Thoughts on Confederate flag column
Don Flood (column June 30) is a little off the reservation in comparing the Confederate flag to Nazism. A little!?!
Adolf Hitler, chancellor of Germany 1933-45, murdered millions and attempt to exterminate European Jewry. Six million Jews died.
Though it may not be the shining star on our crown, Delaware was a slave state. Slavery didn’t become illegal in Delaware until after ratification of the 13th amendment.
Some years ago, I always wondered about a country place right after I turned off MD404 onto Route 16 on my way to my beach house. Out front, a Confederate Stars and Bars flew prominently. What about that guy?
And a third anecdote: Even more years ago when the U.S. Army stationed me in a former Confederate state, I was having a conversation with a woman relative who lived there. She (who was from the North) related that her boss was the daughter of an old, historic North Georgia family. This woman still - in the 1970s -despised the North and the Union army for what it had done to her family. It seems that her family’s planation was in the path of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s march from Atlanta to Charleston.
Years ago, there were a couple phrases for this. One was “The Lost Cause.” The other was “The South will Rise Again.” Rise again? Probably not. Lost cause, you bet. President Obama calls slavery American’s “original sin.” That may be a little strong, but very few Americans would argue today that slavery was in any way commendable or even moral.
The question here, for which there probably is no acceptable answer, is “How much history of the Civil War and the antebellum period do we want to erase?”
South Carolina was the first of what would become 11 states to secede from the United States. South Carolina acted shortly after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860, not to be inaugurated until the following March. By then, seven states had seceded.
Further, the Civil War, called the War Between the States in the South, began shortly after Lincoln took office. The U.S. Army garrison in the Charleston harbor had been under siege for some months. After an ultimatum from Lincoln, southern artillerymen fired on Fort Sumpter. It surrendered in less than two days. The war began on July 21, 1861, with the First Battle of Bull Run, or “First Manassas” in the South.
Unlike Maryland, which as a border state took no side in the Civil War, Delaware continued to be loyal to the Union and our militia fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, among other places. However, slavery continued, mostly in Sussex County, until it was outlawed by the 13th amendment.
So unless it is Mr. Flood’s intention to libel the ancestors of a lot of old Sussex County families, equating slavery with Nazism is not appropriate.
For one thing, Hitler was not seeking to get other people to work for him for nothing. He was killing them for disagreeing with him. And, as far as European Jews were concerned, he was exterminating them both because he considered them a pestilence as well as the fact that he was seeking to create a master race that would rule the world for 1,000 years.
Today, we view race relations through 21st century eyes. President Obama calls slavery the “original sin.” Indeed, there was nothing good about American slavery. Nor was there anything good about the slavery described in the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. Nor is there anything good about the slavery observed in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
But it is well to remember, in light of a new book about the writing of the U.S. Constitution, that we would have had no Constitution and hence no United States of America, had not the northern delegates not compromised over slavery - because the Southern states would never have ratified.
History matters and trying to erase it is a mistake.
Reid K. Beveridge has covered politics in Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Delaware and Washington, D.C. He is now retired at Broadkill Beach. Beveridgere@prodigy.net.
