No matter how they try to twist it, every excuse that supporters of the “Lost Cause” comes back to slavery.

- “It was about states rights!”: The only right the South was interested in protecting was the one to own slaves, hence why the Confederate Constitution was the US one with bits about slavery shoehorned in.

- “It was about money!”: Yes, the millions in 1860’s dollars that were sunk into the acquisition, employment, and care of slaves. A plantation owner looked out on his slaves and didn’t see people, he saw property that was no different than the mule or horses he owned.

- “It was about the economy”: It was about how the agricultural economy that relied upon human labor was becoming obsolete in the face of the manufacturing economy that had come to dominate the North.

- “It was about freedom”: Only if “freedom” means the freedom to hold millions of human beings and their descendants in bondage for your own profit.