By Gary Dickson
I have lived in the South three different times. Twice while in the newspaper business and once while in the military. I guess you have to be born there to understand the relentlessness with which many southerners cling to all things Confederate. The Civil War ended 146 years ago this year. People from the former Union states don”t seem to still view themselves as Union state citizens or Yankees like southerners have held onto the Confederate and rebel labels.
I”ll never forget when my wife and I moved to Port Arthur, Texas . I worked for the newspaper there. Our washing machine quit working, so my wife called a repairman. When he found out we had moved there from Kansas, he said to my wife, “You”re damn Yankees, aren”t you?” My wife was stunned, but she was able to reply, “No, we”re Americans.”
Another memory that is etched in my mind is the day of Sept. 11. I was managing some newspapers in Louisiana at the time. All evening on that warm, summer night a young man in a pickup truck cruised up and down the main street of town with a large U.S. flag flying from one side of the bed of his truck and the Confederate flag waving from the other side.
Back on Dec. 20, while everyone was busy shopping for gifts and going to holiday parties, many people in South Carolina chose to go to another kind of party. For $100 a ticket South Carolinians were welcomed to Charleston”s Gaillard Municipal Auditorium to attend a grand ball to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the state”s Ordinance of Secession from the United States.
According to TPM.com, “The gala”s website describes it as an ?EVENT OF A LIFETIME!!!” The ball was sponsored by the Confederate Heritage Trust and Sons of Confederate Veterans. Attendees were invited to wear formal, period clothing and were told that they would be treated with good food and the opportunity to “dance the Virginia Reel as a band plays ?Dixie.”” The highlight of the evening was billed as a 45-minute play that re-enacted the signing of the secession ordinance, which formally ended the state”s ties to the United States.
I may have been busy with holiday preparations myself, because I didn”t really notice that there was a major outcry over South Carolina”s sesquicentennial celebration of secession. At the time, I caught one small item on an online newspaper, so I saved it to write about it later.
I guess there were some Black community leaders, from around the country, who voiced their outrage about the event. They certainly had a right to do so, since the primary reason for secession was over the election of Abraham Lincoln as president; whose promise was to end slavery in America.
I”m not sure how the South Carolinians of today could be proud to attend the secession ball, knowing that when the Confederacy was formed, its eventual first vice-president, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, stated that the new government was founded on exactly the opposite principle of that of the United States. He said, “?its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
Obviously, that alone is more than enough reason for no one in 2010 (at the time of the celebration) to pay homage to the South Carolina secession of 150 years earlier. But, when I read about the secession party, my first thought was not of past slavery, but more about the current betrayal of the United States. That U.S. citizens of today could kick up their heels at a party to honor their state”s severed ties to this country, even though it was 150 years ago and part of the state”s history, was a monstrous insult to their country. The secession anniversary was something to observe, but certainly nothing to celebrate.
Gary Dickson is the publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
