Well said Chris B….I agree with you 100% and am both a Confederate Re-enactor as well as a student of history. We should also mention that when Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves he only freed those in the southern confederate states….not the north which took much longer before it happened. The north, the Yankees, treated blacks worse than those from the south most of the time and used them only as pawns to win the war.

Sorry, but the states' rights argument is pure Southern revisionist fiction. When South Carolina, the first state to secede, drafted their proclamation, the stated issue was slavery. Ditto for those who followed. The states' rights issue didn't even come up as a suggestion until well into post-Reconstruction. Read some history by those not looking to clean up their ancestors' dirty deeds. Contemporary support for the South is akin to modern Germans showing support for the Nazi's. The Flags of both are symbols of ignorance, racism and hate. Sorry that you have been deceived, but so was I at one time.

hey Chris B, here's some food for thought: symbols are symbols because they represent what a majority of people equate their meaning to be. the majority of people see that flag as a symbol of something painful. it doesn't matter that a smaller number of people believe that it represents something else. Case in point…the swastika. Everyone & their grandmother knows that it's traditionally a religious symbol of peace used in Hinduism, Buddhism & Jainism. However, it was adopted by the nazis. You can put swastikas all over your home and tell people until you're blue in the face that it's not hateful, however, that symbol represents horror, tragedy, ignorance & injustice to most everyone in the world. Can you see that point of view? I'm from the south. My grandfather & I have this discussion often.