A Southern perspective
The recent article, “A Northern Perspective,” by one of your reporters prompted me to respond to his comments about the South in general, and in particular his take on the mindset of the Southerner concerning his Civil War heritage and the ambivalence of the Northerner concerning his own.
The Southern flag and the Civil War are thoroughly intertwined, and to understand the Southern position concerning the flag and his heritage in general, one has to understand the causes of the Civil War. One of the major issues, of course, was slavery.
Perhaps not many people — including many Southerners — realize it or like it, but the institution of slavery is recognized in no less than three clauses in the U.S. Constitution. The fact that representatives to Congress were apportioned on the basis of slave numbers is just one example of the Constitution’s sanctioning of the legal existence of slavery. Understandably, the South used the constitutional argument in vigorously defending the institution.
And in 1854, in the famed Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in 7-2 decision solidly sided with the South in affirming the constitutionality of the Southern position, and furthermore, that the practice could not be restricted. At the time, the Court naturally assumed that its decision decided the issue once and for all.
But to very determined Northern people (the liberals of their day), it mattered not that the South had both the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court on its side. They continued to agitate, ridicule, insult and denigrate the South, even defy the law, to the point that the South eventually had two choices: give up its rights and be run over by the North; or fight. The South chose the latter.
And when the first shots were finally fired at Fort Sumter, it was the South who was blamed for starting the war. It was a classic case of the belligerent big boy continually insulting and harassing the little boy, and when the little boy finally has enough and strikes back, it is the little boy who is blamed for starting the fight.
Yes, the South fired the shots that started the Civil War. But make no mistake, it was the North that caused the Civil War.
The Civil War was the result of a Northern population intent on imposing its own views on the South — by military force — and regardless of the Constitution and the Supreme Court, and regardless of fair-minded men in the North like the Reverend Nehemiah Adams of Boston, an abolitionist who on visiting the South in 1854, concluded to the astonishment of his friends that the South would eventually end the practice on its own if the North would stop its agitation.
And contrary to what the writer suggests in his article, the overwhelming majority of Southern men who fought under the Confederate Stars and Bars did not fight so the big plantation owner could keep his slaves. The average Southern man fought for the right to be left alone and to keep an army of Yankees from overrunning his front yard.
To put into concept today the views of the Northern liberal of that time, one has to simply substitute the phrase “gun control” for “slavery.” Today, it does not matter to the liberal that the right to own a gun is embedded in the Constitution. What matters to the liberal is whether he or she is fundamentally for or against a thing, regardless of its legality.
Further, the liberal is not merely content with exercising his own individual rights concerning these matters, whether the issue is owning a gun or displaying a flag. If a liberal does not want to own a gun, it is not enough for the liberal simply not to own a gun — no one must own a gun. All must be brought to conform to the liberal’s way of thinking.
The current argument over the flag is simply an extension of that thinking, and those supporting the flag should not be duped into believing otherwise.
Perhaps this will give the writer of this article some insight into why Southerner’s who really know their history, don’t want to forget it.
And why he and his Northern friends don’t want to remember theirs.
Jimmy Bonner
Starkville
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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