth because it doesn’t fit their narrative, or goal of destroying this great country.

The South’s Defenders Monument was erected for the 50th anniversary of the war’s end. It was erected to honor the sacrifices made by these men who answered the call to arms by their state and their parish; not as aggressors but as defenders. It was not erected to commemorate the CSA or slavery. The Confederate Battle Flag that has become so despised, was the one chosen by these old vets to be remembered for their deeds and sacrifices, not the flag of the Confederate States of America that was dead and gone. The Battle Flag flew over the first integrated army in our country, where Black soldiers received full and equal pay with their white comrades in arms, and weren’t being used as cannon fodder while receiving half-pay as they were in the segregated Union Army which existed until 1948.

Gordon D. Simmons, Lake Charles

2You and Kevin Adkins

SAVE THE SOUTH'S DEFENDERS MEMORIAL MONUMENT

Monument should not be linked to politics

     THERE ARE some things that should be off-limits to politics, like historic monuments honoring local war dead.

     One of those caught up in a political dispute is Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana’s 105-year-old courthouse monument which honors war dead – who by chance wore gray uniforms in this nation’s most tragic war.

      The South’s Defenders Memorial Monument is being caught up in a nationwide rampage of destruction by radical left-wing mobs intimidated local officials, and in some states, the governors.

       This is the third time spiteful people and groups have tried to get it removed and destroyed. They have convinced Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter, a Republican, to support their campaign, although he claims he doesn’t want it destroyed. Maybe so, but he is still supporting their malicious effort to destroy its meaning and make it something shameful and that those fallen soldiers were traitors. That is just as bad or worse than physically destroying this honorable war memorial.

        All historical documents associated with the monument show, it was dedicated in 1915—the 50^th anniversary year of the nation’s bloodiest conflict in American history—the War Between the States. It was a tribute to Calcasieu Parish war dead and the common soldier, not the Confederate government. Both Union and Confederate veterans took part in the dedication ceremony, and the Union soldiers were thanked by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the group that raised the money for it, for the emancipation of the nation.

        The theme of the dedication was national reconciliation, peace, and unity. There is no racist intention at all in this beautiful monument. It consists of a bronze statue of a young color bearer stepping forward. It stands on a tall marble column and the magnificent seven-tiered marble base is flanked on either side by marble cannonballs. It is an exquisite work of art and sculpture that is an important element of the manicured 1912 Calcasieu Parish Courthouse lawn. To tear that down and possibly destroy it, under such false and shameful circumstances, would be a disgrace to all Southwest Louisiana. Is that the way Louisianians treat its honored war dead?

        Like other monuments dedicated all across this country, it was part of the nation’s healing process. That is why the local monument is historically significant in its own right. Clearly, there was no ill-will or political intent of any kind in the raising of this monument.

        Most citizens of goodwill, black and white, Northerner and Southerner, alike, know the difference between a proper symbol of our history and an improper one.

        To tear down, and possibly destroy, this historic war memorial is to say the Calcasieu men who died in that war did not live, did not suffer, and did not leave widows, orphans and thousands of descendants that feel the agonizing loss that only family members can understand.

         The South’s Defenders Memorial Monument does not represent a nation, a cause, or even a war. It only symbolizes our own tragic loss in the most difficult part of our history. And the healing of a nation once divided by war.

          It pays tribute to the common soldier, who had very little choice in the matter, in much the same way the Vietnam Veterans Memorial honors the fallen of another unpopular war.

          If this community starts tearing down, or neglecting, historic monuments every time the political winds change, no monuments and no heroes will be safe in the future.

          Let’s put politics aside and leave the magnificent The South’s Defenders Memorial Monument standing proudly on the most historically significant landscape at the 1912 Calcasieu Parish Courthouse.

          Please contact your Calcasieu Parish Police Juror and tell him to not move The South’s Defenders Memorial Monument https://www.calcasieuparish.gov/government/police-jury/police-jurors.

