CONFEDERATE SONS ADDRESS OBAMA’S DILEMMA



From Sons of Confederate Veterans Headquarters, Elm Springs, Tennessee
Press Release – March 8, 2007 – For Immediate Release

For information contact:
J. A. Davis
Public-Media Relations Committee
Sons of Confederate Veterans
770 297-4788
Gainesville, Georgia

Responding to an Associated Press story which ran nationally, Christopher M.
Sullivan, Commander in Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, issued the
following statement:

We note with interest the revelation that Democratic Presidential candidate
Barack Obama has slave owners in his ancestry. This news demonstrates an interesting
irony with respect to contemporary multi-cultural American politics.

For candidate Obama, the news is perhaps more complex since his African roots
may link him to African tribes that traded their brothers and sisters into slavery.

"While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in the Civil
War." Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

This is perhaps the most ironic aspect of this story. It is not inconsistent
with American history as a number of the Union states continued slavery until
after the War Between the States ended. Some Union military and citizenry held
slaves, traded in slaves and were solely responsible for trans Atlantic slave
shipping enterprises, all of which operated under the U. S. flag.

It matters not if a man has either slave trading or slave holding, or both,
in his family background. He is not accountable for that. That which he is responsible
for is how he conducts himself in today’s continuing slavery. We wonder where
Senator Obama stands regarding a positive solution to the 27 million people
currently in bondage throughout the world, according to the United Nations?

Robert E. Lee said "Few can say anything other than slavery is a moral
and political evil." The Southern Confederacy, any more than the Union
slave states, cannot be accountable for the slavery that exists today. Rather
than distorting and pointing guilt for occurrences almost 150 years in the past,
we should all mutually focus on slavery’s current existence and unity in ending
human slavery forever.

END

On The Web:
http://georgiaheritagecouncil.org/site2/news/SCVpress030807.phtml