As an editor at large, I get to be considerably at large and so I am in fact living these days across the Cooper River from Charleston, South Carolina. That was the place, as you may remember, where the phenomenon erroneously called the “Civil War” began some 150 years ago, and where some folks now are determined to remember what went on and some others are determined to protest whatever went on then and is going on now.
It seems to have become something of a national issue, and being in a good position to take a look at the events this spring commemorating the sesquicentennial of what they like to call “the late unpleasantness,” I thought I’d try to shed a little light amid the considerable murkiness of ignorance all around.But first I think it’s important to remember that the secession that took place 150 years ago was in a grand old American tradition. The American “Revolution” was, in fact, a war of secession – 13 colonies breaking away from the British Empire – not a war of conquest, and most of the Founding Fathers understood that to be a given right when they created the Articles and then the Constitution.
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