Letter: Situation with statues not about Gettysburg

Thursday August 24, 2017

Editor:

While it's a good idea to localize national news, Jim Lewis' article on Gettysburg monuments ("You can't erase history," Reading Eagle, Aug. 17) is based on the false premise that anyone is advocating removing statues from the Gettysburg National Military Park. It's a premise as false - and illogical - as President Donald Trump's musing about whether statues depicting George Washington and Thomas Jefferson will be the next to go.

Statues honoring the Confederacy in the South aren't being removed merely because they are dedicated to enslavers. They're not being removed, by and large, for being related to the Civil War, either. That's because if you look at the history closely, they're not really Civil War monuments. They were erected as the grip of Jim Crow laws swept through the South. They were meant to celebrate the reassertion of white supremacy. The monuments at Gettysburg have no such tainted pedigree. That's the article the Eagle should have written.

James M. Beidler
Bern Township
Situation with statues not about Gettysburg