Presented at the SC Sons of Confederate Veterans’
Confederate Memorial Day Commemoration
South Carolina Statehouse, Columbia, South Carolina
03 May 2014
It is my high honour and distinct privilege to be addressing you on
this day and at this place; honouring the memory of our fathers at the
Confederate soldiers’ monument—with its sentinel ever vigilant, eyes
northward—flanked by the flag under which our sires fought.
It is a historical flag at a historically significant monument.
Anyone who is still confused about the meaning of this display is
either ignorant, dishonest, or is willing to use falsehoods to further a
political or social agenda. For some reason they believe their lives
will be improved if the memory of our fathers and their struggle for
independence is effaced from the earth. For some reason they have come
to believe the worst of us, their neighbours, who harbour no ill will
towards them.
It would take far more, however, than the removal of these memorials
to efface the memory of our fathers and our affection for them. Unlike
those who believe these symbols represent hatred, an unnatural
attachment to the past, or are the by-product of some kind of mental
deficiency they have called a “Confederacy of the Mind,” they most
assuredly are not.