Re “Confederate pedestals out: Grass and landscaping to soon replace dead soldiers,” Free Press Feb. 3-5 edition:

The Confederacy, like the truth, cannot be killed, but not for lack of trying. It may be vandalized, torn down, dumped in a sewage treatment plant and buried alive, but it will not die.

The Richmond Free Press reported that the City of Richmond has spent $3.36 million removing Richmond’s “Confederate flotsam and jetsam,” plus an additional undisclosed amount for the removal of the Lee monument.

The monuments are to be given to the Richmond-based Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia in order to better spin the “Myth of American History.” In order to do so, I trust that the museum will not mention that “Honest Abe” Lincoln said he was not going to war against the South to free any slaves, or that his Emancipation Proclamation, issued two years later as a desperate war measure when the South was winning the war, plainly stated that slavery was all right as long as one were loyal to his government (proven the following summer when President Lincoln admitted the so-called “slave state” of West Virginia into the Union), or that slavery was constitutional in the United States throughout the war. That certainly punches holes in the story we are all supposed to believe.

I also trust that the museum will not mention that between 1862 and 1870, Freedmen’s Bureau and other records state that upward of 1 million emancipated slaves, or one quarter of the population, died of disease, starvation and neglect under the tender solicitation of their “liberators.” That is more than three times as many Confederate soldiers killed in Lincoln’s war.

When President Lincoln was asked by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in 1865 what provisions he proposed to make for the slaves he emancipated, he said to let them “root hog or die.” I’m sure the Black History Museum would not be interested in mentioning any of that, either. Better stick to the “Myth of American History” if they want to keep those monuments. Then peace, love, and diversity will flow like a river through the River City.

H.V. TRAYWICK JR.

Richmond