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Confederates Look To Win 'Second Battle Of Olustee' In Florida
Does it really suck that bad to be know as the "Losers" in history?
Both the Nazis and the Confederates can't let it go.
Eleven thousand men fought at the Battle of Olustee, the largest Civil War battle in Florida, which took place on Feb. 20, 1864. The fighting took place on the floor of a virgin pine forest and lasted until dark, when the Union forces retreated. There were 1,861 Union casualties, and 946 Confederate casualties, making the battle, proportionally, one of the bloodiest of the war.
This week, almost 150 years later, in a public school auditorium in Lake City, Fla., the Battle of Olustee once again pitted Confederates against Yankees. This time, there were no casualties. But at stake was the fate of a monument to the Union soldiers who fought in the battle, proposed by the Florida "department" of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
"We really don't want controversy," Charles "Buck" Custer, treasurer of the Union group, told TPM in an interview this week. "We're down here in Dixie, and we certainly don't want to make enemies of our neighbors and people that we live with. But on the other hand, I think there should be justice, if you will, and I think that those 2,000 Union soldiers that died up there are at least entitled to have people know that they were there and existed."
The plans for a Union monument at the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park -- about 46 miles west of Jacksonville, Fla. -- began several years ago. The idea was to commemorate the Union regiments that fought at Olustee (pronounced oh-lusty), and to recognize the African American regiments that made up one third of the Union forces. The group members also hoped to correct a perceived imbalance -- they say three Confederate monuments currently exist on the site -- and to get the monument built in time for the battle's sesquicentennial in February 2014. The Florida chapter of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War intended to fully pay for the project, and to offer it as a gift to the people of Florida.
The Confederate Flag represents traitors to the Union.
What's the problem? They are not opposed the monument, just its location. From your link:
Sons of Confederate Veterans, told TPM this week that he and his group are not opposed to the Union monument outright. They just don't want it built on the three-acre battlefield site originally donated to the state by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
"Our particular view is, we're not opposed to the Union monument," Davis said. "We are opposed to the Union monument -- or any other monument -- being put on the original three acres at Olustee. And that's where they want to put it."