In December 1860, Georgia’s U.S. Senator Robert Toombs introduced a seven-point compromise plan to avert the secession crisis. All seven points related to slavery.

Yep, the South was married to slave labor because the entire economy was built on King Cotton. Although it was not considered PC in the North, colonial and antebellum tax records prove they were neither morally or economically different. With the opening of western lands (Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, etc.) the argument fostered range wars, burning of towns, and killing of thousands. Yet we only remember selected Southern historical notations.

Slamming on a four-year period of OUR history, when the issue of slavery came to a head, does not come near the wide ranging reality that slavery was instituted a thousand years before Columbus found his way to these shores. But revisionist history is the fodder that feeds ignorance and political agendas.

Remember that slavery was an issue from the outset of the nation. Allowing or disallowing "servants" was a key argument for bringing the colonies together in the Union. Slaves were owned in all parts of the British colonies - around the world, not just the American South. Yankees from Massachusetts who bought & maintained Southern plantations were no less slave owners than those who eventually formed the Confederacy.

I don't know which history books you guys are reading, but maintaining stereotypical definitions is very myopic.

OK, the Confederacy was a short-lived, separatist government born of the cultural and social realities of early America. Its dependence upon cheap labor, an underclass, was a fact. Arguments that one race is inferior to another was not born in the American South. Nor was it resolved by 1920 when the now-standard IQ tests were used to prove innate rather than learned intelligence. Ignorance underscores most of life's injustices. And no social group, geographical subdivision, ethnic group, or self proclaimed Enlightened Ones have ever been above playing to, and maintaining, that ignorance to advance an agenda or culture or economy.

Today we obviously have the same dependence on cheap labor. Else we would secure our borders, enforce immigration laws, preserve wages... get the picture?

We are simply more Enlightened today -- we do not call it slavery when 15-20 illegals inhabit a house or apartment, work for low wages, and are separated from their families. We call it economic opportunity although it rests upon the backs of a different underclass.

The issue is cultural, then and now. It is economic, then and now. Let us paint with a broader brush to realize the cinder in our own contemporary eye.

Larry, you're my new hero. Thanks for explaining that.

I know slavery wasn't morally right.

Some would think that Iraq isn't either. 150 years from now, are the politicians and history book writers and liberal newspaper writers and whoever's running the Rainbow Coalition going to gloss over this war too?

The Confederacy wasn't right. But if we keep skipping over this period of time long enough, the young people aren't going to know anything about it.

Slamming on a four-year period of OUR history, when the issue of slavery came to a head, does not come near the wide ranging reality that slavery was instituted a thousand years before Columbus found his way to these shores. But revisionist history is the fodder that feeds ignorance and political agendas.

But what sets the Confederacy apart? According to Alexander Stephens himself:

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Lots of nations over time engaged in slavery. Most eventually realized the error of their ways. But the Confederacy holds the notoriety of being perhaps the only nation in the history of the world founded expressly to protect slavery. To protect the "right" to own people as property.

That's not a legacy to celebrate. And yet some people want to.

Its dependence upon cheap labor, an underclass, was a fact.

It wasn't cheap labor, Larry. It was slave labor. Additionally, slaves did not come cheap. People literally shelled out the 19th century equivalent of what we would pay for a car for a couple of slaves.

Other than that, I agree with Larry and Loren. The confederacy itself isn't something to be proud of. But, whether we like it or not, it's part of our past. Instead of ignoring it, we should learn from it.