Oakwood Cemetery. Confederate Memorial Service 2010

Virgil H. Goode, Jr. is the guest speaker at this Memorial Day Service at Oakwood Cemetery in Martinsville, Virginia. May 29, 2010 @ 11 am. He urges us to read the real history of the causes of the war, which was not limited to slavery. Sponsored by the Mildred Lee Chapter, UDC and Stuart Hairston Camp, SCV. Presentation of the Colors and Military Salute by the Stuart Hairston Camp, SCV. Commander Daniel Young. Welcome and ritual given by Mrs. Jean Rood.
"You are working to preserve and provide a true history...
@ 4:44...The issue of slavery came up. I will agree that slavery was a factor in the War Between the States, but it was not, as many would have you believe today, the only cause of the conflict between 1861 and 1865.

We only have to look at what Abraham Lincoln said and did in that regard. Shortly after his election, Lincoln, who is hailed as the Great Emancipator in the end of slavery in United States, endorsed a Constitutional amendment to make slavery permanent in the fifteen southern states. He also offered to help (this is Abraham Lincoln) southern masters return runaway slaves.

Then, when it came time in 1863 on the Emancipation Proclamation, it only covered the states that were in the Confederacy. It omitted Delaware; it omitted Maryland; it omitted Kentucky and it omitted Missouri. And in 1862, Lincoln wrote ?Harris Freeland? that if he could preserve the Union, slavery was fine with him (and I'm paraphrasing).

So for those historians who want to say that the Civil War was fought only for slavery, I say take another look at history. Read the facts, and see that there were many causes.

I know that in Virginia, Virginia did not join the Confederacy until the troops from the north were gonna march in the south.

And I know the representative from Franklin county, and I'm not sure about Henry county, but Jubal Early was one of the representatives, and you all know him, famous Confederate general who was born in Franklin county, he went to the convention in Richmond to vote on the succession, and he was elected on the platform of not succeeding. But after the action that occurred in the north, and the call for Virginia, and North Carolina and Tennessee to take up arms against South Carolina, they reversed course and voted for succession. To say that they succeeded only because of slavery is just flat wrong. I would urge the rewriters of history and those that do textbooks to analyze all the facets of the Civil War, or the War Between the States, wherever the textbook writer is from, and get it right!"

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