You couldn’t possibly be as bloody sick of us as we are of you.
My forebears did not fight to preserve slavery, and most Confederate soldiers did not fight for that. Thousands of their letters prove it. Even McPherson, who is certainly not Confederate friendly, admits that.
A few states seceded in part over slavery — among other things. The states of the upper South seceded because Lincoln tried to coerce them into sending troops to invade the seceded states. See, it’s not as cut and dried as the all-slavery, only-slavery folks like to make it seem.
Moreover, it is open to question that the Confederates started the war. People say “firing the first shot” (at Sumter) started the war, but the firing was in response to aggression (Anderson moving troops into Sumter and threatening Charleston in dispatches sent north, that he knew authorities in Charleston would intercept and read). That aggression, that move to the fort, which preceded the firing and caused it, is what started the war. Without it, there would have been no start.
Am I an American or a Confederate? Yes. There is no “OR”. They’re not mutually exclusive. Confederates were Americans, for the same reason we are ... it is part of our national name, just as it was theirs. See? Fill in the blank: The Confederate States of _______. I’ll give you a hint: it starts with A and it ends with a, and it ain’t Antarctica.
What I am is a Southerner. That is my primary identification — it has been since before I could articulate it — and the South, including its time as a separate nation, the CSA, is what gives meaning to the United States, for me. So in that sense, yes, I’m a Confederate.
Oh please Madame. You can’t be that stupid. They fought to preserve an evil institution of an economy based on the use of slave labor. All their efforts, whether they believed it or not were put to that end. They weren’t fighting in a separate universe so spare me your revisionist history. “Yes what? Are you an American or a Confederate? I’m an American, not a Northerner or a “Yankee’’. My allegiance to this great nation is not predicated on a particular point on a compass. Get used to me. As long as you Rebs go on with your nonsense I’ll be here to speak for my ancestors.