Judges 21:25
“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
King James Version (KJV)
It seems to be such an easy question to answer what’s the difference between right and wrong? What does it mean to do right? Is it right for one person to do something, but wrong for another person to do the same thing? What does it mean to do right in your own eyes? Is the difference between right and wrong black & white or is it like this Monkees song from 50 years ago that there are only shades of gray? By the way I heard that there are like 50 shades of gray. There so many shades of gray, but today I’m only going to talk about one shade of gray– Confederate Gray.
Is it right or wrong to tear down Confederate monuments? Is it right or wrong to display the Confederate flag I’ll give my answer to that by combining the two.
Here in Fort Smith Arkansas, where the TV miniseries The Blue and the Gray was filmed, the talk around town is weather the Confederate monument on the grounds of the Sebastian County Courthouse should be removed or stay where it’s at.
First I’m going to talk about the central theme that all Confederate monuments have in common. On every Confederate monument, whoever it is, they ALL TOOK A KNEE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA. According to the President and his base, as they love to call their selves, it’s the worst thing a person can do is to take a knee and disrespect the flag of the USA. His base will claim they’ll never watch the NFL again and post of all kinds of nasty things about how wrong it is for black players to take a knee to the flag. And yet not only did every Confederate take a knee to flag of the United States, they also pledged allegiance to another flag, the Confederate Flag, a flag that does not stand for LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, and went into battle against those who defended the flag of the United States of America. Do I understand this right, If a black man kneads to the Flag of the United States of America it’s wrong? But a white man not only kneads to the flag of the United States and take up arms against the flag of the United States is not only right he should be honored for it? How can both of these be right?
This is our local confederate monument in Fort Smith, Arkansas, as you can see it is meet to be noticed. It literally has a confederate soldier high upon a pedestal. What you can’t see in this photo it that less than two blocks down the street is the entrance to The Fort Smith National Cemetery where about 24,000 veterans who did not take a knee to the flag of the United States, and took up another flag and fight against the United States of America are buried. But that does not mean that there aren’t confederate soldiers buried in Fort Smith National Cemetery, you have to remember where we’re at. We are in the South, barely, but there is real Civil War history here. On April 23, 1861, at the onset of the Civil War, Fort Smith was evacuated and Confederate forces occupied the fort. None of the Union soldiers that abandoned the fort received the Red Badge of Courage their badge(metal) was yellow. The Confederates held the Fort until September 1, 1863 when the Union retook Fort Smith. During the time the Confederate’s held the Fort there were nearly 400 Confederates buried at the cemetery including
Brigadier General James M. McIntosh, who died at the Battle of Pea Ridge and Brigadier General Alexander E. Steen, who was killed at the Battle of Prairie Grove. So we only had two Civil War battles in Arkansas and yet in each of battles a Confederate general was killed. No wonder why the South didn’t win the war! After the Union was back in charge there were about 1,000 Union Soldiers buried in the cemetery, with not a one Union general buried there. But that’s not the end of the story. In 1884 apparently they dug up 640 Confederate’s bones and reburied them in the National Cemetery, then they placed this marble monument for all of them.
Why do we have this Confederate monument to the Confederate dead on the grounds of the Sebastian County Courthouse when there is already a monument to them inside the National Cemetery? From I can tell from my research on the internet, there was another Confederate monument in the National Cemetery, but in 1898 a large tornado hit Fort Smith killing 55 people and leveled the Confederate monument in the National Cemetery. You have to remember that the Confederates do not believe in ONE NATION UNDER GOD, so even if they claim they believe in God, a tornado sent by God did not give them a big Hint! As a result the Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that can be best described as the KKK for women, raised money for a new monument to replace the one God destroyed. But there was a problem, this was 1903 and the National Cemetery refused to let the Daughters of the Confederacy place their monument to the Confederate dead unless they also mention the Union dead. Their idea: Here also lies a bunch of ni**er-lov’n Yankees: for some reason was not accepted. How did a monument that was built to go in a cemetery is now in front of the county courthouse? The answer is in today’s scripture. The people who placed this monument at the courthouse did not know or care what is right in the eyes of God. They were doing right in their own eyes. What does the Bible say about these people who do right in their own eyes?