Confederate Veterans

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- This state has an aptitude for disgruntlement. It may have suffered more than any other state from the Civil War, but it deserved to, having done more than any other to ignite it. And even now, when it is a full participant in the prosperity of the country's southeast quadrant, it finds itself riven by an utterly optional argument.While most Americans are too busy making money to wage culture wars, South Carolinians find time to be at daggers drawn with each other over a symbol.

SIX SCORE AND 13 years after the organized killing ceased, the Civil War and its lingering emotions return today to Howard County, where the Sons of Confederate Veterans intend to hold a memorial service honoring vanished men and vanished yesterdays, and maybe not-so-vanished values.It isn't so easy to tell about the values.The Confederate loyalists will rededicate a Civil War monument placed before the Howard County Courthouse half a century ago and claim it has nothing to do with favoring the enslavement of human beings, while those actually descended from the enslaved will generally find this an outrageous and painful reminder of America's historic racist instincts.

A proclamation to declare Sunday Howard County Confederate Heritage Day and related plans by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans to rededicate a Confederate monument in Ellicott City have angered African-American leaders in Howard County who believe both events celebrate slavery and racism."

A ceremony to honor Howard County Confederate war dead went peacefully yesterday afternoon, despite about 100 protesters who felt that the event promoted racism and hatred.About 200 people attended the rededication of a 50-year-old Confederate monument outside the Howard County Circuit Courthouse in Ellicott City at 2 p.m. yesterday. They sang "Dixie," saluted the Confederate flag -- and listened to a speech that accused Maryland's secretary of state, John T. Willis, and Gov. Parris N. Glendening of trying to erase Maryland's Southern heritage.

A controversial plan to rededicate a Confederate monument in Ellicott City received another blow yesterday as Maryland's secretary of state refused to issue a proclamation he considered inflammatory.John T. Willis declined to approve a request by Sons of Confederate Veterans to proclaim tomorrow "Howard County Confederate Heritage Day," saying it would be "inappropriate" to issue a government proclamation that "unnecessarily inflames emotions and might divide rather than unify the citizens of Maryland."

When Bryan Green decided three months ago to organize a ceremony to honor men from Howard County who fought for the South in the Civil War, he says he envisioned a quiet, private ceremony at the site of a Confederate monument that lies behind the Howard County Circuit Courthouse in Ellicott City.Instead, the event has attracted the attention of activists, black and white, who believe the Sons of Confederate Veterans' ceremony celebrates bigotry and hatred. Four community organizers gathered last night at Guilford Community Church in Columbia to vent their anger and plan a protest.

IT IS THE right of members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and anyone else who so desires to gather peacefully and commemorate the rebels from Howard County who fought for the South in the Civil War.They plan to do so Saturday at a rededication of a Confederate monument near the Howard County Circuit Courthouse in Ellicott City.Many people wish the granite tombstone had never been erected on public property. (It was dedicated Sept. 23, 1948.) But it's there. And those who feel compelled to honor what it represents to them should not be prohibited.

Old-growth forests irreplaceable assetThe Dec. 22 article on the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park gave me hope that the abuse of our natural system is on the wane.I only hope that the National Forest Service does not have to look back with a similar ''acute sense of regret'' when the last of our old-growth forests are but a memory.These forests and their ecosystems are a unique and irreplaceable asset. They should not be logged in the name of a fraud called the ''forest health crisis.

An article in Saturday's editions incorrectly referred to the battle flag reproduced on Maryland license plates for members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans as the Stars and Bars. The Stars and Bars, with horizontal stripes, was the Confederate national flag.The Sun regrets the errors.You don't have to be a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to own a Maryland license tag with a Confederate symbol. In fact, you probably have one on your car right now.The stylized red and white cross that appears in the state seal and flag -- and on most Maryland license tags -- was a powerful symbol of Confederate sympathy in Maryland during and after the Civil War.Maryland men fighting in Confederate regiments often wore the cross on their lapels and incorporated it into their unit flags.

JUDGE FREDERIC N. Smalkin's decision this week in the so-called ''heritage'' license plates case generated the predictable outcry, but the fact is, the constitutional issue involved in the case could not be clearer: He simply ruled that if the state of Maryland chooses to issue special license plates to the Daughters of the American Revolution, then it cannot refuse to issue plates to the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.Judge Smalkin's decision is so solidly grounded in Supreme Court precedent -- including a landmark ruling in the 1950s prohibiting Alabama from stigmatizing membership in the NAACP -- that it is hard to imagine that any judge, state or federal, Massachusetts or Mississippi, could have reached any other conclusion.

