Today marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning of America’s Civil War. At 4:30 am on this date, in 1861, the southern forces began shelling Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. I saw no great notice of the event in today’s Morning Sun, and am glad of it.

Historians now credit slavery as the underlying cause of that war. As a first generation American, I have no inherited phobias about that long and costly affair. As a retired Regular Air Force Officer, I have studied the development, endurance, and conclusion of it in the rather antiseptic analysis of tactics and strategy that occurred. It is said to be the last old fashioned war and the first modern one. The use of logistics through the railroad lines, massed troops with heavy fire power, and heavy casualties with field hospitals moving with the lines make it truly a first.

What I do not understand is the role of melanin, the main determinant of skin color to absorb or disperse ultraviolet rays as the basis for an extensive prejudice that exists both in the “north” and in the “south.” I can understand the superstitious basis of sinister handedness, but not the color of one’s skin.

Since this is the beginning of the study of that conflict and its disruptive effect on the United States, I hope it also becomes a time when sober adults address the lingering misery of maladjusted hatred that still remains.