Faded Glory. Not just an advertising slogan for a retail chain.
Real glory, the romantic appeal of a failed idealism, that believed more in the original intent of the words of the Declaration of Independence and the meaning of the US Constitution as it was then written, than the harsh righteousness of the “reformers” of the early and mid-19th Century.
The revolution that failed, and has been wrongly portrayed ever since. Slavery, as an economic proposition, was already failing, and would have collapsed of its own inadequacies, had there been no Civil War. The decision to tie the right to own slaves to the doctrine of States’ Rights was probably the one inflammatory factor that could not be defused.
A thoroughly accurate (in every respect) and insightful post!