Monuments, Statues & Flags by Eileen Parker Zoellner

Our Monuments, our Statues, our Flags, and our Markers are simply to tell the world of the valor and fortitude of the Confederate soldier. They each proclaim that we are proud to honor their accomplishments and to claim them as the noblest heritage for us and all our future generations. It is with great pride, that we honor these memorials of great deeds and glorious adversities, whether they be of triumphs nobly won or of the disasters proudly and heroically endured.

 

I love the south not only for all their brave acts, but also for all trials and tribulations that they were forced to withstand, for they sleep within the grounds we walk on. A land without ruins is a land without memories, and a land without memories is a land without liberties. The South is filled with graves, but also with memories.

 

Father Ryan wrote:

 

"O give me the land where the ruins are spread,

And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead.

O give me the land that is blessed by the dust,

And bright with the deeds of the war-slaughtered just.

Give me the land where the battle's red blast

Has flashed to the future the fame of the past.

Give me the land that hath story and song

To tell of the strife of the right with the wrong.

Give me the land with a grave in each spot,

And names in the grave that shall not be forgot.

Give me the land of the wreck and the tomb:

There is grandeur in graves, there is glory in gloom,

For out of the gloom future brightness is born

As after the night comes the sunrise of morn ;

And the graves of the dead with the grass overgrown

Shall yet be the footstool of liberty's throne ;

And each single wreck in the warpath of night

Shall yet be a rock in the temple of right."

 

 

When we honor our Confederate soldiers we let others know of our enduring allegiance to their memory, we commemorate their valor and devotion as shown on many a bloody field. In doing so, be it known that we come in no spirit of regret for the past, no confession of wrong, no forgiveness of failures, no higher honor and no prouder fate than that by their deeds we may be judged, and our most ardent prayer is that the descendants of these heroes may be worthy of their ancestors. The blood that saturated the battlefields of the Confederacy is now thriving in us. Let each of us proclaim that we are proud to honor their accomplishments and to claim them as the noblest heritage.