Letters: Confederacy debate becoming tiresome

When I was in Richmond several weeks ago, I had an opportunity to visit Hollywood Cemetery, the site of several thousand graves of soldiers, both Union and Confederate.

Amongst those graves was that of my great great grandfather, who was wounded a week before the war ended, died in Jackson Hospital in Richmond and was buried May 24, 1865, at the age of 40. He was a private in Company H of the 8th Florida Regiment, and you can be assured that Pvt. Leonidas Newton Creekmore was not and never had been a slave holder, as I would suggest was the case with most of the rank and file of the Confederate Army.

Is it possible that these brave men had a real interest in protecting their homeland from foreign invaders and not perpetrating an institution in which they had little personal or economic interest? I think we are all beginning to tire of the rhetoric around the slavery/slaveholder issue and the suggested removal of any evidence of our heritage. It’s time to move on.

This story was originally published June 14, 2017 at 6:45 PM with the headline "Letters: Confederacy debate becoming tiresome."