Nevertheless, the Hollywood stereotyping of southerners has to stop. The most racist white people I have ever known were some of the folks I grew up around in New York.
"The Confederate flag is the flag of sedition"
Is your definition of sedition protecting your family and property from invasion? The Confederate Flag is a battleflag and a symbol of rebellion world wide. Sedition has nothing to do with it.
I would submit that the Betsy Ross flag was also a flag of sedition. By your logic, America had no right to secede. I'm assuming you'll be in charge of setting up the party wherein we lower the Stars and Stripes and learn to curtsy to Her Majesty?
The South did not seek to overthrow the US Government, any more than Lincoln gave a rat's whiskers about the condition of the slaves. Do you have any idea - any idea at all - at the extent of Communist involvement with both Lincoln's and Grants administrations or that a Marxist (Carl Schurz) was the real force behind the farce known as the Emanicipation Proclamation (which as you undoubtedly know, freed absolutely NO slaves in Federal territory!). That 'hallowed' missive was little more than political rhetoric. Karl Marx wrote articles for the New York papers on the war. Ah but see how great working conditions were for all folks after the moral victory of the industrial north. Makes me want to break out in song "...load 16 tons and whaddya get...another day older and deeper in debt...I owe my soul to the company store..." (Merle Travis circa 1955). Of course if you were a Cheyenne Indian, you didn't get deeper in debt - you got a blanket infected with smallpox or measles, courtesy Sherman, Sheridan and the US army under Mr. President Grant. Ah yes,"...the [general] is a very moral man." (Apologies to Captain Spalding...)