The Confederate Flag

[KDCat]

Originally Posted by PiKA2001

It's more than just slavery, violence, rape and murder. The rebels did have some legitimate reasons to want to break from the Union other than to commit...rape, murder, torture, genocide.....

No, they really didn't. If you read the secession declarations for each state, they state very clearly that they are seceding because of slavery. They cloak it in "states' rights," but the right the states' right that they are seeking to protect is the right to own slaves.

South Carolina seceded first, so I'll quote its secession statement:

"A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy."


My family is from the South. (I'm not.) I appreciate the feelings of pride in Southern heritage. There are things to be proud of, if you are from the South. The Battle Flag isn't one of them.