To the Editor:
Re “Southern
Discomfort,” by Jon Meacham (Op-Ed, April 11), about “Virginia’s
neo-Confederates”:
Several years ago I had a beer with a young Virginian contractor in a
New Jersey bar on St. Patrick’s Day. We got onto the subject of
heritage, and wound up comparing genealogical notes.
I’m proud of my WASP heritage, and—I didn’t tell him—of my long
lineage of loud, Republican antislavery New Englanders. He was proud,
too, and had me matched, with ancestors dating to the 17th century on
both sides.
It should be remembered that his Southern heritage, like my Northern
one, began, and persists, with family as a core feature. Family
character and values that endure through centuries, that come out in us
in too many ways to count, flood our thoughts and inspirations far
beyond our ability to control, or to even know.
Celebrating them is not only a right; it is an important act of
reflection upon our selves as valuable people.
A Virginian’s pride in the history of the state extends back to when
slavery was not much more common there than in Connecticut. Our founding
fathers mostly found it convenient to finesse the slavery issue.
Abraham Lincoln himself would have allowed its perpetuation in order to
save the nation from civil war.
So, we all bear some amount of collective guilt for its perpetuation.
Mr. Meacham’s article, to be fair, should contend that we all hang our
heads in collective shame for this every Fourth of July. Its pieties are
otherwise misplaced.
Matt Carey
Glen Ridge, N.J., April 12, 2010
To the Editor:
As an African-American from the South, I ask: If, from the
Confederate states’ viewpoint, the Civil War mainly was about states’
rights, not slavery, why did Virginia, Alabama and Texas explicitly use
the term “slaveholding states” in their ordinances of secession?
Even when the federal government was seen as a threat to
Southerners’ “prosperity,” much of that threat was the potential
abolition of slavery.
David L. Evans
Cambridge, Mass., April 11, 2010
To the Editor:
It is important for Americans to appreciate the Civil War and the
Confederacy in their full complexity. For those disturbed at their
inarticulate but powerful use as symbols of hate, it is not enough to
complain that this sort of appreciation obfuscates the legacy of slavery
and racism.
The frustrations and ideologies that manifest in nostalgic politics,
be it the Tea Party movement or fights over the Confederate flag, must
be carefully understood. The Civil War was fought for many reasons.
Those on the left and in the North rarely stray from the issues of
slavery and racism when thinking about the Confederacy, but political
philosophy and economic organization must be given appropriate
attention.
Americans rarely turn to class in their analysis, but to understand
the Civil War and states’ rights, class conflict—both within the
regions and between them—must be grappled with.
Stephen Boatright
Brooklyn, April 11, 2010
The writer is an adjunct lecturer in geography
at Hunter College, CUNY.
Note from KBJ: Progressives profess to be nuanced. Ha! In fact, they're simpletons. They think the American Civil War was merely about slavery.
Note 2 from KBJ: Progressives love to say that they are not in favor of abortion; they are in favor of a woman's right to abort. Southerners say that their forebears were not in favor of slavery; they were in favor of a state's right to determine for itself whether it would allow slavery. Why do progressives grasp the distinction in one case but not in the other? Why is abortion about women's rights but the Civil War not about states' rights?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 