by Wayne Powers
It isn't necessary to mention the currently unmentionable Confederate battle flag to garner the usual dismissal from my Northern friends, "Don't you people know that the Civil War is over?" Any comment made relating to Southern heritage or even state sovereignty is sure to elicit the same tired response.
Sadly, this historically illiterate reaction can be heard with increasing frequency right here in Charlotte. It must be a direct result of the contortions we mindlessly make to fit the vague image of a "world-class city" -- whatever that is this week.
What does it say of us when we are willing to sacrifice jobs and people to preserve a spotted owl or save some obscure species of redent while we remain silently acquiescent to the imposed obliteration and extinction of our proud Southern heritage?
The answer is clear: You can't preserve and protect what you've been purposely prevented from learning to begin with.
To the victor go the spoils -- and the greatest spoil Lincoln's army took with them when they finally returned North was the power to write the history books.
It wasn't a 'civil war'
That we ever even fought a civil war at all is solely a Northern view. A "civil war" can only, be definition, be fought by factions of the same country. The Southern states legally seceded from what they perceived to be an increasingly Northern-dominated, repressive union.
Legally? Yes, the right of a sovereign state to secede as a remedy of last resort was never even questioned prior to the mid-19th centruy. When the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, the term "perpetual union" was specifically omitted.
The Constitution clearly established that the states did not grant but merely "delegated" specific authority to the federal government, primarily for the common defense and to regulate interstate trade. Sovereignty belongs to the states.
The independent Southern states formed a new republic, the Confederate States of America, with a Constitution closely mirroring the 1787 document of our Founding Fathers. The most notable difference between the two documents was that the Confederate Constitution outlawed the importation of slaves -- the U.S. Constitution did not.
Jefferson Davis speaks
History books refer to the secession of the Southern states as a "rebellion" and Confederates as "rebels." If our school textbooks, which are still written and published in the North, would only allow Jefferson Davis to speak for himself, we might learn soemthing of value:
"The withdrawal of a state from a league has no revolutionary or insurrectionary characteristic. The government of the state remains unchanged as to all internal affairs. It is only its external or confederate relations that are altered. To term this action of a sovereign as a 'rebellion' is a gross abuse of language."
Thus, when Lincoln's troops invaded Virginia, he invaded both a sovereign state and an independent republic. How can this be construed to be a "civil" war?
If Britain had won the American Revolution, would we not still bristle at it being called a "civil war" today? The only accurate and proper name for the war of 1861-65 is the War for Southern Independence.
A recent editorial in The Observer purported that "The Civil War...settled the question of whether the states were free to secede or whether the United States was, as the Pladge of Allegiance now says, an indivisible nation." I'll stand in the good company of Jefferson Davis, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and every Founding Father in strong objection.
Not indivisible
We have never been and are not now an indivisible nation or nation-state. The United States of America are a constitutionally federated republic of sovereign states. Of much more than grammatcial significance is the fact that "The United States of America" is plural -- not singular.
Was the outcome at Appomattox, as The Observer suggests, a revolution of our collective essence, a final settlement of the question of a state's right to peacefully secede? President Jefferson Davis answered best this spurious claim of "might makes right" when he said, "A question settled by violence, or disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever."
Recognizing that the Pledge of Allegiance does portray "one nation...indivisible," we must also recognize that it was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy as a punitive crowning act to codify Reconstruction and has no force of law. A such, it can hardly be concrete legal grounds or justification for transforming the very nature of the compact which binds us.
The Pledge of Allegiance may embody an underlying purpose of merit, but it is, in its curent form, unconstitutional and needs to be corrected before it can, in good conscience, be restored to modern usage:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of these United States of America, and to the republic of sovereign states, for which it stands, constitutionally federated, under God, with liberty and justice for all." Not one framer of the Constitution would have had the slightest reservation about reciting such a pledge.
Thank you, but...
Erosion of the basic concepts upon which our republic was founded demand nothing less than constitution restoration.
We can best begin by a rejection of Northern revisionist history and a search for the truth of our Southern heritage. To Northern historians we can say politely, "Thank you, but we can best tell our own story."
So, when my Yankee friends smirkingly ask, "Don't you people know that the Civil War is over?" I patiently reply, "The South has never fought a 'civil war.' She fought a War for Southern Independence and, while that war may be over, your comment is strong evidence that Reconstruction is still going strong."
Wayne Powers is from Charlotte, NC. This article originally appeared in The Charlotte Observer, July 19, 1995. Copyright © 1995 - Wayne Powers.