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The honor of not having been born in the South, sir? How about the honor of having been born American on any point of the compass? Slavery was on it's way MY God, what a tired shbolith that is. So the South went to war over a suppossedly â€˜â€™dyingâ€™â€™ institution. Seems an awful lot of trouble to go through for something that was ‘’dying’’. My problem with Lee is that for all this veneration the man chose to fight for an evil and illegitimate government. I have an open mind and I do know the history. I might suggest you take your own advice. And I went to Catholic schools by the way by people, Catholic men and women who devoted their lives to Christ and who to a person possessed an education and morals far and above any that could have been found in a government school in my day and most certainly now.

I apologize for assuming that a Catholic school education would teach the same revisionist history as that taught in public schools, as it was always my understanding that a Catholic education was broader and better than a public education and therefore would have endeavored to put forth more of the truth.

You are still asserting that the South “went to war over slavery.” For reasons I set forth previously, as well as those given by other posters in this thread, this is not the case. Again, slavery was a factor, but not the factor. Please read Mr. Scruggs’ article on the Morrill Tariff which I previously cited. The vast majority of Confederate soldiers didn’t own slaves; most of them were farmers or laborers. Why would they “go to the trouble,” as you call it, to risk their lives for an issue in which they had no stake? No, they went “to the trouble” to defend their country and to stand up for an honorable cause in which they believed.

The Confederate government was not illegitimate, nor was it more evil than that of Lincoln’s. I’m sure you wouldn’t make this claim if the seceding states had stayed in the Union and continued to pay extortion, or rather the oppressive tariffs, imposed upon them by the federal government to keep it running. As long as the money kept flowing from the south to the north, the north wasn’t concerned about the manner in which it was generated – Lincoln repeatedly said that he had no intention of interfering with the institution of slavery. And of course the seceding states would create an entity to govern their free and voluntary association of states – this is what you call illegitimate. I suppose you would make the same claim if the secession threatened by Massachusetts and others at the Hartford Convention were accomplished.

As I said, I was not born in the South, and growing up, I had the same revisionist history crammed down my throat which was written by the victors in the WBTS. As a kid in school, I didn’t know any better and so of course bought into the same slavery propaganda. It’s only within about the last 7 years, since I became involved in researching for a book in progress, that I sought out books and other materials published either during or immediately after the WBTS that set forth accurate accounts, written by people who were “there”, that I reached the intellectual conclusion that the South’s position was correct and that the Confederate states should have been allowed to secede and form their own government – and realized that much I had been taught was wrong. But I’m just a researcher; the South certainly has more capable advocates and defenders than me.

Proponents of both sides can debate these issues forever and neither will convince the other side otherwise. Even if those of you in the pro-north position are not persuaded, perhaps you may wish to investigate the truth further, if for no other reason than to satisfy your curiosity or expand your knowledge.