Letter to the editor: Confederacy not about white supremacy

The fact many people view the Confederate flag as a symbol of white supremacy and slavery is, in my opinion, a product of our flawed educational system. Yes, hate groups have flown it just as they have the American flag. The Confederacy was about upholding the original Constitution and Thomas Jefferson’s promise of states’ rights and a small central government.

In their op-ed “That Confederate flag would have offended your great-great-grandfather” (June 11, TribLIVE), Grove City College professors Gillis Harp and P.C. Kemeny write that Western Pennsylvania supported Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. The same Lincoln who said if he could save the union without freeing a single slave, he would do it. The same Lincoln who would have approved the Corwin amendment, which would have legalized slavery in the Constitution. If slavery was the South’s only motive, all they had to do was sign it. They refused.

They write that many Pennsylvanians opposed secession. So did Robert E. Lee. It was only after Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to invade the South did Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee secede. Lee was Lincoln’s first choice to lead the Union army, but he resigned rather than attack his home state. Had there been no call for troops, maybe the war never would have occurred.

The Confederacy never sought control over Washington. In the words of Confederate spy Belle Boyd, “It will be admitted that the emancipation of the negro was not the object of Northern ambition; that is, of the faction which grasps exclusive power in contempt of general rights.”

Tom Kopczak

Hempfield