In 2015, after nine African-American parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina were gunned down in church by white supremacist, Dylann Roof, many states began a campaign to remove symbols of the defeated Confederacy including Confederate Battle Flags.
In response to that campaign, the attached meme surfaced on social media and then resurfaced after protester Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017.
The meme postulates:
1. Public Law codifies that Confederate soldiers and U. S. Veterans are “legal” equivalent;
2. Public Law directs the recognition of Confederate grave sites as U.S. war grave sites and;
3. Suggests that removing a Confederate statue or monument is the same as removing a U. S. Veteran marker.
The meme is not true and selectively (and inaccurately) interprets parts of the Public Laws it quotes.
When Confederate soldiers took up arms against the United States, they waived their United States citizenship by committing treason. On December 8th, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. The Proclamation granted amnesty and citizenship and property restoration (except slaves) to those who fought for the Confederacy provided they took an oath swearing to “…faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States….”
Those Confederates who did not take the oath or who died in battle never regained their citizenship per Lincoln’s proclamation. But after Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson in 1868 issued a blanket unconditional pardon for the offence of treason “…to all and to every person who, directly or indirectly, participated in the late insurrection or rebellion a full pardon and amnesty for the offense of treason against the United States or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war….”
So to be clear, those who fought for the Confederacy were stripped of their citizenship and property. Those rights were fully returned to them in 1868. Separately, on March 3, 1873, Congress granted burial rights in national military cemeteries to all honorably discharged veterans of the Civil War, to include U. S. Government furnished headstones and markers.
Wait! Does that include Confederate soldiers? The answer is nope! In 1879, the act was specifically amended to only include “…headstones over the graves of soldiers who served in the Regular or Volunteer Army of the United States during the war for the Union, and who have been buried in private village or city cemeteries, in the same manner as provided by the law of March third, eighteen hundred and seventy-three, for those interred in national military cemeteries….”
In 1901, all the Confederate soldiers buried in the national cemeteries at Alexandria, Virginia, and at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington were brought together with the soldiers buried at Arlington and reinterred in a newly created Confederate section. Among the 482 persons buried there are 46 officers, 351 enlisted men, 58 wives, 15 southern civilians, and 12 unknowns. Headstones for Confederate soldiers and sailors “who died in Federal prisons and military hospitals in the North and who were buried near their places of confinement” were authorized by the an act on March 6, 1906 (34 Stat. 56), which required these headstones to be “similar to those recently placed over the graves in the ‘Confederate section’” of Arlington National Cemetery.
Sixty-four years after the Civil War ended, in 1929, Public Law 810 (now 38 U. S. Code, Section 2306) authorized the Secretary to furnish, when requested, appropriate Government headstones or markers for unmarked graves of Soldiers of the Union and Confederate Armies of the Civil War. To be clear, the War Department wasn’t directed to “erect headstones or recognize Confederate cemeteries,” they were told to honor requests for markers for unmarked graves of any Civil War combatant. It was not providing equivalency to the Confederate/ Union soldiers as much as providing closure at the Federal level.
In 1958, just before the last Confederate veteran died in 1959, U.S Public Law 85-425: Section 410 increased the monthly rates of pension payable to widows and former widows of deceased veterans of the Spanish-American War, Civil War, Indian War, and Mexican War, and provided pensions to widows of veterans who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. This is an important point because prior to this law, the Southern states that had seceded from the Union were responsible for paying for any Confederate soldier/widow service-connected pension. The Federal Government refused to pay anything toward Confederate soldier pensions. After the 1958 law, the Federal Government assumed responsibility for paying any survivor pension for Confederate widows and extended Veteran Administration burial benefits to them. As I write this the U.S Government is still paying one Civil War survivor’s pension.
So let’s review. Those who fought for the Confederacy loss their citizenship when they took up arms against the United States. The Confederate soldier was pardoned for his treason by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, but pardon did not legitimize his transgressions and had no standing with the Federal military for pension purposes. In 1901, the remains of Confederate soldiers buried in and around Washington, DC were moved to a dedicated section at Arlington National Cemetery. If a Confederate soldier had died in a Federal prison or in a military hospital, the U. S. Government agreed to provide a headstone or marker for the unmarked grave, but it never provided monuments. In 1958, the U. S. Government assumed responsibility for paying Confederate service-connected survivor pensions and extended burial benefits to surviving widows.
The U. S. Government DOES NOT maintain the more than 235 Confederate cemeteries across the country, but it does maintain the Federal (National) ones. The Federal Government does not recognize any Confederate veteran equivalency to a U. S. veteran. That is not to say that Confederate Soldiers who later served in the U.S. Army and saw service in the Indian Wars or the Spanish-American War aren’t U.S.veterans because that service qualifies them for Federal benefits.
Let’s be clear, the 1958 law contains an expansive definition of veteran solely for the purpose of paying a widows pension. It does not refine “veteran” in any other statue. But here’s a key test: ask yourself if Confederate soldiers were or are eligible for the Congressional Medal of Honor? If you answered ‘no,’ then you know that they are not considered U. S. Veteran equivalent. No one should question whether or not the Confederate soldier was an American, but he was never considered a U. S. veteran and the very laws quoted in the meme prove it.
