Today is the 150th anniversary of the day South Carolina seceded from the United States, starting the Civil War. As a history buff, this writer has no problem with S.C., or any other state, commemorating the events of the Civil War. It was a horrendous, tragic war that still impacts the U.S. to this day — in effect, a second American Revolution that utterly changed the country forever — and as such, has to be commemorated as the seminal national event it was. Commemoration becomes a problem, however, when it turns into a festive celebration, which is one of the things South Carolina has planned; namely, a privately sponsored “secession ball” tonight in Charleston. Considering that the secession they’re celebrating resulted in the deaths of around a million Americans (the equivalent of six million deaths today, in terms of our population), the very idea of a festive ball to commemorate it is obscene, pure and simple. And that doesn’t even take into account the momentous fact that they’ll also be “celebrating” American history’s most hardcore defense of slavery.
I can hear the defenders of the Old South now, just as I’ve heard them all my life: “The war wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights.” As the author, and native Charlestonian, Edward Ball wrote yesterday in a New York Times essay titled “Gone With the Myths,” “I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.” As Ball goes on to report, it’s hard to take those arguments seriously when the very declarations of secession by Confederate states make it clear that those states were acting to protect the practice of slavery and, not just coincidentally, the profits to be gleaned from it.
Here are excerpts from three states’ secession documents, as reported by Edward Ball:
South Carolina: “The non-slaveholding states … have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery” and “have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.”Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. … There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.”
Georgia: “A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.”
You figure it out for yourself — but don’t ever expect the celebrators of secession to believe it; or rather, don’t expect them to admit it.
This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2010.
Saying secession led to 1 mil deaths is like saying our building of a base resulted in Pearl Harbor. Did the U.S. not secede from the British Empire? The actions of a murderous racist dictator, Abraham Lincoln, should indeed not be celebrated, but alas they are.
Thank you BV. You perfectly demonstrated the point of the article.
DLP,
Why don’t you do a little research for yourself. I understand that for you and Grooms, questioning King Abe is unacceptable. But why don’t you look at his words and get back to me on why he sent hundreds of thousands to kill hundreds of thousands, including non-combatants. Also look into why he locked up unfriendly politicians, rigged elections, suspended due process, and DEPORTED a congressman. Oh, and riddle me why the Emancipation was halfway through the war. While your at it, I’d like a list of other countries that had to kill a similar portion of their populations to end the abomination of slavery. It existed elsewhere you know…and ended everywhere else at a similar time without the war.
You can’t wiew their world through our eyes… The north allowed the south to build their economy around slavery while profitting handsomely from it. Lincoln offered to allow it to continue if the south would come back into the union. Yes, slavery was wrong but to claim that the north was morally superior is hogwash. Don’t you find it curious that the Emancipation Proclamation never freed one slave in the north? And how about the laws in northern states that prohibited freed slaves from residing in their state for more than 30 days? Grant and Sherman knew they would be tried for war crimes against humanity if they didn’t win. Morally superior? Not hardly. Honorable men from both sides will be commerorated during the sesquicentennial. Let’s just leave it at that.
“Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.”
“The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.”
“Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.”
“What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?”
“How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?”
“And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?”
“But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.”
“They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.”
“Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.”
Let’s glorify slavery because Whites knew better than to let these savages off of the plantation. Even though Whites could not have possibly had these negroes in chains here without the help of African tribal chiefs in Africa kidnapping their own people (hmm, don’t hear about that much from the NAACP and White liberal suckasses, do ya?), Whites would have been better off to not allow these animals in our country. 150 years after South Carolina seceded, America is a multiracial cesspool of a Second World socialist nation. We have a half-breed, hardcore communist as our “leader.” South Carolina and the rest of the South got it right, I only wish they had won.
Stupidity is alive and well in North Carolina.
We from the North don’t think we’re morally superior to you fine folks, how can we be with all that church you go to? Morally superior, no… better educated, better looking, and better informed, oh yeah. It’s like night and day.
Don’t forget Texas!
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquillity and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
Never forget that the South has their Code of Honor”. This allows them to distort history and forget that they enslaved, abused, raped and dehumaized a race of people. It is an honor to celebrate the lives of the ancestors who had the courage to withraw from the union to defend ther special honor. THe Southern mind is dilludional and without humanity. Let’s all rewrite history to our liking. Hitler was just “kelping” the Jews. Stalin and Mao should be honored in CHarleston as well. Why don’t the Charlestonians go out to Fort Moultrie and commemorate teh 250,000 souls who entered there an enslaved human beings?