Over the years as a member of the Southern Memorial Association, I have been asked on numerous occasions why I would want to spend my time in maintaining a Confederate cemetery or giving honor to the Confederate Cause. 

Most people today do not know much about the War Between the States and are satisfied to believe it was simply a matter of good versus evil, the North being the "good guy" and the South being the "bad guy" and the only thing they were fighting over was slavery.  The North won, and thus slavery was ended in the United States.  End of story.

Thousands of books have been written to analyze the many causes of the War Between the States, so I am not about to produce another one on these pages.  I am only going to give a brief summary of why I spend time keeping up the Confederate Cemetery and continuing to honor the Southern Cause.

Of course, some soldiers from both North and South formed definite opinions of why they fought and what they believed was the right cause.  There were men on both sides who saw preserving the Union as something to die for.  From the beginning of our country there was much contention over the way the country should be governed and we today still argue and fuss over how this country should be governed and how the country's wealth should be spent.  This is what was happening even in the early 1800s in our country.  In a nutshell, the Southern statesmen wanted limited federal control and the Northern statesmen wanted strong federal control.  Every other issue which came up before the war fits under that one category.

Not being able to settle these governing disputes, the South chose to secede and form its own country, believing it was acting in accordance with their own fathers, who had won independence from English rule.  They would win independence from Northen rule!  Peacefully conducting secession conventions in each Southern state legislature, they declared their independence and like colonial America was invaded by force, so too was the South and the Southern people fought back.  Perhaps their idea of a limited constitutional government may someday be realized in this country by peaceful means.

So, why do I care about the Confederate soldier and his Cause?  The Confederate soldier defended hearth and home.  Even if he did not realize or express it in words, he was also fighting for a type of government his leaders thought was right.  I will continue to honor the men in gray for defending hearth and home from invasion and I will also continue to hope for the Southern Cause of limited Constitutional government.


Donna Schwieder, President
Southern Memorial Association
2010

The article below from 1930 sums up the Southern Cause:

"Jefferson Davis and State Sovereignty" by Charles B. Galloway, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.  This article appeared in the June 2, 1930 issue of the Dallas Morning News.

That which pre-eminently signalized the public character and parliamentary career of Jefferson Davis was his sincere and unwavering devotion to the doctrine of State sovereignty and all the practical questions that flowed therefrom.  He held with unrelenting grasp to the fundamental fact that the Union was composed of separate, independent, sovereign States, and that all federal power was delegated, specifically limited, and clearly defined.  The titanic struggles of his entire public life were over this one vital issue, with all that it logically involved for the weal or woe of his beloved country.  The insistence of Mr. Davis and his compatriots was, that the Constitution and its laws should be obeyed, that the individual sovereign States must regulate their own domestic affairs without federal interference and that their property, of whatever kind, must be respected and protected.  They resisted any invasion of the State's right to control its own internal affairs as a violation of the sacred federal compact.

And by the way, our present-day political discussions are eloquently vindicating the patriotic jealousy of Mr. Davis for the rights of the State.  The most significant fact of these strenuous times is the solemn warnings in endless iteration and from both political parities against the ominous encroachment of federal authority.  More and more the nation is seeing that Jefferson Davis was not an alarmist or an academical theorist but a practical, sagacious, far-seeing statesman when he contended so persistently for the rights and unconstrained functions of each member of the federal union.  And it is an interesting and suggestive fact, that the latest historians and writers on Constitutional government sustain this fundamental contention of Southern statesmen.

Mr. Davis wrought with all his great ability and influence to preserve the union.  He favored and earnestly advocated the "Crittenden Resolution" on condition that the Republican members of the peace commission would accept them.  Had they not stubbornly refused (and they did it at the advice of Mr. Lincoln) war would have been averted and the dissolution of the union prevented or postponed.