Aug 17, 2017 1 min read

I’m writing in regards to a letter in the Wednesday edition of the Observer-Reporter from Ed McCauley about Confederate monuments.

First, there actually were four arrests in the toppling of the statue of a Confederate soldier in Durham, N.C. Where there has not been an arrest, however, even though the identity of the perpetrators is known, is in the brutal beating of a young African-American, peaceful counter-protester in Charlottesville, Va.

Second, the 1 million who served in the Confederate Army and the 483,000 who died did so in an act of treason against our government. They are indeed on the “wrong side of history” – the side that participated in an economic system based on capturing and enslaving other human beings.

I wonder how McCauley would have felt if his child had been stolen and carried across the ocean in the bottom of a boat. Would he have been OK with a monument glorifying the men defending that act?

Rebecca Hickok

Charleroi