Sick of the status quo

Dear Editor,

This is an open letter to Greenville and Anderson counties. If either one of them are interested in annexing Pickens County, I will be one of the first to sign up.

When we go to our county seat for any sort of record, we are told to go to Anderson or Greenville. I recently went to get a birth certificate and was told they were no longer available here, and the reason was they did not want to pay a full-time clerk to issue the records and not enough people were asking for them.

They were at one time in the courthouse, and it only took a few minutes to obtain them. Now you have to make a trip out of the county to get them.

I don’t know what we are paying taxes for. It surely is not for service, because we are lacking in that.

I cannot believe all the personnel at the records building are so busy they can’t take a few minutes to accomodate the people who pay their salaries. After all, they are never too busy to take your tax payments when you go there.

Another hidden tax is the extra we have to pay on our gas bills to pay a ransom Fort Hill has to fork out to the cities in Pickens County.

The business people in Easley pay taxes, but guess what — they have to purchase special garbage bags to have their trash picked up, which amounts to an extra tax.

I will be getting back to you on other issues, because I for one am sick of the status quo.

W. Charles Chastain

Easley

Disappointed with leaders’

flag decision

Dear Editor,

I am very disappointed with our state leaders and all who voted to remove the Confederate battle flag.

My great-granddad was an officer in the Civil War. He left his wife and children to go fight for our Southern rights. He never came back.

These men were uneducated farmers. Except a few, none of them owned slaves. These men were the backbone of the state of South Carolina, yet in spite of our leaders, they are nobody. Some people think the war was about slavery, but the war was in its second year before racism and hate was mentioned. These men went without food and water, fought in all kinds of weather, bled and died for our Southern states. They fought with determination and pride under this flag.

The younger people should get out their history books and study about the origin of democracy and our Southern heritage. The ones who voted to remove the flag have no respect for our forefathers, who fought to make this a wonderful place to raise our children.

The truth and the cause of this war had nothing to do with hate or racism — it was fought for freedom of the government and taxation. The federal government was raising taxes on the Southern people through high tariff on imported goods. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, he and the U.S. Congress immediately passed the highest import tax in the history of the U.S.A. It went from 20 percent to 47 percent. The high tax caused many of the Southern people to file for bankruptcy.

This tax was the reason why the Southern states withdrew from the union. Without the South belonging to the Union, the North could not collect this tax from the Southern states. The only way was to invade the South at gunpoint. That is why the Civil War was fought.

My grandmother was a little girl during the Civil War. She would tell us kids how they feared for their lives. The Northern soldiers would take their food and Bibles and rape the young girls. This is what kind of hardships the South had to face. These men were husbands, fathers, sons and loved ones. They fought and lost their lives. Where are our thanks to these men who gave so much for us?

Gladys Lewis Pace Corcoran

Pickens