This is the 3rd and final post in this little “Heritage and History” series of posts. Here are the first two blog posts: Kennesaw Memorial Park, Heritage and History, Blog Post #1, and Heritage and History, Blog Post #2: Cheatham Hill.
Every day thousands of people drive down I85 into downtown Atlanta and don’t even look over their shoulder and ponder the history that happened right here. Starting in 1837, the first name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus” because the train track ended here, and later 2 other train lines connected at this “Terminus” creating a 3-railway-train-line connecting “Terminus”.
Here are the details from this other website: “In 1837 engineers for the Western and Atlantic Railroad (a state-sponsored project) staked out a point on a ridge about seven miles east of the Chattahoochee River as the southern end of a rail line they planned to build south from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The town that emerged around this zero milepost was called Terminus, which literally means “end of the line.” Had this remained the town’s only rail connection, Atlanta might well have stayed a small, end-of-the-line frontier town. By 1846, however, two other railroad lines had converged with the Western and Atlantic in the center of town, connecting it to far-flung areas of the Southeast and spurring the city’s growth.” Here is a picture of the “Terminus” that people pass everyday in Atlanta:
And here is a recreation, from the movie “Gone With the Wind”, of what this “Terminus” in Atlanta might have looked like not long after the battles in Kennesaw and at Cheatham Hill and as Gen. Sherman closed in on Atlanta:
We often lose track of how we got to where we are. That very much includes our parents, grandparents, and all the way back. And it also includes our cities, and states, and countries. In my case, America, Scotland, Ireland, England, and others.
What are the current-day legacies of the Civil War that impact us directly? I’d love to hear your opinions on this question. In my opinion, first, national unity. The country is not split. Second, freedom. No slavery. Third, income tax. Federal government direct income taxation when you get a paycheck from your employer. The original Constitution outlawed the federal government from the power of direct taxation.
Here is my take on the Civil War after reading many books (a few were listed in the second blog post). Most importantly, above all, slavery was a moral blight, and national sin, that had to be eradicated, as Pres. Lincoln rightly indicated in his second inaugural address. It is the role of the federal government to protect our inalienable “God given” rights. No state should violate those rights, and if any state allows those rights to be violated, the federal government should protect those rights. I’d love to see the federal government champion all our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms including freedom of the press and of speech and the right to bear arms (as opposed to actively censoring the press and censoring our freedom of speech and trying to curtail our right to bear arms). In areas where states do not violate our inalienable “God given” rights, the federal government should not bother the states. Direct federal income tax never should have happened against the Constitution. It was many years before the federal government took all that power through a Constitutional amendment by promising to never go beyond very light taxes. Lies upon lies, and here we are, in regard to direct taxation.
Having said that, in the book “The Siege and Burning of Atlanta”, there was this interesting story: in the Civil War battles approaching Atlanta, Union soldiers captured a 17 year old Confederate soldier and asked him if he was pro-slavery. The boy said he had no position on slavery. The union soldiers asked the boy, “Then why are you fighting?” The boy answered, “Because you are here.”
Understanding our heritage and our history matter. We need to understand how we got to where we are today. While recognizing and learning from past problems we need to celebrate the positive aspects of our heritage and history and “count our many blessings!”
