An Open Letter & Open Report / Part Two / The Response



From: “Calvin Hart” (CalvinHart@bellsouth.net)
Date: Feb 18, 2017
Subject: Olustee
To: (hk.edgerton@gmail.com), “Lunelle Siegel” (siegels1@mindspring.com)

I read your article with wonder…you completely left out Camp #1209 and the Southern courtesy we extended to you. To say this was a yankee event is quite a lie. We
gave out hundreds of Confederate Flags today and educated the public on the honor of our Confederate ancestors. In fact, we are still at Olustee celebrating our
Southern victory. Maybe allowing you to sit in my chair as friend was my mistake.

Commander Calvin Hart

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From: HK Edgerton (hk.edgerton@gmail.com)
Date: Sun, Feb 19, 2017
Subject: An Open Letter & Open Report / Part Two / The Response
To: siegels1 (siegels1@mindspring.com)

Dear Ms. Lunelle.

I would receive this correspondence from the Commander of the General Kirby Smith Camp #1209 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And, by God, all the things he said
that I left out in part one of my Open Letter and Open Report are true.

I did leave out that it was his Camp that invited me into their station at Olustee where I would, and could, speak to all those babies, their parents and teachers, or
the herculean effort of he and his men to bring the CSA Hunley submarine. And not to forget all the other Confederate re-enactors who did their very best to portray
family life in the South, and the victory won at Olustee.

However, let us examine why old Edgerton proclaimed this a Yankee propaganda event. It was some of his men who asked that I go over to the station of Fredrick
Douglass, where my babies were being turned into White folk guilt zombies, and Black haters of the South and its White populous.

And I wish you could have seen the sad look on their faces as Freddy was laying it on about his old Master that somehow symbolized all the Southern Masters. And not
to forget how he escaped to the North, all the while teaching himself to read and write the English language. And how he so elegantly wrote about his debacle.

One baby girl at Olustee would ask me about the diatribe of Douglass as we stood and talked at lunch time. “Mr. HK,” she would ask, “how did Fredrick Douglass
teach himself as a runaway slave to read and write the English language? I had such a hard time understanding to use to, two and too. And when it came to pronouncing
the, no matter how hard my teacher or my mother lectured me about the sound of the alphabet, it was hard. I believe he lied about that.”

I would tell the baby girl that I didn’t know how the Master of Douglass treated him. There were some bad Masters. However, the one of Douglass did not represent
the behavior of all, and neither did he represent what all Southerners did, or felt about the African people. And, if what Douglass said was true, he didn’t tell about
the tools he purposely broke that would stop a whole day or more of labor that meant the slaves would have to work twice as hard to make up for it. That plow would be
the apparatus that also fed, clothed and sheltered his people.

Mr. Douglass didn’t tell these babies that he was Lincoln’s snitch. It was he who told Lincoln about the Black Confederate soldier which led the Yankees to
kidnappings of Southern Blacks to be forced into the Yankee army. And in far too many instances in this correspondence to portray which led to them being forced to be
put in forward positions of battle, or the suicide missions like the Battle of the crater, or their wives being used as concubine for the White Union soldier, or that
they served in a segregated Union military doing tasks that their White counterparts would receive as much as twice the pay, or the lack of equal medical care.

I saw and confronted the Yankee author, Bob O’Connor, about his warped accountings. I didn’t see Southern writers like the Kennedy brothers, Delorean, David Chaltas,
Ron Jones, Mike Scruggs or any from the Southern Press.

What I did see is this Commander’s Camp namesake, the Honorable General Kirby Smith, being slandered, and him being treated like a wild dog. And you may as well
throw in the General’s Aid de Camp, the Honorable Dr. Alexander Darnes, a Black Confederate soldier who both got the same from the White folk guilt, and Black haters
of the Florida Legislature.

I will tell this Commander that one thing for sure. “I, in no way, diminished the works of all those re-enactors and their efforts to bring history to light
at Olustee, nor do I apologize about what I have written.” God bless you!

Your brother,

HK

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