To the editor:

I must have missed the influx of Southerners who moved to the Adirondacks, but there’s no mistaking their displays of the Confederate flag, which usually flies from porches and pickup trucks. These newcomers don’t seem to understand how many Adirondack natives suffered and died at the hands of Confederates.

Nelson Goff from Lewis was captured and sent to the notorious Libby Prison in Virginia. Three years later he staggered home, broken and unable to work or support his family. Two of his sons, Jeremy and Chesley, died fighting Confederates. They are still buried in Southern soil. Edward McManus from Elizabethtown survived starvation in two Southern prisons before escaping from a freight car carrying him and other Adirondack soldiers to certain death. Myron Arnold of AuSable Forks was shot in the leg by Confederates and bled to death along the side of a road in Virginia. 

Adirondack men of all colors defended America. Lafayette Mason, a free Black man from New Russia, was tortured when he was taken prisoner by the Confederates. He managed to escape and make it back to the Adirondacks, where he was safe. I wonder if he would feel safe here now?

Thirty-nine thousand New York men died fighting the Confederates. During the Civil War, New York suffered more dead soldiers than any other state in the Union.

New Yorkers, both men and women, fought to save America from destruction. Do those flying the Confederate flag think we would be better off fractured and still allowing slavery? New Yorkers were wounded and died at the hands of Southern traitors who wanted to perpetuate slavery.

Today’s lovers of the Confederacy don’t seem to remember that Confederates were the losers; they lost the war and cost America more casualties than any other war in our history. Confederate lovers in the Adirondacks would be better off moving back to the South. Their Stars and Bars might be welcome by some in Dixie but not here in the Adirondacks. Our brave ancestors would be outraged at the sight of their enemies’ symbol, the Confederate flag, flying on Adirondack soil. Residents of the Adirondacks should fly the American flag, not the flag of a defeated enemy. 

Margaret Bartley

Retired history teacher

New Russia