Government Run Civil War Site Eliminates Confederate Flag Without Consulting Historians

by Warner Todd Huston | July 4, 2015 11:22 am

The Battle of Fort Sumter off the coast of South Carolina is one of the first major battles between the nascent Confederacy and the federal army under the newly elected Abe Lincoln. Since the war Fort Sumter has become a civil war battlefield park run by the National Park Service. Now, after 155 years, the federal government is eliminating the Confederate flag at the park and this move was made without even bothering to seek advice from historians.

Fort Sumter Today Just Before The CS FLags Were Removed

Fort Sumter was the battle that helped Abe Lincoln make the claim that it was the Confederates who started the war because he ordered his troops in Fort Sumter not to fire first, only to respond to attack, not initiate it. The Confederates obliged by firing the first shot early on April 12, 1861.

Illogically the Park Service decided that the Confederate flag has “no historical context”[1] at this national battlefield park–you know, where the Confederacy actually fought.

he decision to remove the flags came from a directive by National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis in Washington, D.C. which reads: “Confederate flags shall not be flown in units of the National Park system and related sites with the exception of specific circumstances where the flags provide historic context. … All superintendents and program managers should evaluate how Confederate flags are used … and remove the flags where appropriate.” “Shall not be flown” is the only text that appears in bold in the letter.

The site of the Civil War’s first battle is clearly a “historic” one, but according to a Fort Sumter spokesperson, it doesn’t qualify as a place where “flags provide historical context,” local WMBF News reported.

After the initial order from Washington to remove the flags was handed down, NPS Director Jarvis provided “further guidance” the next day that put the onus for the decision on regional directors. Fort Sumter’s Superintendent Timothy Stone did not reverse Jarvis’ decision and the flags remain down.

“The Confederate flag has a place in national parks when it provides historic context — signifying troop movements and locations, during living history programs and reenactments, or as a part of memorials and historic landscapes,” Kathy Kupper, a spokesperson for the National Park Service, told the Washington Examiner.

The Park Service fired the only historian it had working for Fort Sumter and never replaced him, so this move was made without the advice of anyone who actually knows anything about history.

Endnotes:
  1. “no historical context”: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fort-sumter-nixes-all-confederate-flags-makes-decision-sans-historian/article/2567521

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/democrats/government-run-civil-war-site-eliminates-confederate-flag-without-consulting-historians/