Just got back from a mini vacation, and one stop was a visit to historic Fort Sumter.
Though some of the talk and artifacts were interesting, I was not very impressed by the fort itself. Most of it was blasted to smithereens at the end of the Civil War. Then in later wars they threw an ugly black cement & steel building right in the middle of it so they could put some giant guns facing out towards the ocean. Those giant guns are gone, but the ugly building still stands.
I did not know the island was man made. That was interesting.
I was designed for coastal protection… and though it was a pivotal flash point to start the Civil War, it never really did much else. Its location was probably good for intended use… but was never really needed in later wars.
The one thing I was MOST curious to see/hear… was how they addressed the issue of slavery and how they addressed the cause(s) of the Civil War. As anyone with a brain knows, the only real cause of the war was the issue of slavery. With later revisionist and apologist types trying to make the Southerners feel better by giving other “reasons” like “States Rights”. It’s too funny because apologists now pretend the Southerners cared about “States Rights”… but they always forget that the South was against Norther states having the “Right” to refuse to track ex-slaves and refuse to enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws.
Anyway.. I was happy to see/hear that the literature and tours were all clear with Slavery being the absolute PRIMARY cause of the war. I glad to see that our Gov’t (The National Park Service) is getting things correct and they protect true and accurate history.
From the flyer/map provide with the tour…
“The critical significance of this election was expressed in South Carolina’s Declaration of the Immediate Causes [of] Secession… The Declaration claimed secession was justified because the Federal Government had violated the Constitutional Compact… As the primary violation, the Declaration listed the failure of the 14 northern states to enforce the Federal Fugitive Slave Act or to restrict the actions of antislavery organizations.”
“The South Carolina Declaration shows how national arguments related to state sovereignty arose from questions about the nature and expansion of slavery.”
i.e. debates about “States Rights” are BS and only exist(ed) because the South wanted to protect slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Car ... _Secession
