A previous thread brought out the suggestion that one of those removed Confederate statues ought to be replaced by one of Union Gen. George H. Thomas (“The Rock of Chickamauga”), a career soldier from Virginia who stuck with the US (and was disowned by his family for it) - and made quite a name for himself in the Civil War. While looking up his CV, I came across this quote which seemed amazingly timely, even 150 years on.

[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them.
— George Henry Thomas, November 1868.

Yep, “Old Slow Trot” nailed the neo-Confederates exactly: “a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery”: sad to think that they’re still at it. And still bitching. Even though that “counterfeit varnish” has been replaced by acrylics…