We all mourn the death of Mr Floyd but to remove the Fame Confederate Statue in Salisbury NC because of protestors from outside the city. Anytime their is a protest at any location it’s going to most likely provoke things to happen and thus isn’t a product of removal. This statue represents the men who died fighting for a war that the state lawmakers voted to fight. The state lawmakers voted to succeed from Union not the men who fought the war. These brave men died fighting not because they wanted to protect slavery but because their state voted to succeed. Less than 3 percent of them men who fought even owned slaves themselves. 

Keeping this statue honors our Veterans. If this comes down, who is next? Congress states Confederate Soldiers are legal veterans.  By Public Law 85-425, May 23, 1958 (H.R. 358) 72 Statute 133 states – “(3) (e) for the purpose of this section, and section 433, the term ‘veteran’ includes a person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, and the term ‘active, military or naval service’ includes active service in such forces.” As a result of this law the last surviving Confederate Veteran received a U.S. Military pension until his death in 1959, and from that day until present, descendants of Confederate veterans have been able to receive military monuments to place on graves from the Veteran’s Administration for their ancestors. A Confederate Veteran should therefore be treated with the same honor and dignity of any other American veteran.

I asked the City Council to keep the Fame Statue to honor these men and to help us learn from our history. Whether you feel this war was  good or bad, it is to be embraced, not deleted from our minds and history classes.  When history is forgotten, removed, or ignored it is bound to repeat itself.  This is what a small minority of people want, to brainwash everyone leaving them with no true facts. 

This nation learned from its victories as well as its failures, and tearing down monuments and taking away everything that has made us great is a disservice to us all