[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 12, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1202-E1203]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 DISCUSSION ABOUT REMOVING A PLAQUE ON THE JEFFERSON COUNTY COURTHOUSE

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. ALEXANDER X. MOONEY

                            of west virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 12, 2017

  Mr. MOONEY of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the 
following remarks by Peter Onoszko, President of the Jefferson County 
Commission:

       ``With malice toward none and charity for all'' thus said 
     President Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address in 
     1865. Even though the Civil War would continue for several 
     more months before the final victory over the Confederate 
     States, President Lincoln was already setting the country on 
     the path of reconciliation. Regardless of the military 
     victory, the President knew that unless there was a 
     reconciliation the military victory would be meaningless.
       The path of reconciliation has been slow and tortuous. 
     However, in the decades following the Civil War all but the 
     most senior of the former Confederate military and civilian 
     leadership had their United States citizenship restored by 
     Congress. The post-War careers of Confederate general 
     officers is illustrative of the reconciliation. Depending on 
     how one counts, there were between 425 and 562 Confederate 
     general officers. Of these numbers, 3 were recalled to active 
     duty during the Spanish-American War and served in the United 
     States Army. 51 were appointed to various federal civilian 
     positions ranging from US ambassadors to foreign governments 
     to US marshals to membership on various federal commissions 
     to postmasters and so forth. 45 were elected to the US 
     Congress as senators and representatives and at least one was 
     appointed to a federal judgeship.
       What of the ordinary soldiers and how they felt? In 1905 on 
     the 40th anniversary of the Civil War, Congress authorized 
     the first campaign medal ever awarded to members of the Armed 
     Forces and this was the Civil War Campaign Medal awarded to 
     all who had served honorably in BOTH the Union and 
     Confederate armies. Perhaps the most poignant demonstration 
     of reconciliation was the Battle of Gettysburg Reunion of 
     1913 marking the fiftieth anniversary of that great battle. 
     Thousands of surviving veterans from both the North and the 
     South gathered at the site of the battle. During several days 
     of the reunion, Confederate and Union veterans toured the 
     battlefield walking arm in arm as they revisited the site and 
     reminisced with each other, recognizing that there was an 
     unbreakable bond that had risen among all who had 
     participated.
       By 1978 the United States Congress had restored US 
     citizenship to all of the senior leadership of the 
     Confederacy, in some cases posthumously. The last was 
     Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, who 
     posthumously had his US citizenship restored by an act of 
     Congress in 1978. In signing this act President Jimmy Carter 
     observed that this was the final act of reconciliation.
       Paralleling the reconciliation of ``the Boys in Blue and 
     the Boys in Gray'' was the reconciliation between white and 
     black Americans. This also followed a tortuous path. Starting 
     with the Emancipation Proclamation promulgated in 1863 and 
     continuing with the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th 
     Amendments to the Constitution between 1864 and 1870, slavery 
     was abolished and black Americans were recognized as full 
     citizens of the United States with all the rights and 
     privileges pertaining thereto.
       Unfortunately the full acceptance of black Americans was 
     legally obstructed in many

[[Page E1203]]

     sections of the country for the next century with the 
     enactment of ``Jim Crow'' laws which made racial segregation 
     and discrimination legal (``Separate but equal'' as the US 
     Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson [1896]). However, 
     the path toward racial reconciliation continued. The Armed 
     Forces were racially integrated by President Harry Truman 
     during the Korean War and Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned 
     by the US Supreme Court in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of 
     Education decision which ruled that ``Separate but equal is 
     not equal at all'' to cite several examples of the country 
     moving toward complete reconciliation. The struggle to 
     legally abolish racial discrimination and insure civil rights 
     for all Americans of whatever racial background, in which 
     struggle both black and white Americans participated, came to 
     a head in the civil rights protests and demonstrations of the 
     1960s. This resulted in the landmark Civil Rights Legislation 
     of the era which ended racial segregation and outlawed 
     discrimination on the basis of race.
       In our lifetime we have had an African American president, 
     African American cabinet officers, including two secretaries 
     of state, two African American Justices on the Supreme Court, 
     several African American four-star generals including one 
     Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, many Members of 
     Congress in both the Senate and House, along with African 
     American leaders in business, industry, science, medicine, 
     academia, and the arts.
       Tragically today there exist small radical minorities among 
     both white and black Americans who seek to undermine over a 
     century and a half of progress toward the reconciliation 
     between regions of America and the races of Americans, 
     creating harmful division and discord between our people and 
     threatening to destroy our country. This has got to stop. We 
     are ALL Americans and as Abraham Lincoln said in 1858 ``A 
     house divided against itself cannot stand.''

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