Dear editor: Don't punish the flag

Dear editors:

I have studied the Civil War my entire adult life and I guarantee that this war was no more fought over slavery than the American Revolution was fought over tea. I will be the first to admit that the South is far from racial utopia and we indeed have our share of racial problems. My heart grieves for the victims and their families due to the depraved act of a deeply deranged individual who should receive the maximum punishment of death without question. But why must the Battle Flag be punished for the actions of a madman? My Confederate ancestors would have strongly vilified this psychopath, as I do today. If flags are going to be condemned due to guilt by association, then by that absolute, the white flag of surrender will stand alone.

First of all, one will never know this war until they understand the U.S. Constitution and learn the status of the States before 1861. These former colonies became sovereign nations when their independence was won from Britain during our American Revolution and remained so until the American Civil War. A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bank of Augusta v. Earl in 1839, reaffirms the States are indeed nations in every particular.

These nations created the Constitution of 1787 and this document created the federal government, which was delegated limited and enumerated powers. The powers not delegated to the federal government were to be reserved to the States, which were numerous and indefinite, as declared in the 10th Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The institution of slavery was federally protected, both North and South, in no less than four clauses of the U.S. Constitution, which simply demonstrates that the federal government did not wage an illegal war over an institution that was codified in law by its own Constitution.

It should be specifically mentioned that the federal government had zero constitutional authority to wage war against its creator, the sovereign States. That is articulated in Article III, Section 3, which is defined as treason and there are no exceptions in this clause. Due to this war, the once sovereign States are now subjugated to the federal government and are mere tributaries to Washington, D.C.

In actuality, the Confederate Battle Flag, and/or any Confederate flag, stands far more deeply rooted in the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights than the U.S. flag during the entire Abraham Lincoln administration. Lincoln not only unlawfully warred against the South, but also warred with the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The right of self-government that was contended in 1776 was the exact political ideology that was later contended in 1861. This is why we Southerners, who still believe in the God-given right for the States to govern themselves as handed down to us as a legacy that is articulated in the three cornerstones of American liberty known as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of 1787, and the Bill of Rights, still fly this flag.

Loy Mauch

Bismarck

Editorial on 06/30/2015

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