2006-05-07

Is Retrocession The Answer?

Then what is the question, might be the most appropriate response. When your author was a wee young lad, a great hue and cry went across the land sounding off on "statehood for DC!" The proponents were very passionate, but perhaps you can tell by my use of the past tense that their efforts were to no avail. I have recently been apprised of another solution to the whole "taxation without representation dilemma in which the current residents of the District find themselves: retrocession back to Maryland. Behold, with but a single Act of Congress and the flourish of a mighty presidential pen, the residents of DC will gain a representative in the house and two of their very own senators.

Perhaps anyone who is against "taxation without representation" should be for retrocession, but I find myself hesitating somewhat: what is wrong with actually going back to the original intent for DC? Instead of returning to Maryland that which she gave to create our nations capital, why not have the residents of Arlington County, VA restore the perfect square of our capital and the wound that slavery has cast upon our capitol city? Surely, those residents can no longer be so deeply bound to the blood lust for African slaves, as they were when they cried out for freedom from the capitol city in the mid 1800s. Here are the facts of the situation:

  1. DC was created and placed in Southern state territory by the our nations founders.
  2. The site was chosen by our nation's first president - George Washington and the city was named in his honor.
  3. That honor was diminished by the shade of slavery and the greed of Alexandria businessmen, who wanted to maintain their brisk business in trading Africans as chattel.
  4. Their greed was matched by the avarice of other Virginians, who did not wish to see VA become a free state - which they were in peril of becoming without the additional representatives from the returning county of Arlington (this battle for the soul of VA resulted in the establishment of West Virginia, as those counties left at the start of the Civil War).
Is it not clear that the "broken square" that is our nations capitol today is directly related to the gravest injustice this nation has ever committed against her own people? Does it not follow that all Americans of good conscience should want to see this scar at long last healed?

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