Americans are the only people in the history of the world to fight a Civil War to end slavery. And the Union Army fought it with a volunteer army. This war resulted in the highest number of American casualties of any war fought by Americans to this day. It's why the Republican Party was formed, it's why Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States, it's why Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, why we won the war, freed the slaves, passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, why black Americans have equal rights in our country under the US Constitution, why President Lincoln was assassinated, why a Democrat Vice President named Andrew Johnson became President, why reparations and resettlement were canceled, reconstruction run amok, and why the law was changed to ensure that in the future the President and Vice President would be from the same political party.

The people of the south suffered terribly from this war. The Union Army volunteers were on a mission and nothing was going to stop them. It was a selfless devotion to freedom for 4 million people trapped in slavery in their country in what they believed and I agree were unconstitutional acts by the states on behalf of slave owners. The US Supreme Court could have ended slavery in 1857 with a simple ruling in favor of Dred Scott, without a shot or a home or barn burned, without a life or limb lost, but chose not to do so.

The Confederate Soldiers were fighting to preserve a way of life, the only one they knew. They were afraid of the consequences of emancipation on their own lives from safety, security and job competition to economic in-stability and the increased poverty for them that it could all mean. Slave owners ruled the South, they controlled the state houses to the legislatures, the cities and towns, most of the large businesses in the south, the courts, the university scholars and the press.

Robert E Lee was a Virginian, raised in the South, a slave owner, as much a victim of the culture as any other Confederate Soldier. He did his duty as he saw it to preserve a way of life until it could be changed naturally over-time. Neither Robert E Lee nor any Confederate General or Officer, nor any Confederate Soldier was a bad person, they were part of a way of life that included the abomination of slavery, so much a part of their lives for so many generations that they could not see a South without it.

For activists in 2017 to trivialize the complex issues of the Civil War with silly slogans of "hate and bigotry" for political purposes is a national disgrace and an insult to all the Americans of the days of slavery on both sides of the issue.

There are some things that can't be solved with talk from hateful mouths and ugly signs. Slavery was one of them. Racism is another.