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Our Story BY Scott English Executive Director scott@stamps.org A Remarkable Step for Civil War Philately IN November, the Confederate Stamp Alliance’s membership voted overwhelmingly to change its name to the Civil War Philatelic Society. With 365 total votes cast, 310 supported the move while 55 members opposed it. Beginning in 2021, the quarterly journal for the Society will become the Civil War Philatelist. When the CWPS Board proposed the name change, they recognized the reality of where we are today. Among the reasons were national efforts to remove Confederate statues, collections losing value, a loss of advertisers for the journal, and even difficulty booking hotels. It rightly noted the word Confederate “equates to pro-slavery and racism to most citizens.” For full disclosure, I’ve been a member of the Society since 2017, and I voted in favor of the name change. Though I’m hardly a high-level philatelist in any subject, I am a historian. In college, I focused on the landscape of the Civil War and Reconstruction through every lens possible. It is an important subject to understand, given the nation continues to struggle with the War and its aftermath. We cannot deny the Confederacy’s cause has been hijacked by those who want hate to keep the nation as divided as it was then. We should not deny what the Confederacy represents to many fellow Americans. When I joined the South Carolina Governor’s staff in 2003, the State had just voted to remove the Confederate flag from flying over the Capitol Dome. The flag was relocated to the State House grounds by the Confederate Veterans Memorial. Throughout my time in the Governor’s Office, different groups lobbied to remove the flag altogether, while others wanted to restore it to the Dome. Though I had hoped we could restart the discussion of full removal, but other crises got in the way. I learned to regret that we didn’t at least try. On June 17, 2015, a young white man walked into a bible study at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. He sat through the study before murdering nine people, including the minister and state senator Clementa Pinckney, whom I’d come to know as a friend. We would learn 18 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / JANUARY 2021 Scott 77 15¢ Abraham Lincoln this young man, fueled by anger and brandishing the Confederate flag as a symbol of pride, believed he would start a race war, 150 years after the end of the Civil War. The South Carolina legislature voted to remove the flag from the State House grounds later that year. It was then the first effort to change the name of the Society began and failed. APS Vice President Trish Kaufmann, who has served the Society in various capacities, including President and editor of the journal, was one of the outspoken leaders to the change. Over time, she’s remained an advocate, and in November, her efforts and those of countless others accomplished that goal. For me, I didn’t support the change because of hotel reservations, advertising, or even my dear friend, Clem, but rather because I thought it was the right thing to do. History needs perspective and focusing on one aspect of the Civil War, rather than the whole story, fails to teach. Stamp collectors are some of the most important historians because we preserve the direct connections between people and tell their stories. By transitioning to the CWPS, the Society opens the door to collectors of Union philatelic material and postal history from the same era. We know the War divided families, but in some ways, the country remained intertwined. We also know that philately should be apolitical. Though politics invade too many corners of our world today, philately is a welcome escape for most of us. In time, politics would have found its way to the CWPS, gradually eroding its membership and relevance. We do not need to celebrate the Confederacy’s cause, but we need to understand it and hand those lessons to the next generation and on. As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” On the occasion of his second inaugural address to the nation, our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, offered these words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the
ight, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Lincoln delivered those words on March 4, 1865. The timing of his comments is remarkable. In February, he had signed the Joint Resolution to send to the states the 13th amendment for ratification, which outlawed slavery in the U.S. Constitution. In April, he was assassinated, and in May, the War ended. When he said those words, the question was no longer whether the Union would prevail, but when. Given that, he wanted to frame what peace had to look like for a nation in need of healing. After all this time, the work is still not done, but if philately can lead by example, it should. Thank you to the CWPS Board, Trish Kaufmann, and countless others, and the members of the Society for taking this critical step in the hobby. I look forward to seeing the organization chart this new course. JANUARY 2021 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 19
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