Free Republic

President Abraham Lincoln receives a telegram from General Sherman stating "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won"

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (WNCN) - An Orange County chocolate shop owner is an unlikely voice in what’s turning out to be a high stakes game of free speech – and he is showing no signs of backing down. Matthew Shepherd says almost every Saturday a group gathers outside his chocolate shop in downtown Hillsborough waving Confederate flags. “They were calling me names, they’re calling everybody names,” Shepherd said. “They’re instigating, they’re poking, they’re blocking the sidewalk.”

NORFOLK A Circuit Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit by activists that attempted to force the city to move its 112-year-old Confederate monument. In an 11-page order entered Tuesday, Chief Judge Mary Jane Hall said the plaintiffs failed to prove that their constitutional rights were being violated by the continued placement of the Confederate monument. The suit was filed in late March by Roy Perry-Bey, from Newport News, and Ronald Green, who lives in Norfolk. The men represented themselves. They argued that the display of the monument endorsed ideas such as secession, slavery, racial segregation, white supremacy and violence and...

SPRINGFIELD — Country rock band Confederate Railroad has been barred from performing at an Illinois state fair because of its use of the Confederate flag, setting off a firestorm by southern Illinois fans who believe they’re under Chicago liberals’ thumb of political correctness. The band was scheduled to appear Aug. 27 at the DuQuoin State Fair , but Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration canceled the appearance last week. “This administration’s guiding principle is that the state of Illinois will not use state resources to promote symbols of racism,” Pritzker spokeswoman Emily Bittner said. “Symbols of hate cannot and will not represent...

The 2019 Civil War Days might be the last hosted by the Lake County Forest Preserves after the district president questioned the appropriateness of the annual commemoration that features the Confederate flag. President Angelo Kyle said he would prefer to focus on environmental issues such as climate change. In 2015, the district staged Civil War Days shortly after South Carolina removed the battle flag from its Capitol. At the time, forest preserves officials said Confederate flags were not being displayed inappropriately and were used in a historical context. Kyle, who is African American, said that history is written by the...

Almost 100 years after Confederate sympathizers named a major Virginia road after the president of their lost cause, Arlington County won approval from a state transportation board to rename Jefferson Davis Highway. The Commonwealth Transportation Board voted unanimously Wednesday morning to allow Arlington to change the name of the road — commonly known as Route 1 — to Richmond Highway by Oct. 1, after lobbying by the county, legislators, business and residential groups, and Gov. Ralph Northam (D). “What we just heard, through the unanimous vote and the words of the governor, is it’s past time,” said Christian Dorsey (D),...

Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan. What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast an event as that war to one cause is to show contempt for the complexities of history as a quest for the understanding of human action. Two generations ago, most perceptive historians, much more learned than the current crop, said...

House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Sunday offered a sharp rejoinder to President Trump’s lauding of Robert E. Lee as a “great general,” noting that Trump “always said that he hated losers.” “The fact of the matter is, Robert E. Lee was a great tactician,” Clyburn said on ABC News’s “This Week,” then added, “Was not a great person. Robert E. Lee was a slave owner and a brutal slave master. Thankfully, he lost that war. And I find it kind of interesting that the president is now glorifying a loser. He always said that he hated losers....

JUST IN: A Virginia judge in Charlottesville has ruled that the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues in the city are Civil War Memorials and protected by law

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on Thursday called for the removal of a 50-foot arch at Fort Monroe that honors the former president of the Confederacy - two months after a blackface scandal nearly ended his time in office. The Daily Press reported that Northam's office presented a letter to the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees supporting removal of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Arch, which was built near to where the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia some 400 years ago. The board's eight members voted unanimously for the structure's removal, though this is likely to be a long process...

