THE WAR OF NORTHERN AGGRESSION CROWD WEIGHS IN
Metro Council President David Bragdon and people like him have been brainwashed by society’s perpetual use of symbols and biased account of history. If they ever bothered to do any research, they might discover that the Confederate Flag is NOT a symbol of racism, but rather a piece of American history that has unfortunately been co-opted and besmirched by hate groups who have no right to use it (‘The Dixie Pix’ WW, Oct. 4, 2006).
The Civil War was precipitated by a raise in Southern tariffs and Lincoln’s favoritism to Northern states, who were paying one quarter what Southern states were. So Virginia decided to secede from the Union (which, under their state constitution, they had every legal right to do). Lincoln realized that Southern secession would disrupt commerce, directly affecting the local Northern economy, and responded by sending 18,000 troops into Virginia. Southerners found it unfathomable (and rightly so) that a president would send troops to attack other Americans.
Slavery was never the central issue of the Civil War, as our public schools would like us to believe (they generally fail to mention that the majority of Southerners didn’t own slaves). The Stars and Bars are a symbol of the greatest American display of resistance against a corrupt government, not of racism.
Jess Nichols
Gresham
