The harsh reality is that many people like me had family who fought for the Confederate side. So I suppose if we take the literal definition of culture, "manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively" yes I would say I'm proud of my relatives for standing up for what they thought was right. Not saying that it was, I'm just happy they stood up for it considering the odds.

And that is why I respect that "symbol of racism" as people call it. Because one mans symbol of hatred, is another one's symbol of courage. There are always two sides, and nothing is black and white, but many shades of grey.

Modern-day Islamic terrorists courageously blow themselves up along with innocent bystanders. So, should their relatives be proud of what they do?

Your analogy is idiotic. Your comparing religious fundamentalists with people who were tired of the oppressive union that taxed with little to no representation.

Uh, want to back up your claim that the southern states had "little to no representation"?

Also, you mischaracterize the reason why the Confederacy was formed.

From CivilWar.org:

"The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states."

In short, white southern men cared more about profiting from slavery than they did about the evilness of slavery.

Your quote is an authors opinion, history dictates differently.

What an interesting straw-man.

From History.com:

"In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country's northern and southern regions. While in the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, the South's economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of black slaves to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco. Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery's extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in america--and thus the backbone of their economy--was in danger."

From Britannica.com:

"he secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) in 1860–61 and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional friction over the related issues of slavery, trade and tariffs, and the doctrine of states’ rights. This friction arose out of fundamental differences between the economies of the Northern and Southern states.

The North had a growing manufacturing sector and small farms using free labour, while the South’s economy was based on large farms (plantations) using slave labour. In the 1840s and ’50s the Northern states wanted to prohibit slavery in the western territories that would eventually become new states. The Southern states opposed all efforts to block the expansion of slavery and feared that the North’s stance would eventually endanger existing slaveholdings in the South itself.

By the 1850s, some Northerners had begun calling for the complete abolition of slavery, while several Southern states threatened to secede from the Union as a means to protect their right to keep slaves. When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in late 1860, the Southern states carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the Confederate States of America."

From the National Park Service:

"Both sides were willing to sustain such punishment and keep fighting because the stakes were so great: nationality and freedom. If the Confederacy lost the war, it would cease to exist. And by 1863 or 1864, when emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery became a Northern war aim, the institution of African-American bondage that was a cornerstone of Southern society would also cease to exist. "This country without slave labor would be completely worthless," wrote a Mississippi soldier to his wife. "We can only live & exist by that species of labor: and hence I am willing to fight to the last." ...

... Most of the slave states seceded in 1861 not only because they feared the potential threat to the long-term survival of slavery posed by Lincoln's election, but also because they looked forward to the expansion of a dynamic, independent Confederacy into new territory by the acquisition of Cuba and perhaps more of Mexico and Central America."

From the History News Network:

"Slavery caused the American Civil War. Of course, it wasn't the only reason war came, and most soldiers, either Union or Confederate, fought for their own personal reasons, but slavery was ultimately behind the fundamental rift between the states.

Economically, slavery played a significant role in producing wealth in the Southern states. Unlike the Northern states, the Southern states were largely agricultural. They used millions of slaves for manual labor.

For the Northerners, it was a case of slave labor versus free labor. What would happened if “slave power” expanded its grip over the entire nation? They certainly didn't want to find out.

Examining the various acts that were passed before the war also demonstrates the link between slavery and the Civil War.

For example, the Compromise of 1850 consisted of a package of five bills. The most notable was the Fugitive Slave Act. This law required individuals, including judicial officials, to aid in capturing escaped slaves and return them to their owners. The 'escaped slave' could be a freedman, but it could rarely be determined because no court trial was needed.

Finally, when President Lincoln was elected, he took steps to abolish the practice of slavery from expanding in the territories. This was the last straw in the Southern states' drive to secession."

And the victor writes history, unfortunately in this case the losers were their own countrymen. And for the record, slavery continued on for another 50 years after the end of the war so tell me again how important it was for the north to fight against slavery? I read civil war magazine which consists of articles written by historians. These men and women spend years researching a particular event during the war and submit it to the publisher of the magazine.

Most people don't realize what a mixed bag Lincoln was. What he did right was not borrowing from Rothschild to finance his war...What he did wrong was to support the northern carpetbaggers and deny the southern states their RIGHT to secede.

The slavery thing as you know was really a side issue to justify the war...Kinda like "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. That's not to say that slavery is OK (it isn't), but it wasn't the real reason for the war IMO.

Lincoln was Americas first dictator.

Under the highly illegal General Order Number 38 he ordered the deportation of not only a famous American citizen, but a famous American politician, two-time Representative Clement L. Vallandighan, a highly illegal act which could only have been made worse if he had done what Obama does now; killed the American citizen abroad. He invaded the South in violation of the Constitution, he arrested people who were critical of him, rigged elections in the North and ordered and supported mass killings of United States citizens, all in the name of preserving the Union. But in the end, did he do us any good? The Union was preserved geographically but philosophically it was damaged because as it is stated in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence and in the Articles of Confederation, the states are all free and independent.

Lincoln was awesome