The Confederacy Under Attack-- Part 50: We Can't Make the Past Go Away By Destroying Our History

From the September 16, 2015, Baltimore Sun.  A letter to the editor.  My thought is that this is finally the voice of reason in "political-correctness run amok."

Should we scrap "The Star-Spangled Banner" because Francis Scott Key owned slaves and his descendants fought for the Confederacy?

Eight U.S. presidents owned slaves while in office.  Should we erase everything they did and all their honors because of that?  Should the names George Washington and Thomas Jefferson be stripped from the United States?  Andrew Jackson was a Tennessee slave owner who was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and also took Florida from Spain.  But, he was also responsible for the Indian Removal and Trail of Tears.

Four other presidents owned slaves at one time while in office, but not while in office.

Abraham Lincoln viewed slavery as a violation of human rights, but only initially sought to prevent the spread of it to new states.  He was more than happy to allow and protect it where it already existed.

FDR sent the Japanese-Americans to internment camps and Harry Truman, of course, ordered the atom bombs dropped on Japan.

Should everything good that they did be stripped away because some perceive other things they did as bad?

"To strip out the good to punish the nation for past sins is no better than the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan or ISIS destroying 2,000-year-old temples in Palmyra."

--Old Secesh

"However, I find it despicable that the culture of the South is being systematically attacked by destroying and changing the names of roads and streets named for Southern heroes."