No such thing as an honorable Confederate flag
By Dwight T. Pitcaithley
POSTED: 07/20/2015 10:22:08 PM MDT
... Delegate G. T. Yelverton of Coffee County, Alabama, explained the need to secede in most simple terms, "The question of Slavery is the rock upon which the Old Government split: it is the cause of secession." Jefferson Buford of Barbour County, Alabama agreed but cast the secession campaign in larger terms: "We are sent (to Alabama's secession convention) to protect, not so much property, as white supremacy,...."
The constitution makers in Montgomery certainly knew what they were about. While the United States Constitution in 1861 did not contain the word "slavery," the Confederate Constitution used the word 10 times, most importantly to establish the new reality that slaves were considered property. And, as property, they were protected by the "due process" clause of the Fifth Amendment which the constitutional architects embedded into Article I. In other words, the Confederate Constitution assured that slavery was protected by the federal charter, secure from the wishes of the states. Slavery, in the Confederacy, had been nationalized.
Before we engage in a national frenzy substituting one of the Confederate national flags for the battle flag, we need to pause and remember that the famed Stars and Bars (the first Confederate national flag) and its successors were also designed and flown as symbols of white supremacy. As the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens put it in an address to Virginia's secession convention, "The great truth, I repeat, upon which our system rests, is the inferiority of the African." Confederate flags of all kinds need to be relegated to museums not public spaces ...
Dwight T. Pitcaithley served as chief historian of the National Park Service from 1995 to 2005.
http://www.demingheadlight.com/deming-opinion/ci_28514444/dwight-t-pitcaithley-no-such-thing-an-honorable
= new reply since forum marked as read
