Great Atlantic Seaboard Bicycyle Tour: Charleston, SC 10/18 0 driving miles; 16 walking miles

At some point, our very knowledgeable walking tour guide, Tommy Dewes, put up his dukes in a fiesty fighting stance and claimed, "Winners write the history, and much of the Southern story has been twisted. We Southerners are hyper sensitive about it." During the tour, both Tommy's passion and his agenda were on display. He had an authoritative delivery, a great voice, and a certain style in which he would drop some provocative nugget, turn briskly and walk two or three steps before turning on his heels in a well staged pirouette. Then he would expound. At one point in describing the justification for slave labor, he asked crisply, "Morality or Money- Take your pick." Later, in defense of the "business" model in which enslaved humans were considered chattel, nothing more than livestock, he rationalized the practice by defying us to find a society throughout history in which slavery was not normal practice. He cited the sheer numbers of immigrants (As well as the reality of an agrarian base versus an industrial base) as the cause of the South's demise, rightly citing that early immigrants (And now brown people all over our country) worked in conditions far worse than those the slaves suffered. He also rightly stated that the power brokers of the North would simply replace any feeble or maimed worker with another emaciated dreamer. He must have equated the dispicable practices of "company" stores of the meat packers, and the cramped harsh conditions of early factory workers with the rapes, the whippings, the hangings, and the families torn asunder that those enslaved endured. He claimed it was just good business practice to "take care" of your slaves. He didn't mention differences, say unionization as the painfully hard fought gains of the European immigrant as opposed to instituionalized racism that is alive and well in America today, nor did he mention the difference between willingly boarding a ship in the hopes of a better life, as opposed to being herded into the holds of ships shackled in irons. He did rightly portray Lincoln's position in the Civil War was to preserve the union, and that it wasn't a war over slavery. He spoke with great fervor while standing in front of John C. Calhoun's grave, saying, "It's ironic that we had to lose the war to preserve our Southern culture." And finally, as we stood on the battery, Fort Sumpter in the distance and a 14,000 square foot single home worth roughly $8,000,000 behind us, Tommy stood proudly on his last claim, "Calhoun, a Confederate hero, started talking about the unconstitutional position of the Federal government in 1832. On April 12, 1861 we lobbed a few shells to displace the tyranny. Where we're standing were the front row seats." Tommy began the tour half jokingly: What's the difference between a Yankee and a Southerner? A Southerner knows that I-95 goes both ways. For me, not just a Yankee, but a late coming, near chattel status immigrant, he needn't worry. I'm happy to bury my head in the comfortable sands of home. In this we can agree, and therefore life is good for both of us, especially today.