Re: “Letter to the editor: Troubled by growth of ‘political correctness’ “ (July 18):

Replacement of a Confederate flag by the flag of the United States at a cemetery gravestone is an entirely appropriate action.

Slavery, the fundamental and only basis for the Civil War, has been obscured, thanks to revisionist textbooks.

The rewriting and sanitizing have already been done in order to please school districts in the South. This is the real “political correctness” that has caused children to grow up unaware of the symbolism of the Confederate flag.

Consider the benefits to landowners of the economic institution of slavery. Slaves were just as much property then as your car, your house and your dishwasher are today.

Slaves were chattel, to be bought, sold, traded, worked, bred and inherited. Consider how plantation owners must have felt when they were told that one of their most valuable possessions was to be taken from them.

The writings of the great leaders of the secessionist states all make clear that their actions to break away from the United States were taken to preserve the economic institution of slavery and not for any other reason.

Moreover, scholars of the Civil War are in agreement that preserving slavery was the actual reason for the Civil War, not “preserving culture” or “states’ rights.” Those other rationales are used to obfuscate the true reason, no doubt because of its moral indefensibility.

Therefore, the Confederate flag is and always was about slavery and preserving it as an institution of the South. That is what it means, and why overt racists embrace it as a symbol today.

So let me ask the question: Is removing a Confederate flag from a tombstone done for “politically correct” reasons, or is it done to show respect for the deceased? Let us honor our soldiers, not sully their motives.

Richard Craven

Falmouth