LePage’s fake history
Whether Gov. Paul LePage and his supporters admit it or even realize it, the fact remains that the Southern armies were defeated at Gettysburg, the most critical battle of the Civil War, by some 358 men from Maine under a man from Brewer, Col. Joshua Chamberlain, at Little Round Top.
Credit has gone to Chamberlain for ordering the bayonet charge that broke the Confederates’ effort to flank and rout the Army of the Potomac. While there has been disagreement as to who actually issued the order, there is no doubt that these Maine men, out of ammunition and outnumbered, charged their attackers and enabled the Union Army to hold this critical high ground. It was their desperate effort that won the Battle of Gettysburg, which historians and military strategists on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line agree doomed the South to defeat.
LePage would do well to honor the Maine men who defended their government from a group of malicious powerful Southern “property” owners, who were attempting to take apart this country of ours. But if he did so, he would be a man who has educated himself regarding the real history of this nation and this state as opposed to spouting the fake news and fake history with which he and his supporters attempt to divide us.
There are living descendants of those tough Maine men who died defending this country as well as of those who survived. Those families know well what sacrifices were made by their ancestors. They also know that this governor is the clearest example possible that, while cheap political hacks and ignorant men many be a dime a dozen, good teachers are as rare as an honorable politician.
Newbold Noyes
Sorrento
Protect Endangered Species Act
With all the congressional drama happening in Washington, D.C., I don’t want to forget about one of our most fundamental environmental laws: the Endangered Species Act. Passed practically unanimously in 1973 during the Nixon administration, the Endangered Species Act protects our imperiled plants, wildlife and habitat, and recognizes that they “are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people,” the act’s preamble reads.
Let’s add economic value to that list. According to a 2017 report by the Outdoor Industry Association, the outdoor recreation economy generates $887 billion in consumer spending, 7.6 million jobs, $65.3 billion federal tax revenue, and $59.2 billion state and local tax revenue. Yet, without clean habitats and biodiversity, we wouldn’t have the privilege to enjoy the prosperity that comes from the recreation industry.
Right now, some members of Congress are promising to gut the Endangered Species Act to make way for fossil fuel development in critical habitat areas, including our public lands. We need the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws to protect our disappearing wildlife and public lands. Our senators should protect the Endangered Species Act.
Cason Snow
Bangor
Confederate symbols have no place in America
Not only did the South rise in rebellion but seceded from the United States. Those officials and military officers who resigned their allegiance and citizenship to the U.S. and took up arms against the United States were guilty of treasonous armed conflict against the nation.
The South demanded the right to ignore any federal law they disagreed with and wanted to take slave labor with them as they expanded westward. The northern states and the new Republican Party wanted to establish the western territories as non-slave areas and only developed by white labor, the surplus population of the crowded North and East.
The South lost the rebellion, but have largely been allowed to keep what they call their honor. I spent years in the military with Southerners who often arrogantly pushed Confederate ideology on us Yankees. I have had it with the South still trying to fight and glorify the Civil War, or the “war of northern aggression” as they like to call it.
The South lost. Their leaders should have been found guilty of treason and hanged or jailed. Robert E. Lee is not an honorable man. With his military genius, he prolonged the South’s inevitable defeat after Gettysburg.
It’s time for those of us who consider ourselves “true” Americans to collectively remind those in the South and Steuben, Maine, that the South lost the war and their rebellious and treasonous symbols have no public place in 2017. It’s not changing history, but “correcting” history.
Peter Duston
Cherryfield