Hey Steve, thought-provoking essay. You write about important issues with a clear-eyed honesty and deceptively simple precision .

I am a combat veteran, so I do feel a certain amount of kinship affinity to the plight of any soldier caught up in any conflict. That said, I agree with you that there is a moral reckoning those trying to find pride in Confederate heritage just cannot avoid.

My family has two ancestors that we know of--my great-something-grandfathers--who fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union. Both died early in the war. One was a decent man who loved his wife, was elected Executive Officer of his Illinois volunteer regiment, and took a cannon ball to the chest. The other was a small town newspaper publisher who ran off to war, leaving his wife with significant debts to deal with; he died of one of the rampant sicknesses that constantly swept through the military camps on both sides. Is one a "hero" and the other a "villain?" I don't know. But they were on the right side of history with no mental gymnastics needed to justify their service.

I'm not a southerner, but I've lived in Georgia, Missouri, and Texas and have seen the kinds of contortions you write about that the otherwise very nice people there go through to justify pride in a heritage that to me just cannot be decoupled from systematic, structural pervasive racism in general and more specifically the service given to the defense of the institution that was the moral abomination of slavery. As you noted, they at the time made the wrong choice. Those now trying to take ownership of the parsed "good" parts need to also own the "bad."

Hope you're doing well!