Editor,

I am a Tennessean with Confederate ancestry writing in response to Zachary Eckels article about the Confederate flag. Now, apart from the lack of understanding of Southern culture and heritage, Eckels also connects the Confederacy to the Nazis. Yet I wonder, has he ever learned about the leaders of the Confederacy?

Let's start with Robert E. Lee, who displayed the most tactically brilliant field command of the time. He also was offered command of the Union armies first and chose to lead the Confederate armies, not out of hatred toward blacks, but out of love for his state. How about another great Confederate, Stonewall Jackson, whom General Lee referred to as his "right arm"?

This man held no hatred or revulsion toward slaves but was a strong, Christian man with tremendous battlefield skills and deep devotion.

The list goes on with honorable men who led and fought for the Confederacy, and for Eckels to compare them to those responsible for the Holocaust is of the utmost shame.

How dare he besmirch the good name of these men and the flag for which they stood? Eckels knows nothing of Southern pride and the history from which we came. If he did, he would know we Southerners see the flag and think not of bigotry and racism but of the great men who once marched under that flag.

Yet because others are too closed-minded to see the pride of our history, we should accommodate them and renounce the flag under which our forebears marched? I will not. I will continue to hold fast to my heritage and the symbols thereof, regardless of what Eckels continues to write.

Brandon Speight

Sophomore in food science