The country music legend and civil rights leader Daisy Gatson Bates will replace controversial Civil War figures The times are changing, and so is the marble. Arkansas is leaving behind statues of the old guard and sending a few new faces to the U.S. Capitol. Civil rights icon Daisy Gatson Bates and musician Johnny Cash will join the Statuary Hall collection in D.C., replacing 19th-century attorney Uriah Milton Rose and statesman James Paul Clarke. The governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, made the plan official by signing a bill last week. Both Rose and Clarke were political figures during the Civil...

The Hall of Fame recently dedicated at New York Uni­versity was conceived from the Ruhmes Halle in Bavaria. This structure on University Heights, on the Harlem river, in the borough of the Bronx, New York City, has, or is in­tended to have, a panel of bronze with other mementos for each of one hundred and fifty native-born Americans who have been deceased at least ten years, and who are of great character and fame in authorship, education, science, art, soldiery, statesmanship, philanthropy, or in any worthy un­dertaking. Fifty names were to have been chosen at once; but, on account of...

Editor's note: This column was authored by Ross Marchand.To say the least, America has a complicated relationship with its past. Hundreds of Confederate monuments dot town squares, mountains, and prominently-placed paintings, and recent tussles show we still have no idea how to deal with them. Dallas’s Confederate War Memorial (near City Hall) was recently deemed by the City Council as “non-contributing to the historic overlay district” in which it resides, and will probably be removed soon—at a cost of half-a-million dollars. Soon, one of Winston-Salem’s most prominent Confederate statues will also come down, amidst “public safety” concerns cited by Mayor...

I am not sure if Daily Wire is allowed to be placed in FR. Here is a comment directed to Alyssa Milano

A billboard with Confederate symbols is raising the question of basic decency in Kaufman County while taking aim at the city of Dallas. The billboard is on Highway 175 in the town of Kemp, about 45 miles southeast of Dallas. The sign shows a cartoon character with a Confederate flag urinating on the Dallas skyline and says “I support Confederate heritage.”

CNN hosted a town hall on Monday in Mississippi with presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) where she answered questions on a range of issues, including the Mississippi flag, which features in its field a Confederate symbol. “Mississippi’s the only state in the country that still has the Confederate battle emblem on the state flag — do you think Mississippi should adopt a new flag?” Jake Tapper, CNN anchor who moderated the town hall, asked Warren. “Warren replied with one word — ‘Yes’ — and was met with loud applause from the crowd,” CNN reported on its event....CNN also...

“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.” — Robert E. Lee 1856 Could Gen. Robert E.l Lee’s sentiments deter the “tear down those monuments” crowd? Probably not. Given their current success in removing monuments to Confederate generals, ignorant politicians and those whose hobby is going through life seeking to be offended, soon will run out of things to be offended by. Why not broaden the list of "offensive" symbols to include slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and a...

University of Mississippi student government groups are calling for a Confederate soldier monument to be moved from a prominent spot on the Oxford campus to a Confederate cemetery in a secluded area behind a coliseum. All 47 members of the Associated Student Body Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday in favor of a resolution asking administrators to move the statue, which has stood since 1906 in a park-like setting near the university's main administrative building. The Confederate soldier statue was a rallying point in Oxford in 1962 for people who rioted to oppose court-ordered integration of the university. The Graduate Student...

DUNN, NC (WNCN/CNN) - Authorities said vandals wanted to express their opposition to Confederate monuments by targeting a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The problem is, they went after the wrong statue. Gen. William C. Lee was the commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division during World War II, and his statue stands in front of his namesake museum, the William C. Lee Airborne Museum. Authorities say someone recently tried to set the statue on fire. “This is a hometown grown boy here that turned out to be an international hero in World War II, but to come...

Statue vandals seem to have mistaken WWII hero for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, museum officials say Vandals in North Carolina may be in need of a history lesson after having set fire to a statue honoring a World War II hero they apparently mistook for a Confederate general, officials said earlier this week. A white marble monument of U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division's "Screaming Eagles" during World War II, was doused with flammable liquid and set on fire last week, museum officials said. The statue bears black scorch marks running up...