Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Monuments mean different things to different people, and much depends on what they have been taught by their families and by the school system. The fact remains that monuments to soldiers are honoring the dead; someone’s father, husband, brother, uncle, grandfather, etc. When these soldiers fell in battle far from home, they were often hastily buried in shallow graves on the battlefields with no notification to family.

Monuments to remembrance are often the only grave markers they will ever have. Whether one disagrees with or finds offensive the reasons for a war, soldiers do not always have a choice, as in the case of conscription acts. In the case of defending one’s home and family from an invading army, most men saw it as a matter of honor and duty as well as life and death for those they loved. They would not have seen any other choice or reason.

In the War Between the States, approximately 80 percent of Confederate soldiers did not own slaves. Vi...