Erroneous comment refuted

In the front page article “Governor says his life has been threatened” (Friday, Aug. 25), Gov. Paul LePage stated that Civil War-era tensions reminded him of the schisms in American society during the Vietnam War when, as the article explains, “people spit on returning soldiers.”

The governor’s insupportable characterization of the Civil War originating as a property-rights dispute merited, and received, rebuttal. The article, however, inappropriately treated the assertion regarding spat upon soldiers as uncontested truth. Jerry Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran and emeritus professor of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross, debunked this claim in his 1998 book, “The Spitting Image.”

Like the governor’s erroneous comments regarding the Civil War, that statement deserved refutation.

Eben Miller, Lewiston