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"For the past 100 years, we've been presenting this battlefield as the high watermark of the Confederacy and focusing on the personal valor of the soldiers who fought here," said Gettysburg Park Superintendent John Latschar.

As it should be.

"We want to get away from the traditional descriptions of who shot whom, where and into discussions of why they were shooting one another," Latschar said.

Fine. Then that interpretative center should be built in Washington, D.C. on the grounds of the U.S. Congress where those political battles were fought prior to the start of the war.

To imply that every Southern soldier was fighting to keep slavery and every Union soldier was fighting to free slaves is Politically Correct historical revisionism.

The Northern battle cry was "Save the Union".

Considering that Julia Dent Grant owned slaves throughout the entire war and brought them with her when she went to visit her husband U.S. Grant in his various camps, maybe Park Superintendent Latschar would care to explain why, exactly, Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant faced in other in battle.

After all, Lee had freed the slaves he had inherited long before the Civil War began. U. S. Grant's wife had personal slaves all during the war, which were not freed until the 13th Amendment was enacted.

Ok, as a teacher of high school history, I have to weigh in here. Both sides have points. Let's go through them one by one.

1) Slavery was a major, though not the only, issue in the war. The series of compromises trying to keep the balance of slave states and free states was doomed to die as it was clear that most of the western states were obviously going to come in as free states and upset the balance in the Senate. It was a time bomb waiting to go off.

2) The South and the North/West had different ideas of what Federalism would be like under the Constitution. Many southern states bought into Federalism largely because of Virginian Washington's influence, and the series of Virginian presidents helped ease their fears. But even slaveholding Andrew Jackson went toe-to-toe with Calhoun over nullification, an early test of whether the South had to submit to the North's interpretation of federalism.

3) Regional issues had been an issue going back to the debate over the Declaration of Independence. Short periods of truce during the War of 1812 and the Mexican War were unable to survive the growing distrust between the regions going all the way back to the defeat of Clay's American system, which left the South without a federal infrastructure building program. Tariffs which engorged Northern textile manufacturers and raised costs in the South together with open abolitionism fed the Southern desire to withdraw from the union. The final nails in the coffin were the polarizing events of the death of the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, and most importantly, the Brown raid's effect on the intensity of training in the Southern militias.

4) Basically, the Civil War established that with this union, there is no divorce. That seemed unreasonable to the South, and obviously still does to many Freepers, but it's a fact. I am so grateful that the Rebellion failed, as I value the contributions the South makes to this country. But to ignore the substantial importance of the issue of slavery on the war is to make the same mistake of saying that it was the whole reason for it.

In the end, it was about more than slavery...but it also probably does not happen without it. Wars require passion. 9/11 has given us the passion to eliminate Saddam. The stories around the Rape of Kuwait and the memory of gas lines and fear of $100 oil fed the Gulf war (along with memories of the ignominy of Vietnam, the need to "win one", and the shame of the Iranian hostage crisis).

The Civil War was fought by most Union soldiers to preserve the Union. Some had abolitionist sympathies, but weren't thinking of them as they fought and died. They felt they were fighting to preserve the country their ancestors had fought and died for in the War of Independence.

Most Southern soldiers felt they were fighting because the Union would not let them have their "divorce."

Later in the war, Lincoln made it more of a conflict over slavery, ostensibly timing the Emancipation Proclamation in order to deflect British and French recognition of the Confederacy.

It is easy to see why freepers fight so much over the causes and issues of the Civil War as we continue to struggle over these issues today. I would argue that we should appreciate both sides interpretation of their rights under the Constitution, but that the issues have been decided and with enough blood. The union remains. The struggle of dual federalism continues, and likely will forever. But there should be no disputing that the nation was better served by keeping the union together, it is simply up to us, the "posterity", to keep up a vigilance over the rights fought for in all American wars, because we have the kind of government we deserve, since we choose them. Good or bad.

NEXT DEBATER PLEASE...!

To imply that every Southern soldier was fighting to keep slavery and every Union soldier was fighting to free slaves is Politically Correct historical revisionism.

Correct. Lincoln introduced the emancipation theme as a rationale for the war, by equating abolition and emancipation with the freedom of people to govern themselves: "government of the people, by the people, and for the people".

Reflection on Lincoln's address will reveal that, in fact, he was warring against the Peoples of the Southern States to bind on them a Union they no longer wanted; his achievement of reunification by force, was actually the overthrow of the "government of the people" that he had proclaimed as his guiding principle and object in view.

The Northern battle cry was "Save the Union".

Correct again. The Northern purpose, after Fort Sumter, was the restoration of the Union by force.