Inquirer Editorial: It began at Fort Sumter

CHARLESTON, APRIL 12 - The ball has been opened at last, and war has been inaugurated.

The batteries on Sullivan's Island, Morris Island, and other points, opened on Fort Sumter at 4 o'clock this morning.

Fort Sumter returned the fire, and a brisk cannonading has been kept up.

Were you alive 150 years ago in Philadelphia, you might have read those very words in The Inquirer in a dispatch reporting the beginning of the Civil War.

With the very first boom of the guns thousands rushed from their beds to the harbor front, and all day every available place has been thronged by ladies and gentlemen, viewing the spectacle through their glasses.

Today, we wonder if those Charleston aristocrats who may have used opera glasses to watch the rebels bombard a federal fort really understood what was taking place before their eyes.

The bloody conflict that began 150 years ago divided the United States in ways still visible, if you look closely enough. The war saved the union, but it didn't end the argument over states' rights, which remains the root of much of today's political debate.

African Americans benefited the most from the war that led to their emancipation. But more than a century later, they still find themselves trailing whites in almost every economic, health, or academic survey.

Lines can be drawn from today's daunting statistics to a legacy of discrimination that has been dimmed but not yet erased.

Even so, racial discrimination has become a topic that is little discussed in the halls of power.

Politicians today seem cowed by a grassroots movement that prefers not to discuss the causes of inequality, in apparent fear that to do so would dilute the argument that cutting spending on the poor and infirm is the best way to keep the nation's listing economic ship from sinking.

Taking that point of view ignores the equally disturbing cost of not adequately providing for our most vulnerable citizens.

It also gives a pass to military spending, which, at more than $700 billion in 2009 (including the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan operations), is more than this country has ever spent annually, even during World War II or the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.

In fact, cutting military spending might be a good way to commemorate a war 150 years ago that was the the most expensive not in dollars, but in lives lost and in how it ripped the nation.

Our divisions today pale in comparision. Some states do seem on the verge of secession. They want to go their own way on immigration, abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues. But no state government has threatened to bear arms to fight for its rights.

At least, not yet.