The job of the common soldier is to fight according to the rules of war. They don’t make policy, they just fight. And yes, between conscription, allegiance to the state over the nation, and the honor culture, the Confederate soldiers were compelled to fight for their leaders.
It wasn’t “plain to see” for the vast majority of human history. Slavery wasn’t invented by eleven Southern states, I’m afraid.
Clearly, to us, they were in the wrong. I find your claim that they knew they were in the wrong, because you find their reasoning dubious (of course you do, you disagree with the thing it is defending), rather suspect. With that logic, you can dismiss any beliefs ever held by anyone as “manufactured excuses”.
The “all men are created equal” code, if that is what you are referring to, wasn’t actually being practiced anywhere in the country. Several states restricted the vote to Christians. Free black men could only vote in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York (though only property-owning free blacks, whites had this requirement waived), and North Carolina. The idea was an ideal that no state actually practiced.
By stating that they sincerely thought they were in the right, though they were not? How is that “defending their defense”? Stating that their defense exists?
Where are you getting that statutory language? Your Cornell link takes me to this:
That’s a proclamation by the head of a veteran’s organization. It’s no more binding on the meaning of a federal holiday than a proclamation I might make.
The only statute establishing the holiday that’s been presented is 36 USC 116, which only speaks of praying for peace.
That bitter racist, Susan B. Anthony?
Anyway, note that your standard precludes having a Memorial Day, since that entails honoring the fallen soldiers of wars that did not make the world better for other people, at all.
They were traitors who didn’t fight for anyone’s freedom, they fought for the continuation of slavery.
If we include CSA soldiers in Memorial Day, can we have a day for Americans who were also killed by the US, but not to preserve slavery but just the opposite: because they advocated decent pay and working conditions?
Actually there is just such a day, but its held in Moscow’s Red Square
Not sure I follow you. Wiki sez “The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies”, the next-to-last of which seems to qualify.
You say “there might be a case for it” had it actually been a civil war. So if they’d donned those grey uniforms and started marching for Washington – plotting to put Jefferson Davis in the White House, and shooting anyone who got in their way – they could maybe deserve mention on Memorial Day?
Well, if you read the literature, it becomes painfully clear, through the decades of twisted self-justification and heated denials, that (by and large) they didn’t “think they were right.” They wanted to be seen as doing right, but mostly they wanted to keep doing it, and never mind right or wrong. One of the reasons the slavery debate was so heated was the deep strain of anger and defensiveness among the slaveholding classes that shows through when we read what they themselves wrote.
Regarding Anwar al-Awlaki:
I guess that depends. Plenty of Confederate activity would be considered terror attacks these days, right from the start. And whether al-Awlaki counts as “foreign” seems murky to me; was he not primarily promoting religious conflict, not nationalism?
I’ll contend that Hood may have killed more Confederate than Union soldiers, and thus inadvertently be eligible for Memorial Day honors. 
By that standard Braxton Bragg may have deserved the Medal of Honor for his role in shortening the war in the west.
Sure, they reacted with anger and defensiveness. The whole secession was a show of anger and defensiveness. “I should be able to keep doing this” is a position all its own, whether cloaked in states rights or the supposed right to secede or not, and they certainly thought they were right about that, and many thought that slavery was right in itself as well.
Union activity as well, Sherman’s March to the Sea wouldn’t be well-recieved if the U.S. Army did it today.
Also, Ellsworth’s killer, James W. Jackson, was not a Confederates soldier.
I didn’t say he was foreign, but that organization he was affiliated with was, in a way that the Confederacy was not. While proclaiming themselves a separate American nation, the Confederates were nonetheless American.
No, you’re wrong, still and again. I’ll once more helpfully bold the important parts.
[
](http://us-code.vlex.com/vid/sec-memorial-day-19229580)
You are wrong. Memorial Day is now and has always been about honoring people who died in service to the United States. Confederate soldiers did no such thing so fuck them.
Oh, come on. This is goofy. Honoring Confederate dead? They were in revolt against the United States! Are we supposed to be honoring the Indians who died resisting American annexation, too? What about the Branch Davidians and The Order? They died bravely resisting the US government as well.
It wasn’t then, either; it was a PR nightmare. Several northern papers condemned the march while it was happening, so much so that Sherman banned reporters from his presence.
[QUOTE= William T. Sherman, 1864]
If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.
[/quote]
That is not 36 USC 116, that’s from the National Moment of Remembrance, Pub. L. 106-579, of Dec. 28, 2000. You’re confusing it with the actual statute that created Memorial Day as a federal holiday.
Do you agree or disagree that Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day?
It makes pretty clear what the Congress in 2000 thought Memorial Day was for.
Exactly my point, Ascenray; thank you.
Look under the “Notes” tab above the language. It includes later revisions of the statute.
Do we celebrate and remember the Nazi soldiers who killed Americans, or the Japanese kamikaze pilots, or the British redcoats? Confederate soldiers belong in that group, not with real Americans