In a message dated 1/17/2003 10:19:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: > but we still respect people that fought and died for what they believed in > at that the time was a just cause. We all know that slavery was not a just > cause. > > You are assuming, wrongly, the institution of slavery was the cause for the Civil War, just or not. The people you so kindly "still respect" (Confederates) were born Americans, the sons and grandsons of soldiers of the American Revolution and the War of 1812. They fought for the right to secede from the Union, just as their ancestors fought for the right to secede from the Crown. They failed in that attempt, but that fact does not invalidate their right to try or make it an "unjust" cause. The concept of states' rights is a much thornier problem to explain away; it has been much easier for revisionists to cite slavery as the cause.