Finally, I'm catching up on the dates. Edward Sebesta's April 25 entry quotes from another United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine (March 1959) called "Why the South Honors Lee and Jackson."
Let's be clear: the Confederate idolators "honored" Stonewall Jackson, not Andrew Jackson.
And why? The article explains:
Robert E. Lee was a man who rejected personal opportunity to accept the difficult task of serving his state. He did so because of deep conviction. He believed in the Constitution and the reservation of powers to the states and the people. General Lee was a man who strongly opposed secession and was eager for the end of slavery. He was a gentle man who fought for his homeland because he believed in the principles of fundamental constitutional government.
Robert E. Lee was also a man who rejected his oath to the United States and its Army to join the armed revolt to destroy the United States of America. If he believed in the Constitution, leading an army to destroy it was quite a peculiar way to show it. If Lee opposed secession, he shouldn't have joined it. And this idea that Lee was "eager for the end of slavery" is not only false, it shows how little the Confederate idolator who penned the article cared for the real history of the South. He may have been a gentle man in his personal relationships. But the "homeland" for which he fought in the Civil War was not the America that he pledged to support in his oath to the Army; Lee's conception of Southern honor did not include honoring that pledge to his country.
The writer is undoubtedly correct, however, in speculating on what the roles of Lee and Stonewall Jackson would have been on segregation in the 1950s:
Who can deny that Lee and Jackson in this modern day would be standing with their, feet firmly planted on conviction, with Christian morality and dedication to the established Constitution, determined to use every legal means possible to thwart usurpation that threatens to tear our nation asunder and destroy freedom by destroying the Constitution?
In that, at least, they were "honoring" the real Lee and Stonewall Jackson. What follows is more obtuse segregationist prose about states rights. It was some measure of good fortune for the supporters of democracy in the 1950s that the segregationists so often defended their cause with such turgid writing.
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