Too Small for a Republic, No. 438
Back in the Mesozoic Era of this blog, I did a couple of posts on a South Carolina woman named Annie Caddel. She had moved to Summerville, into a predominantly African American neighborhood that had been founded as a settlement of former USCTs after the Civil War, and made a point of flying her Confederate Battle Flag. This didn’t go over real well with her neighbors, and there soon followed an escalating series of incidents including allegations of vandalism to her home, and a series of ever-taller flagpoles and privacy fences put up by the neighbors. Even H. K. Edgerton, the peripatetic performance artist and Confederate beard, made an appearance (above). You can read my earlier posts here and here. It sure seemed like a rancid, toxic mess.
Needless to say, Ms. Caddel was a heroine of the True Southron™ crowd. Or she was until last week, when after seven years she lowered her flag and presented it to Kenneth Battle, Chairman of the Summerville-Dorchester Museum, to be displayed there in an effort to promote unity and reconciliation in the community.
Now, the True Southrons in South Carolina have labeled her a “traitor” and a “Judas.”
No good deed goes unpunished, y’all.
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Update, March 7: Corrected the description of Ms. Caddell’s neighborhood as being predominantly African American, not Summerville as a whole.
Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
Congratulations, Mrs. Caddel, for seeing the light.
Good for Mrs Caddel.
I hadn’t heard anything about this story since it made the news years ago. But I’m certain that (1) this dispute has been a festering sore for all parties involved, and (2) the butternut shriekers who are vilifying her now have exactly zero personal stake in any of it. They don’t live there, or have to deal with the toxic environment it’s created.
I lived in Summerville…the facts are, per usual, in error.
Summerville is not a majority black community.
It is 75% white.
But nice try.
Thanks for the correction. I was sloppy in my wording. In my earlier posts on this subject, I noted that her neighborhood was originally founded as a settlement of former USCTs and Freedmen known as Brownsville and, according to press reports at the time, remains largely African American today.