Here is a short video of this year’s Memorial Day ceremony at our local Confederate cemetery on the campus of the University of Virginia. It’s a few blocks from my school and I bring students to the site every year. There are over 1,000 soldiers buried here, who died in the Charlottesville hospitals during the war. Up until a few years ago there were only a few headstones. The local chapter of the SCV plans to place a headstone for every soldier. By the looks of things in this video and a recent visit that I made with one of my classes it looks like they are making steady progress.
The video include a short interview with Kimberly Mauch, president of the Turner Ashby chapter, No. 184, United Daughters of the Confederacy of Winchester Virginia. I find her level of understanding of the war and slavery to be appalling. A transcript of the Q&A follows the video.
AS A YANKEE- WE GENERALLY ASSOCIATE THE CONFEDERACY WITH SLAVERY. IT’S HARD TO OVERCOME THAT. “I understand that. Yes, slavery was a very hot topic back then you could say, even twenty years prior to that, even, especially in the Kansas-Missouri border states, the abolitionists and all that went on out there. It was fought more- states’ rights started everything, I feel. The South wanted to do things their way and the North wanted to control that and that’s what fueled the fire for South Carolina to secede from the Union to begin with. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BEING IN THE UNION TODAY? “I love it.” THINGS WORKED OUT FOR THE BEST? “Who knows what it would be like? Nobody can say it would be better or worse but it’s still a great country.”








