"You're asking me to agree that my great-grandparent and great-great-grandparents were monsters."

From the New York Times, 24 June 2015:

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- It has been quite a few years since the lost cause has appeared quite as lost as it did Tuesday. As the afternoon drew on and their retreat turned into a rout, the lingering upholders of the Confederacy watched as license plates, statues and prominently placed Confederate battle flags slipped from their reach. [...]

"You're asking me to agree that my great-grandparent and great-great-grandparents were monsters," said Greg Stewart, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the executive director of Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis.

From the Owensboro, Kentucky Messenger, 5 Nov 1908:

TAPS SOUNDED FOR ANOTHER VETERAN OF THE SOUTHERN CAUSE.

James S. Hayden Dies at His Home at West Louisville--Born in Nelson County.

James S. Hayden, one of the best known and most highly respected citizens of Daviess county, died suddenly of heart trouble Wednesday afternoon at his home in the West Louisville neighborhood. His death was entirely unexpected, as he was apparently in good health.

Mr. Hayden, for many years, was a resident of Daviess county and a valuable citizen. He was [born] in Nelson county, Ky., August 23, 1836, and was a son of Joseph Hayden, deceased, a native of Washington county. He came to this county in 1852. He enlisted in Company K, Fourth Kentucky Infantry, Confederate army. He was in many battles and never lost a day's service while in the army. He was married to Miss Mary D. Hayden, on January 28, 1868, his first wife, and eight children were born to them. He is survived by his second wife and five children, four sons and one daughter. Mr. Hayden was a member of the Catholic church and was a Christian gentleman.

The funeral will take place at 2 o'clock this afternoon from St. Alphonsus chuch, and the interment will take place at the church cemetery.

I don't think my great-great-grandfather was a monster. I think he was probably no more monstrous than most people, though the cause he fought for turned out to be a bad one. Who knows what our own descendants will judge us for? We should all hope that they remember, as we should, that history is a bitch.

From the New York Times, 24 June 2015:

In Austin, Tex., a tall bearded man went into the tattoo parlor where Kelly Barr works with a request: the removal a 10-year-old tattoo of the Confederate flag.

He told Mr. Barr that he had decided to get the flag removed when he saw the pained look on a middle-age black woman at his gym on Monday.

"'If South Carolina can take theirs down,'" Mr. Barr recalled him saying, "'I can take mine down.'" I told him, 'Right on.'"

In 1862, Henry Isaac Newton, of Owensboro, Kentucky, father of two, joined in the Union Army of the Cumberland, 12th Kentucky Cavalry. He was captured in Sweetwater, Tennessee during Burnside's abortive campaign to push south, and spent nearly a year in a Confederate prison. After his return, he and his wife had eight more children.

On 31 Jan 1899, the second-to-last of those, Sarah Frances "Fannie" Newton, married Clarence Eugene Hayden, the second son of Confederate veteran James S. Hayden. Fannie lived to 1970. I met her more than once.

We're not monsters because we say or do the wrong thing. We're monsters when, later, we refuse to learn.