by Jon Pyle

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of guest columns by members of the Urquhart Gillette Camp 1471 Sons Of Confederate Veterans in commemoration of the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans are the direct or lateral decedents of a Confederate soldier or sailor.

I am very proud of my great-grandfather James William Gist. He mustered into the Confederate service in May 1861. He was assigned to the 1st regiment Kentucky Calvary and later to the 13th Kentucky Calvary CSA.

After the war of southern independence ended in April 1865 at Appomattox, Va., most of these Confederate soldiers walked home to 10 years of those sad times called reconstruction.

The northern Congress allowed their appointees, the carpetbaggers and scallywags, to take on the wealthiest set of states in the world and completely destroy the infrastructure of those states by steeling and robbing anything and everything of wealth.

We need to know these appointees controlled all forms of government from the smallest town to county and state levels.

The Confederate soldiers were much older and dying. These men were worried their service and sacrifice and what they all fought for would be forgotten and not handed down to future generations.

In Richmond in 1896, the soldiers held a convention. They voted to form an organization to keep their heritage and history from fading away in future years. That’s how the Sons of Confederate Veterans was formed and why.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans is a patriotic organization, not linked with any other organization, and is neither political nor sectional. We take great pride in our Confederate forbearers, men and women who sacrificed their all for the cause they believed in.

We do not support any hate groups and strongly disagree with anything they stand for. These people have caused the Sons of Confederate Veterans great harm with their actions and through their self-serving display of the Confederate battle flag.

There are Sons of Confederate Veterans camps in every state of the Union. Yes, even in the Northern states.

Each camp is charged with the protection of the Confederate soldiers’ good name and the perpetual care of all their gravesites where possible.

I write this article in hopes that all who read this will understand what the Sons of Confederate Veterans stand for.

JON PYLE is commander of Urquhart-Gillette Camp 1471 Sons Of Confederate Veterans. He can be reached at rebyank@gmail.com.