Confederate Flag IGNORANCE

This is a false dichotomy. The Confederate flag was fashioned to represent the states who broke away from the union over the issue of slavery. Slavery in the antebellum period was intimately tied to the "southern way of life."

Slavery was also the reason why the Civil War started. The north and south had incompatible visions for developing the federal (western) territories, and the Republican Party was born out of that conflict. Abraham Lincoln campaigned on a platform of stopping the spread of slavery into the west. Upon winning the presidency, it placed the slaveholding states on notice that someone hostile to their vision would be president for at least four years.

In addition to pre-existing tensions between the industrialized north and slaveholding south, this caused southern states to look for a political alternative to remaining within the union. South Carolina became the first state to secede from the union with other slaveholding states following in rapid succession

 

Hmmm. Funny thing. He logged out with his rep bar back in the red now it's back in the green. How'd that happen? Who gave him positive rep?