Confederate Memorial Day

It seems odd, even to me, that a northerner, born and bred, should join in the celebration of Confederate Memorial Day on May 7th. Odder still because I saw the worst of the South with its Jim Crow laws that so cruelly oppressed the Blacks that lived there, but I spent enough years in the South to love its people, its music, its culture, and its history. It is said that the winner of wars gets to write the history of those conflicts and that is true, but there is ample history of the Confederacy to gain a much-needed understanding of why, on February 4, 1861, the representatives of seven States, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, would meet to formally secede from the Union to form a new republic. On February 8, the convention announced the establishment of the Confederate States of America and declared itself its provisional Congress.