'The great truth'
Published: Tue, Mar. 14, 2006 12:00AM
Modified Tue, Mar. 14, 2006 12:21PM
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closeAlthough the writer of the March 11 People's Forum letter captioned "Lost and found" would have us believe that "the cause of the South" had nothing to do with slavery, the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens, held different views:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition." (March 21, 1861)
Since the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, as proclaimed by its second-highest official, was racial inequality and slavery, it is little wonder that people of conscience today, white as well as black, object to the celebration of the flag that embodied those institutions.
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Norman G. Owen
Durham
(The writer is a visiting professor of history at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.)
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