Omitting Pete Seeger derails concert review While I understand the difficulty of writing a concert review and know that someone will inevitably be disappointed by a reviewer's failure to mention a concert participant, The Baltimore Sun's review of the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial was egregious in its omission of the presence of Pete Seeger ("Musical messages of hope, faith," Jan. 19). While many Hollywood celebrities were part of the celebration, no other person was more deserving of that bully pulpit on such a day of celebration than was Mr. Seeger, who was blacklisted in the 1950s, marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and participated in the Poor People's March in 1968 at that same site.

Civil War sensitivity must run both ways I read with interest the editorial "A Civil action" (Nov. 21) which seems to confuse the "Stars and Bars" with the Confederate Battle Flag. The Stars and Bars is actually the first Confederate national flag. Mostly, it flew over Confederate government buildings during the war. The battle flag is the one depicted in the photo next to the editorial. Unfortunately, that flag has often been usurped by hate groups that share nothing in common with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

I was dismayed to read that, after 20 years of hosting the groups, the Johns Hopkins University is refusing to allow Confederate Civil War re-enactment groups to rent space for their yearly ceremony ("Hopkins balks at Confederate banner," Nov. 20). As the wife of a Civil War history enthusiast, I know that the Civil War was about more than just slavery and that those who seek to celebrate Confederate ancestors are not also seeking to celebrate discrimination and bigotry. By including in its article on the controversy quotes from the NAACP condemning the Confederate flag as a symbol of hatred, the newspapers boxes re-enactors and historical enthusiasts in with white supremacists and others who twist history to suit their political needs.

Every January, descendants of Confederate soldiers gather in Wyman Park to march under the banner of the Confederacy, sing "Dixie" and lay wreaths at the monument to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, legendary generals of the Confederate States of America. And afterward, for 20 years now, everyone has gone across the street to the Johns Hopkins University for coffee and refreshments, with some of the 200 descendants and observers still wearing the uniforms of Confederate re-enactors and carrying the flag.

Alberta Martin, 97, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died on Memorial Day in Montgomery, Ala., ending an unlikely ascent from sharecropper's daughter to the belle of 21st century Confederate history buffs who paraded her across the South. Mrs. Martin died of complications from a heart attack she suffered May 7, said her caretaker, Dr. Kenneth Chancey. Her May-December marriage in the 1920s to Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin and her longevity made her a celebrated final link to the old Confederacy.

RICHMOND, Va. - Two ceremonies were taking place yesterday with purposes as different as day and night, or North and South. One was the unveiling of a statue of Abraham Lincoln, the other a vigil in protest at the grave of Jefferson Davis. The statue of Lincoln, commissioned by the U.S. Historical Society, is in a park that was the site of Tredegar Ironworks, where tons of Confederate materiel were forged during the Civil War. The protest, by about 100 members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, was at Hollywood Cemetery, where many of the Confederacy's politicians and civic leaders are buried, as well as 18,000 Civil War soldiers.

IF I made a bet that this fella Stan Armstrong likes to ice-skate uphill, I'd probably get no takers. Armstrong's a filmmaker, not exactly the easiest of careers to break into. You have to get the training. Then have to hope financing comes from somewhere for a film. To make matters even more difficult, Armstrong's a documentary filmmaker. Remember documentaries? Good. I barely do. Few directors bother to make them anymore. It's rare for a major studio to fund one. Armstrong is also a black documentary filmmaker and, so the perception goes, faces the obstacle of race in a white-dominated field.

William Wheary Beane, until recently a senior vice president of risk management at Carrollton Bank, died June 25 of multiple organ failure at University of Maryland Medical Center. The Towson resident was 60. The cause of death may have been the result of a spider bite, said his wife of 36 years, the former Sandra Mayer. The Virginia native attended Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Va., and earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., in 1965.

THE EVE of the official celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday might be a good time to weigh in on the flap over the Confederate flag flying atop South Carolina's Capitol. The NAACP has called for a boycott of the state until the Stars and Bars is lowered. Some South Carolinians have resisted. Last week, 6,000 marched to proclaim that the flag represents Southern heritage and pride. It should never come down, they shouted. But let's get the reaction of South Carolinians, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others who still cherish the Stars and Bars, to the flag being in a place where its image clearly shouldn't be, but is. It might help explain why many blacks -- in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and out -- feel the Confederate flag represents racism and slavery.

Like an odd and fateful conjunction of planets and stars in a paradoxical universe, falling in a cluster this weekend are celebrations of the birthdays of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the great champion of civil rights, and Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, renowned defenders of the slave states of the Confederacy. King was born on Jan. 15, 1929. Lee was born on Jan. 19, 1807. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson was born on Jan. 21, 1824. King's birthday is a national holiday the third Monday of January, and celebrations abound in Baltimore and Maryland.