COVINGTON, Ga. — A local businessman has helped organize a special event at the Covington Square to honor soldiers who lost their lives in the Civil War.

Bill Nash announced recently that area residents would be invited to gather at the Square Confederate Memorial Day on Tuesday, April 26, and say a prayer for the fallen soldiers.

“We will gather and say a prayer for the local citizens of this area who never came home from the Civil War,” Nash said. “We will lay a wreath on the monument to honor the dead and to honor their family's that endured their loss. We will celebrate the 116th year anniversary of the monument to be erected on the Covington Square.”

Confederate Memorial Day was made legal holiday in the state of Georgia in 1874 by an act of the Georgia General Assembly. It is observed to honor those who lost their lives during the Civil War, which is the same reason the Confederate monument was erected on the Square, Nash said.

“The monument was erected in 1906 and honors those that never came home from the war, leaving their wives and families without help to run their farms and households,” Nash said. “The monument does not glorify slavery in any way and never has.”

Nash said that more than 99% of the soldiers who fought in the war were not slave owners.

“The Confederate soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes,” he said. “We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at the end of the war. We did not surrender our rights and history; nor was it one of the conditions of surrender for our unfriendly lips to tell un-truths of the war, or that unfriendly hands should write the non-true history of the war, the causes that led up to it, and the principles of unfair taxation on southern products by the north.”

Nash said the gathering would begin at 10 a.m. at the base of the Confederate monument on the Square.