I went to high school in the south. At our pep rallies, the band would play dixie, the bletchers were full of white, black, and hispanic confederate flag waving kids giving rebel yells. None of us were offended, but we sure were fired up. YeeeeeHA!! Your right, the war was not about racisim, it was about "States Rights"!!!
I take a wild guess and say that was prior to the time everyone took a notion to be offended by everything.
It is statements like this that perplexes me. I am trying to keep an open mind. However, post 32 posted the "Declaration of Succession" by Texas which had strong racist language. Yet, I hear again and again, that the Civil War was not racist in nature but about State's rights. How can this be?
President Lincoln, during the most bloody period of the war even offered the Southern States a return to their farms and all will be forgiven but to only meet two conditions; 1) Do not succeed from the Union and 2) Give up slavery. In which the South's reply was that those were the only two conditions they would not give into.
I do want to keep an open mind since so many claim it was about heritage and states rights. I believe all people groups in America should have their heritage celebrated and respected. But how can the claim that the Civil War was not about slavery be accurate?
I can understand the exacerbation you feel in trying to paint a "State's Rights" point of view in the face of a culture full of political correctness. But is it possible, whatever the political bent of today is, that the Civil War was indeed about a part of America that insisted on the right to own another human being and was willing to fight and die for it?