Part of Trimble’s Brigade, the 12th Georgia held part of Jackson’s line in front of the Dunker Church during the morning Union attacks atAntietamSharpsburg. Captain James Rodgers, commanding the 12th, was struck dead by bullets that hit his hand, thigh, and head. This battle flag of the 12th Georgia includes the names of several color bearers who were killed during the tremendous fighting on the morning of September 17, 1862.
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Henry Bacon McKoy was the nephew of Henry Bacon, Illinois native and architect of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The former was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and served as an engineer on the memorial; he was also a partner in the Morris-McKoy firm that built Furman University’s Sirrine Shrine Stadium in 1936. McKoy wrote the following letter to the editor in the late 1960s.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
The Confederate Flag and Dixie:
“Editor of the Greenville News, Greenville, S.C.
Dear Sir,
I
see great changes made every day. Nations fall, former things thought
miracles are commonplace. Heroes are toppled. The road I travel is
suddenly forked into a hundred different directions. Religions become
questionable and faith a myth.
But
little did I think that I should live to see the day when a group of
students at the University of South Carolina would advocate a ban on the
playing of “Dixie” and the display of the Confederate Flag.
Or,
that I would have ever thought it advisable to add dignity and
recognition to such a movement, by opposing it. Millions have admired
and loved all that the Confederate Flag has stood for and all that
“Dixie” meant to the hearts and aspirations of a defeated people.
Only
because of ignorance and misunderstanding, and a hate that has recently
been engendered by those who are capable of nothing higher, is the
Confederate Flag and what it stood for, and Dixie – in thought or words
ever considered to degrade or belittle the Negroes.
The
South lost greatly in its youth and the best of its men and future
leaders, and its wealth, and it has taken a hundred years to partially
recover their loss. Their defeat they accepted. There remained, however,
honor, integrity, honesty, truth and God. These the South took and
engraved them on their hearts and minds and allowed the Confederate Flag
to become a symbol of all the good they believed in.
Christians
honor the cross, not as a fetish, not for its value, but for what it
represents in their hearts. They object to its desecration because in
doing so one attempts to destroy what it stands for.
The
Negro was not the cause of the Confederate War, but “The Excuse” for a
war of aggression and conquest. It has been claimed the reason, and like
Hitler’s LIE – told so often, that it finally became to be thought the
truth.
It
seems wrong to me that the Confederate Flag and Dixie should need any
defense on my part – it doesn’t. But if I and others stand silent while
this attack is being made, then our uninformed young and our ignorant
youths will think that we agree and accept this lie, and that we are
ashamed to answer it. A thousand facts and records substantiate my
words.
I
condemn this movement and the thoughts behind it. Out of sight are the
communists who are attacking everything that is sacred – that is right –
that is true.
Henry B. McKoy”
(Second Thoughts and Talks, Henry Bacon McKoy, 1975, pp. 63-64)
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