What, you didn’t think all those statues, plaques, and memorials being torn down, defiled, and/or otherwise destroyed the last several years was mere coinkydink, did ya?

Best think again, sport.

Upon the Soviet Union’s dismissal of 146 historians from Czech universities, Milan Hübl, among those dismissed, is said to have observed, “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.” Hübl went on to predict that after a “new history” takes the place of the old “the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.” Such sentiment echoed a similar southern fear during and after the American Civil War. Confederate General Patrick Cleburne declared that, “Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers; will learn from northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” To Cleburne, along with many other southern patriots, such an outcome was unacceptable. When the cannons fell silent in 1865, the pen became the only weapon the South had left, and many wielded it masterfully.

Smart fella, was ol’ Pat Cleburn. Tough, brave, pugnacious, valiant—he wasn’t known as “the Stonewall of the West” for nothin’, you know.

The above is the opening ‘graph of the deep dive to end all deep dives, one that’s sure to fascinate any Civil War 1.0 buff such as myself to no end. Be warned: it’s a long ‘un, and you’re gonna want to take it all down in one go, lest by leaving and then coming back to it later you lose the essential thread of the piece. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.