Every time I have heard proponents of the flag interviewed on tv or the radio they claim its about honoring their heritage, not racism. Yet, the interviewer never ask the followup question: Define what you mean by heritage.

it is about and over something evil.

was only and entirely about the "right" to own slaves. It has been used since as the basis for the "right" to do other bad things.

the confederate flag, Elmer Ellsworth .

I've gotten more stammering than anything else. Slavery was the biggest part of it, but I'd say that overall racism was what motivated most of the Confederate soldiers. Slavery was just a part of a racist ideology that generally says that blacks aren't equal to whites, that blacks are in a sort of lower caste.

Most of the men in the army weren't wealthy planter's sons, they were mostly small farmers and tradesmen. You wouldn't have gotten them to fight over slavery, they didn't own many, if any at all. They didn't profit directly from slavery, but they did profit from being above them in the racial hierarchy. So I would say that racism was the main reason, with slavery being the main issue beneath that.

Thanks

They always regretted the loss of the Articles of Confederation, something that had given all power to the states including the power to raise armies, negotiate treaties and print money. They have always resented being part of a larger whole.

It still gets under some people's skin for the gubmint to have regulations over just about any part of their lives. They think they should be free to do just about any obnoxious thing. Fancy men from the gubmint with all their book larnin' ain't gonna tell them shit. They already know all they need to know. They think we can live like they did in the old West, as if that would be a good thing.

it that anyone presuming to consider themselves informed about the Civil War, should have learned a thing or two about the Fugitive Slave Laws, Dred Scott, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Southern politicians were totally ok with using the power of the federal government at the expense of the state governments as long as they held the reins in Congress. It was only when they faced the possibility of being increasingly outnumbered by the new territories being incorporated that they rebelled.

in 1961, when the centennial of the Civil War started. All of a sudden we kids were being told by the social studies teacher that no, the Civil War wasn't about slavery at all, it was about states' rights, the right of states to determine their own fate.

Left unsaid was that the only state right anyone cared about in the Confederacy was the right to own slaves.

Two completely odd things about the revisionism. One is that I lived in northern New York State at the time. Secondly, I recall quite clearly that we'd always been taught before that that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. I've never quite understood how the revisionism took hold so firmly back then, but it did.

I've long thought that it should have been against the law in this country to display the rebel flag in any form. It really is about time that the south realized that it lost that war, and to stop glorifying the insurrection that killed so many.