There is a segment of our nation’s population that’s truly unaware of its true family history. The link between them and their ancestors were crushed, discarded, and heaped in the belly of thousands of slave ships headed for the United States of America.

The belief/view that our American Civil War was fought purely on the basis of a 41 percent tax on goods produced in the South and shipped to the North is extremely misguided and delusional. The taxes on these goods was only a symptom of the virus called slavery.

The flu virus is accompanied by symptoms such as muscle aches, coughs, chills, nasal congestion, headaches, and etc. These symptoms standing alone cause their own challenges and a doctor could treat each one of them, but they would only subside for a while and reappear stronger. The doctor must treat the flu virus. The same actions had to be taken to combat the virus called slavery.

It is true that 620,000 Americans died in our American Civil War. This is a fact and cannot be questioned, but I pose another horrific loss of life. The estimate of Africans that perished during the slave trade while on the Middle Passage is 2.5 million. This is only an estimate; the number could be much greater. You have to remember that slaves were not considered humans, but a commodity similar to cattle and pigs. Please take a moment and wrap your hearts and minds around that staggering number. This does not take into account the number of babies that were born during the Middle Passage that were thrown overboard by their mothers that could not bear to think of their babies being brutalized, tortured, or raped.

We must come to the realization that our American Civil War was a war not fought over taxes and caused by special interest groups, but it was fought over the economic machine powered by the virus of slavery.

I do honor my forebears even though their names are not written in a ledger, carved in a fine piece of granite, or printed on our currency. I know it is because of those nameless heroes and heroines that battled the virus of slavery for hundreds of years that I am able to live in the manner I do today.

Thanks,

Theron Dawson

Johnson City, Tenn.