The collectively defiant attitudes of Charleston's citizenry with regards to the issue of human trafficking and slavery served only to further inflame and harden public opinion in the Northern states against the old South. In that regard, the white South Carolinians' own arrogance served to blind them to the fact that they were courting their own inevitable destruction.

The asinine assault on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor by Confederate forces under the command of Gen. Pierre Beauregard -- 151 years ago this very week -- sealed the South's ultimate doom, by casting the Confederacy as the initial aggressor in what remains our bloodiest conflict. The federal post was already under tight blockade, and its U.S. Army garrison would've been compelled to surrender within a couple of weeks as the last of its provisions ran out. It was a needless act of Dixie hubris, as though they just couldn't help themselves.

I really do appreciate your feelings about the antebellum slave trade, which is a true blight on American history and something that we may never be able to live down. It's an emotionally gutwrenching issue that led directly to our nation's penultimate defining moment, the U.S. Civil War, of which we're still feeling its impact and ramifications 150 years afterward.

But nevertheless, what's done is done, and we can't turn back the clock or whitewash the past. We can only learn from history, as a means to not repeat our forefathers' errors as we go forward.