Memorial Day

 

The Moneychanger

Monday is Memorial Day holiday in the United States when the country honors its fallen soldiers and veterans. Oddly enough, this began in the South, in May 1865 when the ladies in Columbus (some say Georgia, some Mississippi) went to decorate Southern soldiers' graves. Since they were gracious Southern ladies, they honored both their own dead and Northern dead. They understood that death ends all hostilities.

In memory of those brave Southerners who fought a Second War for Independence, I will tell y'all the story of the Army of Tennessee's retreat from the Battle of Nashville. General Bedford Forrest was charged with covering the retreat, in bitter December. When he took command, he saw that his shoeless men had bleeding feet, cut by the ice on the puddles. Out of the chaos he commandeered wagons, and put these brave soldiers in them. When they came to a place where they had to stand and fight, they rolled out of the wagons and fought like furies on bleeding feet, then remounted the wagons and rode to the next stand.

If you come South and notice on every county's courthouse lawn a statue of a Confederate soldier, that's why. In their honor in Greensboro, Georgia stands this monument: "In honor of the brave who fell defending the right of local self-government."