Grand Junction VA Removes Civil War Mural

Why don't they just remove what Lincoln said about those who fought in the Civil War as well?

With the words, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” President Lincoln affirmed the government’s obligation to care for those injured during the war and to provide for the families of those who perished on the battlefield.

It has been the motto of the VA.

Rebel flag banished from history mural at VA 
The Daily Standard Grand Junction
By Gary Harmon
Thursday, August 13, 2015

Paul Sweeney, spokesman for the Grand Junction Veterans Administration Medical Center, places a banner promoting the VA’s medical foster home program in front of a depiction of the Civil War on Thursday. The display is part of a mural showing American military history, from the Revolution to the war in Iraq, that was painted by muralist Lee Bowerman along the north wall of the hospital’s canteen. The banner will hide the Confederate flag until Bowerman is able to remove it from the mural.

The Stars and Bars have been banned from a mural in the cafeteria in the Grand Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center in what critics say is an overzealous reaction to the flag.

Artist Lee Bowerman of Grand Junction said he reluctantly agreed to a request that he remove the Stars and Bars — known to many as the Confederate flag, but more accurately referred to as the battle flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia — from his depiction of a Union soldier and a Confederate rebel going to nose to nose.

“I’m going to paint what they want painted because we’re living in a political environment,” said Bowerman, 72.

The soldiers are depicted in a two-year-old mural of American military history stretching from the American Revolution to the present day.

The mural is nothing if not inclusive, Bowerman said.

“I got black, brown, white, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, POWs and MIAs,” Bowerman said. “I got a mule in there with a gas mask on.”

The Stars and Bars, though, have to go, according to the upper reaches of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said medical center spokesman Paul Sweeney.
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President Lincoln Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Why not stop Memorial Day? After all, we began to honor those who sacrificed their lives because of the Civil War when war widows of the South decided to also honor the fallen from the North.

One of the first occurred in Columbus, Miss., April 25, 1866, when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of the bare graves, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves, as well.

Many believe the Confederate flag should not be flown on any federal building but disagree with removing it from the nation. It is part of our history as a whole. Do we bind this nation's wounds by forgetting what tore at the fabric of unity?

Do we do any good by screaming about equal rights then claiming the lives of one group matter more than others or do we change what is wrong by actually fighting for equality under the law?

Do we change anything claiming lives matter then do nothing to actually prove they do? Do we see marches throughout city streets where young men and women feel trapped by a cycle of violence and drugs or demand peaceful lives for families to live instead of being terrified by gunshots?

Forgetting history will only help us forget how long we've had to get it right and insures we will never actually achieve it.
UPDATE
Why They Fought

Men on both sides were inspired to fight by patriotism, state pride, the chance for adventure, steady pay. Union soldiers fought to preserve the Union; the common Confederate fought to defend his home. Later in the war, increasing numbers of Federal soldiers fought to abolish slavery, if for no other reason than to end the war quickly. Confederate soldiers sometimes fought because they feared Union victory would result in a society where black people were placed on an even footing with whites.