Unfettered Letters

No reparations needed

I read in papers every so often about the government needing to pay families reparations for their ancestors having been slaves.

I am of the belief that the bloodshed of the Civil War, in part to end slavery, should be reparation enough. I feel it time to move on.

I’m sure many American Indians would be happy with an apology.

Dee Graham
Louisburg, Kan.

Slavery apology?

Slavery is a human travesty wherever and whenever it occurs. No one can deny this. But just what does Democratic Rep. Talibdin El-Amin of St. Louis want to accomplish by asking the present day government in the state of Missouri to apologize for slavery (2/6, Local, “Resolution seeks apology for slavery”)?

Will he also ask the present-day Democratic Party to apologize for lynching the blacks who attempted to register to vote in the South following the Civil War? How about having them apologize to all the descendants of the white abolitionists who stood up to his party before the Civil War?

Granted, Missouri may have entered the Union as a slave state, but Gen. Nathaniel Lyon’s occupation of St. Louis insured the Confederacy could never get control of its ammunition and other resources.

Men like my great-great-grandfather and his sons all fought and were wounded under the “official” Missouri colors for the Union.

To have Missouri apologize for a wrong these men fought so hard against would disregard and discredit the service they did as veterans to this great nation and our state.

Ironically, Rep. El-Amin walks past the Union regiment colors on his way to work in the State capitol each day. Maybe he can find it in his heart to apologize to these patriots the next time he passes by.

George Lauer
Jefferson City

Democracy for Iraq

How can we help Iraq become a democracy when we are still working on it ourselves?

It took a civil war in the 1860s to join all the states under one government. It took the suffragist movement in the early 1900s to give equality to women. It took the civil-rights movement in the 1950s to give more rights to all U.S. citizens.

We still have a way to go to make all citizens equal in the United States.

Iraq will have to go through such events to unite all the different factions under one government.

We were the catalyst to start the Iraqis to be equal citizens. Now they must do it themselves, or fall back to other types of government. We cannot and should not be the enforcers of what we call democracy.

We are really a republic and call it democracy. True democracy is what Jesus taught and what the early Christians practiced: equality in all things, a lifestyle, not a government. The government cannot give equality in all things, only people can.

Dolores Lear
Kansas City

Civil War

I don’t know where Chris O’Carroll (10/3, Letters) was when they taught American history at his school, but it is evident he wasn’t paying attention.

If you want to know who the real hatemongers were during the Civil War, go to the Lone Jack Museum and read how the Union Army murdered, plundered and burned out anyone who would not take a loyalty oath.

Go to the city of Richmond, Va., and see how they conducted themselves in that conflict.

Go anywhere in the South where the Union Army left its bloody footprint and tell me who hated most.

Michael Benson
Lone Jack