THE CONFEDERACY LIVES ON

Number Thirteen – December 2010

I begin writing this blog on the evening of December 20, 2010. While sitting here hundreds of people are gathering at the Guilliard Auditorium in Charleston, South Carolina proudly celebrating their past. This $100.00 plate banquet and ball is the 150th year celebration of South Carolina’s secession from the United States on December 24, 1861.

The Secession Ball is organized by the Confederate Heritage Trust and sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The gala is a gathering of people dressed in modern cocktail attire or 1860 period clothing. This is the birthplace of Dixie and folks gather to remember it and to “be part of it.”

This 150th anniversary of the four year conflict of the Civil War begins in the former slave port of Charleston with a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink. Similar celebrations will be replicated in other Southern cities. These secession events are among hundreds, if not thousands, that will unfold over the next four years in honor of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. A parade is planned for Montgomery, Alabama along with a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy. At the site in Maryland of the Battle of Antietam, a solemn memorial will feature 23,000 candles representing the battle’s casualties. Sons of Confederate Veterans are preparing television commercials with planned showings in 2011. “All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves,” claims one ad from the Georgia division.

These events focus on the issue of states’ rights which was the key claim made by Southern States justifying the Civil War. Michael Givens, commander-in-chief of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans says: “We in the South, who have been kicked around for an awfully long time and are accused of being racists, we would just like the truth to be known.” And though there were many causes of the Civil War, “Our people were only fighting to protect themselves from an invasion and for their independence.”

Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina NAACP, is dumbfounded by “all this glamorization and sanitation of what really happened. When Southerners refer to states’ rights,” he said, “they are really talking about the idea of one’s right to buy and sell human beings.”

Though slavery is underplayed or ignored by those planning these Sesquicentennial celebrations, it is, nevertheless, clearly articulated in the Confederate States of America Declaration of the Immediate Cause Which Induce and Justify Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union (Adopted December 24, 1860):
…they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of other citizens of other states. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; ….
…A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinion and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with administration of the common government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

To make the importance of the slave issue stronger it should be remembered that Secessionists accused Northerners of disobeying constitutionally enacted laws: specifically the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This law was a Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave holding interests and Northern Free Soilers. It led abolitionists to fear a “slave power conspiracy.” It gave Southern slave owners the right to seek and capture and return to the South runaway slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act gave suspected slaves no recourse to the Northern courts which meant many free Blacks were kidnapped and forced illegally into slavery. It even required Northern law enforcement officials to participate in capturing and returning such “fugitives.” Abolitionist, of course, objected to these actions and sought to protect runaway slaves and provided passage to Canada for many of them.

At a press conference before the ball, Randy Burbage, Vice President of the Confederate heritage Trust, said the ball was held to honor Confederate soldiers and recognize the historic act that happened in Charleston 150 years ago. “It’s an educational and a historical presentation and that is all. It is not a celebration of slavery or anything of the sort, that’s never been our intention.”

The issue of slavery is what led to secession of the Confederate States and to the Civil War. Celebrating the Sesquicentennial of Secession reopens the deep sores of slavery and racism. Not telling the whole story of slavery and its degrading brutal treatment of Blacks in the South makes these events mischaracterizations of historical events. They are whitewashed lies.

What do you think? Let us hear from you.

Don Coleman – December 2010

--
Sources:
Austin American-Statesman, Saturday, December 4, 2010. p. A3. “Civil War anniversary events highlight lingering divisions” by Katharine Q. Seelye

The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. “Confederate States of America – Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.”

WCIV – TV (abcnews4.com) – Charleston. Report by Jon Bruce.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

--
Pro-Reconciliation/Anti-Racism Team:
Karon Alexander, Dwight Bailey, Jerry Bennett-Barker, Brittany Barber, Darron Bowden, Gloria Carey-Branch, Minta Coburn, Ann Marie Coleman, Don Coleman, Teresa Dulyea-Parker, Martha Herrin, Carol Josefowski, Delre Smith, Lelia Ward