While the First Amendment is designed to foster discussion of every issue, we cannot recreate history to justify our political opinions.
We cannot allow our future generations to be told a revisionist history of the Civil War and its battle flag as was done by Rosalee Reed of the Rocky Mountain Confederate Conservation in her letter to the editor (Herald, Jan. 29) where she asserted the Confederate battle flag is not a racist symbol and the South was forced into secession.
The Civil War has been studied by many American historians. The overwhelming majority of historians agree that the Civil War was predominately precipitated because the institution of slavery was so imbedded in the agricultural practices of the southern states that the South sought succession to preserve those property rights, as that property right of slavery was fundamental to their business, culture and, yes, religion. The South demanded that slavery be protected in the original Articles of Confederation and provided representation to southern states based on slave ownership in the U.S. Constitution.
Slavery affected millions of African Americans who were forced to live in involuntary servitude, were never allowed to be citizens, own property, marry, assemble, be educated, vote or have basic human rights as they were only white man’s property, same as a cow or a bale of cotton. Even their children were not their own. Slavery was racist, unjust, immoral and against every code of decency in western civilization.
Then there is the issue of the Confederate battle flag. To say it is not racist or symbolic of the institution of slavery belies the history of the Civil War. Again, history shows us that in the earliest films (“Birth of a Nation,” originally “The Clansman”) the Confederate battle flag was used by the Ku Klux Klan at every lynching, murder, house burning and clan-directed terrorist activity taken against Blacks, Jews and Catholics since the Civil War. Just last year, the white supremacist murderer Dylan Roof wrapped himself in the Confederate battle flag and apartheid symbols of South Africa for a definite reason: He wanted the world to know that flag was his symbol, his banner, his values. Try as they might, this is the overwhelming perception of the Confederate battle flag.
Never considered by its adoring fans, the Confederate battle flag is seen by many Americans as a divisive terroristic symbol of slavery, injustice, racism, oppression of our American way of life and terrorism perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. It is also a symbol of the Jim Crow South, which I observed in 1953 to 1959 while living Florida and Virginia.
In America, we are free to express ourselves with any symbol we choose, whether a swastika or a peace sign. But we can’t let others rewrite or change history to justify their beliefs. Anybody who thinks the Confederate battle flag is not racist and a symbol of racial oppression shows no regard for history or fact. The Confederate battle flag is un-American.
Michael McLachlan is a Durango attorney and former state representative for Colorado’s 59th House District. Reach him at mike@dgoattys.com.