New Book on Randal's Texas Infantry Brigade in the War for Southern Independence

This is the history of one of the finest bodies of Confederate infantry in the War for Southern Independence.
     General Kirby Smith and Lieutenant General Richard Taylor considered Randal's Texas Brigade to be one of the finest infantry brigades in the Trans-Mississippi Department.
     The brigade was principally made up of the 11th Texas Infantry, 14th Texas Infantry, 28th Texas Cavalry (Dismounted), and the 6th Battalion Texas Cavalry (Dismounted).
     It fought in the major Trans-Mississippi Department battles, in all or part, including the Battle of Bayou Bourbeau, the Battle of Mansfield, The Battle of Pleasant Hill, and the Battle of Jenkin's Ferry.
     The men of Randal's Texas Brigade play a major roll in keeping Texas largely free from kind of destruction inflicted on other Confederate states.
     Author: Michael Dan Jones, photographs, maps, illustration, footnotes, bibliography, index.

• Paperback: 181 pages
• Publisher: Independently published (May 17, 2020)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 979-8639054648
• ASIN: B088VX3HWG
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Click here for more information

CALCASIEU GREYS April 2020

Click Here for the April 2020 Calcasieu Greys


CONFEDERATE IMAGE OF THE MONTH

Lt. Charles Welhausen, Creuzbaur's Battery, 5th Texas Light Artillery
Fought in the Battle of Calcasieu Pass, May 8, 1864

Fighting for Southern Independence: A History of the 13th Louisiana Infantry

     The 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiment was made up of a cross-section of New Orleans society, French Creoles, Irish immigrants, and wealthy plantation owners. It fought in some of the largest and bloodiest battles of the War Between the Station. Now its story is told in a new regimental history, Fighting for Southern Independence: A History of the 13th Louisiana Infantry.
     It was led by an outstanding Louisianian, Randall Lee Gibson, both as a colonel and brigadier general. Gibson had no military education or experience, but he was a brilliant man, fast-learner and an innate warrior who was an outstanding citizen-soldier. He was a brave and wise leader who had the ability to stay cool in battle and made good decisions under pressure.
     Two-thirds of the regiment was made up of companies from the former Avenegno Zouaves, who gained notoriety for their flashy Zouave uniforms and aggressive style of fighting. Three other companies were predominantly hard fighting Irish immigrants. The only non-New Orleans company was from St. Mary Parish parish, which was made up of young men of rural and agricultural backgrounds. Despite their differences, they became a solid band of brothers who were welded together in the fiery trial of combat.
      They fought in such famous battles as Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga. They also fought throughout the epic Atlanta Campaign of 1864, including the battles of Resaca, Ezra Church, Lookout Mountain, Atlanta, Missionary Ridge, and Jonesboro. The 13th Louisiana finished up the war taking part in the epic Siege of Spanish Fort at Mobile, Alabama. They had a record to be proud of that is written large in the pages of history.
       The book contains 295 pages and includes photographs, illustrations, maps, footnotes, bibliography, and index. It also has an annotated roster of over 1,300 men who served in the regiment during the war. The book is $15.95, paperback, and is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

     

Robert E. Lee Centennial Celebration, 1907

Note: The following speech is taken from The Spirit of the South: Orations, Essays and Lectures, by Colonel William Henry Stewart (New York and Washington, 1908), pp. 98–102.

EULOGY ON GENERAL LEE

[An address before the United Daughters of the Confederacy, January 19, 1901.]

MRS. PRESIDENT, PORTSMOUTH CHAPTER, U.D.C., AND THEIR FRIENDS:

The centuries have given many men to measure up to the standard of greatness; many men worthy of a place in the temple of fame; many men of prodigious valor; many of thrilling chivalry; many of brilliant intellectual attainments; many of splendid virtues; but, as I see, no single character is or has been so deeply loved by the people whom he served, and few more generally admired by the world, than Robert Edward Lee. His very name is inspiration to the hearts of Southerners; his conduct a model for their children; his great goodness like a ceaseless prayer for their welfare.

General Lee was great and good, brilliant and modest, humble and true, faithful to his God and fellows. His life is a picture of love and beauty; and all his actions from youth to old age were infused with the highest ideals of duty. No considerations could turn him from its path; no inducements could swerve his inflexible devotion to truth.

Lt. Col. William Henry Stewart

A cavalier ancestor of the eleventh century left him lessons of true pride, honor, self-sacrifice, and generous nature, and a father like “Light Horse Harry” gave a light, which must have in a measure guided his conduct.

