[TommyDale]

I find baseball caps with "X" on them to be racist, but I never went around demanding that the person wearing it to take it off. I find hip-hop/(C)rap music to be racist, but I don't threaten radio stations or sponsors with boycotts. I could go on...

Anyone who thinks the Confederate Flag is a racist symbol is in some serious need of history lessons. The "War Between the States" was about the rights of individual states, it was NOT a civil war about slavery. Abraham Lincoln made it one.

By the way, I like Neal Boortz' definition about civil wars being about two factions, both fighting to control one country. The War Between the States was about a group of individual states fighting to NOT be federally controlled. There is a big difference here.

[mcg1969]

The "War Between the States" was about the rights of individual states, it was NOT a civil war about slavery. Abraham Lincoln made it one.

Yes he did, and he was right to do so. Slavery should not ever have been a states' rights issue and I'm damn glad it no longer is.

[cyborg]

Negro league baseball caps are a part of American history. Spike Lee ruined it though. Everyone associates the X with Malcolm X now.

[jmhfnyc]

"The "War Between the States" was about the rights of individual states, it was NOT a civil war about slavery. Abraham Lincoln made it one."

What revisionist rot! The Civil War was about the rights of southern states TO OWN SLAVES AND TO EXPAND their "perculiar institution" across the continent. As a proud Yankee, I abhor the enemy flag. Star and Stripes forever.

[Frank L]

Everyone keeps talking about this Civil War thing. Are they by any chance referring to the War of Northern Aggression?

[Dazedcat]

"This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy".

Those are the first three paragraphs of the South Carolina announcement that it was splitting from the federal union in 1860. Are you sure this wasn't a war about slavery? Are you sure "Mr". Lincoln made it into an issue all by himself?

Sorry but this war was all about slavery under the guise of "states rights". I'm all for states rights, today more than ever. I'm also for the Stars and Bars being flown wherever people see it fit to fly. Calling it a "racist" emblem is just modern day liberal nonsense and everyone with half a brain ought to realize that fact.

But the war was about slavery......that really was the root cause of it all. The South Carolina declaration (just one among all the rest of the Conferedate states) is proof of that. In my humble opinion of course.

[driveserve]

The Civil War was, from the beginning, always about slavery. One needs only to look at the tensions, in years leading up to the Civil War to understand that slavery was the elephant in the room. Whatever Lincoln said or did, regardless of how or what he said or did, the war was always about slavery. The rebel states stated that it was about state's rights; rights that revolved around slavery. Abraham Lincoln never made the war about slavery. Slavery made the war. To believe otherwise, requires an absolute disregard for the overwhelming evidence of history to the contrary.