Letter from Fort Heiman Camp Sons of Confederate Veterans charter member Thomas Y. Hiter forwarded June 18, 2020

Gentlemen:

During the War for Southern Independence, and for half a Century afterwards, it was popular in the north to characterize that War as a "rebellion" against the lawful government. Folks in the south never fully accepted that name, and having lost the War but made our point, eventually the nation arrived at an equitable conclusion: that the sections would agree to differ on the name of the thing and to coexist peacefully. Then, late in the next Century, the Twentieth, the political left and certain elements of racist extremists, white and black, began to typify the War as a racist crusade, fought over slavery. It was never that, either, as clearly shown by a multitude of documents that are still available, today, but those same people, media, academe and political, continue to spout the error, today, for their own purposes. It is popular, in the midst of all the highlycharged political rhetoric being heard today, to hear and read about attempts to remove monuments erected a Century and more ago to Confederate veterans as being offensive to certain groups of people today. Now, if some people want to be offended, they most certainly wilt [sic] be offended. Nothing can be done to stop that. But our monuments were not erected to the defense of slavery any more than our ancestors fought to maintain slavery. Consider this excerpt from the history of the McCain's Cumberland Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Maury County, Tennessee.

"This cemetery holds the earthly remains of Capt. John J. Kelleher of Company H, Twelfth Kentucky Cavalry, CSA. Kelleher had started his Confederate military service enlisting in April, 1861, from Calloway County as first corporal in Company F, First Kentucky Infantry, CSA, rising to the rank of second sergeant by the time his unit mustered out of service in May, 1862. Kelleher came back to Calloway County and soon joined Col. William W. Faulkner's First Kentucky Partisan Rangers. After this unit became the Twelfth Kentucky Cavalry CSA, Kelleher was elected captain of the newly formed Company H. Capt. Kelleher on at least one occasion was commanding officer in the field of the Twelfth Kentucky Cavalry, and on several occasions when an active leader was needed he was called upon to command detachments of troops for special missions. At the battle of Harrisburg, Mississippi, on July 14, 1864, Capt. Kelleher was commanding the advance skirmishing group of some 150 Confederates from the Twelfth Kentucky Cavalry in the advance of Forrest's Kentucky Brigade reaching the closest to the Federal entrenchments, but with a horrific fifty percent casualty rate. Capt. Kelleher, who was in command of a portion of the rear guard protecting the Confederate army under Gen. Hood in its retreat from Middle Tennessee, had been skirmishing off and on with the Federals who were following the retreating Confederates for days when on December 23, 1864, he was killed by direct cannon fire. After the war, his comrades constantly referred to Kelleher as a dashing and courageous Irishman. His old, barely-legible headstone reads "In memory of Capt. KELLEHER Co. H 12 Ky. Buford's Brigade Forrest's Cay. Killed Dec. 23, 1864 on Hood's retreat. Residence Calloway County. Ky."

That is who the monument is set to recognize, Captain Kelleher and the thousand and more other Confederate soldiers from Murray and Calloway County. Did Kelleher fight to maintain slavery? It doesn't say so. Did anyone else? If so, where is the evidence? There are said to have been 336 slaveowners in Calloway County in 1860. Was Kelleher one of them? Indeed, how many of the men who fought for the south - the men who are honored by that monument - owned slaves? We of the SCV know that there were even, among the Confederate soldiers honored by that monument, black soldiers, some of whom were slaves themselves. The monument honors them, too, equally with their white comrades. Race and slavery have no place in this debate, and the opinions of people who were born elsewhere, raised elsewhere, went to school elsewhere, and only recently even moved here to work, while valuable, mean little compared to generations of our own people who remember and know who we are and what our history really is.

Please leave the UDC monument where it was placed in 1917-over a hundred years ago-in honor of the Confederate heroes of Murray and Calloway County.

Rev. Thomas Y. Hiter, Ph.D.

Charter member of Fort Heiman Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Murray, Kentucky

Editor's note: The foregoing letter was forwarded to the fiscal court by email from John Young on June 18, 2020.

The foregoing is part of a collection of correspondence to various Calloway County government officials as well as remarks made before the Calloway County Fiscal Court in 2020, which the Sentinel obtained from County Judge-Executive Kenny Imes' office.