Robert E. Lee was born on January 19, 1807, in the same house and same room in which Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, two signers of the Declaration of Independence, were born.

It might be said that he inherited honor and fame; nevertheless, he held them not as an idler's toy, but applied his vigorous energies and imperial intellect to emulate his forefathers in all their courageous, virtuous, and noble characteristics.

He commenced his boyhood in the line of meritorious manhood. When he entered West Point he took the head of his class and held it until he was graduated in 1829, never having received a demerit or reprimand during his term there. He entered upon the duties of an army officer with the highest honor of his military school, and afterward, in the fiery rush of battle, held fast to his attainment and was thrice brevetted for gallant and meritorious conduct in the Mexican war.

He served thirty years in the United States army, and was considered by all officers, almost without exception, to be, by many degrees, the most accomplished soldier in the service.

The commander-in-chief, General Winnfield Scott, entertained such an opinion of him, and said: “Lee is the greatest military genius in America.”

He undoubtedly stood highest on the military record of the United States army when Virginia seceded. Had rank, self-aggrandizement, success and wealth been his dream of life, he would have remained in the old army.

All the allurements of power and place a mighty nation could tender were in the request to unsheathe his sword as commander-in-chief of Lincoln's armies. But the metal of the man was not poured in that mold which turns out the creature for the dazzling equipments of success at the sacrifice of honor. No place could win and no power could tempt him from that path of duty which led him to draw his sword for Virginia.

Here is mighty character unfolded itself to the world, and it stood the test under every condition.

General Lee was high in the opinion of the people, and their expectations were great when he was ordered to command the defeated army of the slain Garnett; but he failed to retrieve the disasters in western Virginia, and the indignation of the inconsiderate pubic arose against him as the cruel blasts of a destructive cyclone.

His military reputation fell as fevered mercury on Arctic ice, and popular prejudice retired him to the list of inefficient officers. Had its verdict held, no great general, no illustrious military leader, no loved hero for the South, would be personified in Robert E. Lee.

But the hand which guided the helm of the Confederacy knew the man, and the fickle public could not deter or restrain its judgment. Therein was the manhood and statesmanship of Jefferson Davis. He deserves a monument from the South by every consideration of patriotism and justice.

Say what you may of President Davis, we owe to him the rescue of our beloved Lee from the merciless oblivion of unjust and cruel public opinion. Mr. Davis leaves us a great lesson of charity, to restrain our prejudices and govern our judgment. The hero and the man were there, although the shadows of pitiless night concealed the majestic form.

After General Joseph E. Johnson was incapacitated by wounds at Seven Pines, Jefferson Davis made Robert E. Lee commander of the army in spite of misfortune. There began a career so brilliant as to entitle him to be classed with the greatest generals on the lists of renown.

He took but one week to defeat McClellan's great army, relieve the siege of Richmond, and reinstall himself as the best loved hero in all the South. Then followed in the course of time the great battles of Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, in which his matchless leadership thrilled the world.

But perhaps the true greatness of the man was more vividly displayed after his surrender at Appomattox, when he said; “ I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.“

Lord Wolseley said: “I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mold and made of different and finer metal than all other men. He is stamped upon my memory as a being apart and superior to all others in every way, a man with whom none I ever knew and very few of whom I have read are worthy to be classed.”

Modesty, gentleness, simplicity, benevolence and Christian humility added to Robert E. Lee's military genius made him the man whom the South prizes as its individual and national exemplar.

Notwithstanding international edict and national law, to all of which I yield perfect obedience, there is and will be a national South in the hearts of her true people; and may God let it live, because it symbolizes chivalry, truth, honor, pride, patience, and self-abnegation, as the life of Robert E. Lee exemplified; not only by our estimation, but by that of the London Standard: “A country which has given birth to men like him, and those who followed him, may look the chivalry of Europe in the face without shame, for the fatherlands of Sidney and Bayard never produced a nobler soldier, gentleman, and Christian than General Robert E. Lee.”

And the honor of his birthday by the Daughters of the Confederacy must stimulate the virtues of the people, enkindle the patriotism of the men, and make these noble women sponsors of Christian knighthood in our Southland.