Dear Joe; I have the fortune to have had two ancestors fight for the Union and one who fought for the Confederacy. I am proud of all of them because they had the guts to fight for their personal beliefs. My ancestors who fought in the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Indian wars enabled them to make these choices. I have ancestors who came here to Missouri with Boone and have Spanish land grants. We here in Missouri were almost equally divided in our politics. The confederate flag was a battle flag and they were proud of it. Our Stars and Stripes is our flag now, but the Stars and Bars stood for a great deal. It stood for a political statement of States Rights that for people of certain states were willing to fight and die. Mr. Gephardt, like many others, objects to the flag because to some it represents an attitude of hatred and feelings of superiority over persons of the black race. We have no place in society or as Christians for such feelings, but until people are able to look upon the Star and Bars as a banner that belongs in our historic past and not as a symbol of inherited feelings and resentments that have no place in today's society, it has no right to fly above the Stars and Stripes or on the same pole below. On historic sites such as Fort Davidson it should be displayed on an equal height with the Stars and Stripes as it appeared in 1861. That is History. Missourian to the Bone, Toby Charles