This address was delivered by the Rev Fr. Alister C. Anderson; Past Chaplain-in-Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans at the Remembrance Ceremony to honor the Southern soldiers, sailors and civilians buried at the Point Lookout Prison Camp Cemetery. It was delivered on Saturday, June 12, 1999. The Charge of Lt. General Stephen D. Lee, CSA To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we submit the vindication for which we fought; to your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles he loved and which made him glorious, and which you also cherish. Remember it is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations. Now, what is the next phrase in General Lee's Charge to us. It is: "We submit the Vindication of the Cause for which we fought". There are two very powerful words in that phrase. They are the words "cause" and "vindication". What was the Cause of our ancestors? And what is our Cause today? The Causes are the same. It is the right of all men to freely govern themselves in society. I have read many letters that Confederate soldiers wrote home to their families. I have read many sermons that Southern clergymen and chaplains preached. Ninety-nine percent of them express this theme: We are fighting for our right to be free. We are fighting because these Yankee armies are invading us to enslave us. And they did indeed enslave our Southern ancestors after the war during the Reconstruction Era. That era was the lowest, filthiest and most demonic period in the history of the United States. It was the nadir of disgrace. It was anything but reconstruction. It was total destruction of everything Southern. It took away every vestige of human freedom for the white Southerner. It was a genocide and a holocaust of a whole people. It was the brutal demonic force of a radical Federal Government gone amuck. It began with Lincoln and continued with Thaddeus Stephens, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Butler and other Federal officers acting through a host of carpetbaggers and scalawags. By far the worst thing that happened through the Northern Federal government's plan to reconstruct the South was the creation of increasing disharmony between the newly freed Negroes and the White population. The vicious, revengeful radical Northern Republicans caused whatever and wherever bad race relations still exist in our country today. Reconstruction produced legitimate fear and anger in the war-torn and politically deprived South. It caused the enactment later of many of the Jim Crow Laws in the South. It caused the terrible formation of Black ghettos in the North. The Reconstruction Era has made many Southerners look at the War as a Lost Cause, especially recent generations of people who have been emasculated by political correctness and Yankee propaganda. But the real cause of the South has been a Righteous Cause - a Just Cause and a Noble Cause. Those words really define the cause for which our ancestors fought. There is no Lost Cause! It is a living Cause -- the cause of freedom, liberty and limited and local government. We must never forget what General Robert E. Lee told the Governor of Texas privately during the horrors of the Reconstruction Era: Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no Sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand. What brave Men..... Carolyn