In his letter to the editor, Dr. Ravi Perry accuses Confederate soldiers of being “by definition, traitors to the nation.” He is either ignorant of history or he is a “Court Historian” willfully indoctrinating his credulous students with what Voltaire called “the propaganda of the victorious.”

There was a hue and cry to try Jefferson Davis for treason after the Civil War, but the sound councils of constitutional law said he would be exonerated, thereby exposing and embarrassing the “Lincoln myth” and, therefore, he was never tried.

It was President Abraham Lincoln who committed treason when he, without the consent of Congress waged the bloodiest war in the history of the Western Hemisphere. It was President Lincoln who did not recognize the seceded states as being out of the Union, and thereby, by his own definition, committed treason in violation of the U.S. Constitution by waging war on them.

Later, when people of the United States railed against President Lincoln’s war and usurpation of powers not granted him by the Constitution, he further committed treason  by suspending the writ of habeas corpus and locking up tens of thousands of U.S. citizens without trial when the civil courts were open.

So much for his “government of the people, by the people and for the people” not perishing from the earth.

Do not confuse the many reasons for secession with the single cause for the war, which was secession itself. That was what the war was about.

This sad war was not waged by the “righteous North” to free the slaves from the “evil South” as the myth of American history would have it. It was President Lincoln’s war to prevent Confederate independence, just as the war in 1776 was King George III’s war to prevent colonial independence. The slavery issue was merely the smelly red herring to cover the tracks of Northern imperialism and Puritan hubris. And emancipation — only of slaves behind Confederate lines — was merely a war measure to deprive the Confederacy of its support troops.

When President Lincoln was asked what should be done with the freedmen, he said let them root, hog or die.

Freed from their masters’ care, about one quarter of the population did die from starvation, disease and neglect by their liberators between 1862 and 1870.

Your readership has been lied to long enough.

H.V. “BO” TRAYWICK JR.

Richmond