States’ rights dismissed

I feel compelled to respond to the recent barrage of untrue, biased, incorrect and inaccurate historical depictions of the South during the Civil War. Slavery, which I personally deplore, existed in both the North and the South at that time. However, the vast majority of Southern soldiers valiantly fighting in this war were not slave owners, but rather hardworking small farmers, hunters, factory workers and small-business owners. They would not have risked their lives and livelihoods to protect the interests of a few wealthy plantation owners who did rely on slave labor.

So why did the South rebel and fight? History confirms that the real issue was to preserve and protect the sovereignty and honor of individual states against the tyranny of a too-powerful national federal government.

That fear was clearly confirmed by President Lincoln sending General Sherman’s Union army on that horrific march through the South, burning complete towns (including schools and churches), and destroying farms, factories, railroads and river ports.

That same too-powerful federal government exists today, and just as the early Southerners feared, the sovereignty of states’ rights has been usurped by the dictates of our federal government. Today a single appointed federal judge or as few as five appointed Supreme Court justices can override and nullify voter referendums and constitutions of individual states. Perhaps the early Southerners were justified in their concerns over 200 years ago.