Peter Goodspeed: Southern states mark 150 years of trying to rewrite history
They held a ball in Charleston, South Carolina, last week to celebrate the onset of the bloodiest war in U.S. history.
Men in frock coats and militia uniforms joined women in silk hoop skirts to sip mint juleps, as a band called Unreconstructed played Dixie and a squad of historical re-enactors staged a replay of the Dec. 20, 1860 signing of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession, which severed ties with the Union and paved the way for the American Civil War.
The 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession is the first in a long list of Civil War memorials scheduled to be staged over the next four-and-a-half years that could end up reopening old war wounds.
Festive and defiant, in character with the Old South, Charleston’s Secession Ball sparked a revival of an old debate about whether the most deadly conflict in U.S. history, which claimed a total of 620,000 lives, was fought over slavery or states’ rights. Read More »
