I am a Republican and have been a Republican County Chairman in two states, but if the Republican Party is going to be the party of the people, it must be the party of truth. We must avoid whitewashed versions of history. The first test of all politics should be truth.
The South was as devastated by the Un-Civil War of
1861 to 1865 as much as any nation in the annals of warfare. By the end
of the war one out of every four white men had been killed or died of
wounds or disease. Over 40 percent of private property including homes,
businesses livestock, and crops had been destroyed.
In South Carolina,
where Sherman’s men had burned the capitol city of Columbia, over 50
percent of private property was destroyed. Most of this property damage
was deliberately inflicted on the civilian population to deny the
Confederate Army the logistical means of resistance, but also to
demoralize their families and supporters at home. It was ordered in cold
calculation by Northern political and military leadership, but often
executed with self-righteous religious zeal or criminal abandon. At the
end of the war at least 50,000 homeless and displaced refugees, mostly
former slaves, died of famine and disease. Neither Christian teachings
nor modern Geneva Conventions condone such total war. Reconstruction was
an extension of that total war by political means.
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