HK: St. Augustine History / An Open Response

This is the monument to my Great Grandfather, *John Pelopidus Leach, Confederate Veteran in  Littleton, NC. It was erected at the time of his death in 1914 and depicts two hands shaking, one black and one white, with the inscription: “This Is What He Meant – All Men Up, Erected By His Colored Friends.” 

July 17, 2019

Dear Ms. Lunelle,

I read the article pulled out of Harpers archive section of events that took place in the Nation’s oldest City in 1963 as Ron Rawls, a modern day poverty Pimp, seeks to take the City and its people back to the past with his relentless attacks upon the Confederate Cenotaphs there.

Had Dr. King, or the Honorable Andrew Young fully understood history they would have found the table of brotherhood that the Honorable Dr. Alexander Darnes, Christopher Columbus Quarls, Anthony Welters and a host of other black Confederate soldiers, and their families sat at with their white brothers.

Had King and Young stepped back in history and heeded the warnings of the Pole Bearers and Knights Monumental Associations, who warned their black brothers and sisters of those who had come into the South to divide and separate them from their Southern white family ; to never let it happen again; a different tale would have been told about St. Augustine.

Had Young and King don the uniform that Darnes and Quarls had, with the Southern Cross in hand as they entered St. Augustine while reaching back for the honor that Southern blacks like Napoleon Nelson, Chaplain in Chief of the Honorable General Nathan Bedford Forest, who with his grandson Nelson Windbush, too, don the uniform of the Southern soldier as they attended the integrated re-unions of the Confederate soldier represented by the Cenotaph in the City Park.

Had Young and King continued on some 50 yards, they would have come upon the childhood home of the Honorable Confederate General Kirby Smith, and his Aid de Camp, black Confederate soldier Alexander Darnes; childhood friends.  Darnes would be educated off the funds given to him by the Smith family, and later would become the second black Doctor in the City of Jacksonville, where he would be responsible for stopping a Yellow Fever, and SmallPox epidemic that would have killed possibly thousands.

Had they asked, they would have learned about the day that the Ku Klux Klan don in their full regalia, sat in the Church at the internment of Christopher Columbus Quarls beside his family paying tribute to Quarls life beside a man that he not only called master, but also family and friend.

But, not to be.  Here was King who now climbed into bed with a man who had come South with the General Order of Lincoln to take the theater of war to the innocent, defenseless old men, women and children; black and white, freed  or indentured, raping, plundering , and murdering; with no regard that these were patriotic, Christian people who regarded many of his actions to be problematic to everything they believed in.

To them King had climbed into bed with the Communist Party, and even been accused by his right hand man, Rev. Ralph Abernathy with having extramarital relations with other women; something they could not tolerate from a man of the cloth; and not worthy to lead his people.

To them, King had preached almost verbatim on a radio program from the Battle Hymn of the Republic;  a Yankee War cry used by the same Union forces who entered the Southern cities that they sacked, and before battle with Confederate forces. Offences forgiveable to some, but not by many.

I have entered this City called St. Augustine don in the uniform of the Southern soldier with the Christian Cross, his Colors in hand; called brother by those supposed to hate me; to include the Klan.  And, yet only called “Nigger” by those who walk with Rawls and his band of Black Lives Matters, Take Em Down thugs, Antifa and the others who George Soros provides for his campaign of anarchy.  God bless you!