Well, when you have books in Texas that call the Civil War, "The War Of Northern Aggresion" this is bound to happen. The Civil War didn't just start one day when South Carolina said "Fuck it, lets form our own country." The Civil War was decades in the making, with bitter feeling against each other buidling up for quite some time. Sparked by the Industrial Revolution the Southern and Northern economies changed dramatically, and with it their way of life. The liberal(relatively) North with their urban lifestyle and advanced education system was quite different from the conservative rural south. They viewed economic,banking, and social situations differently. The South viewed the rise of wage labor to be an attack on freedom and that the instution of slavery was neccesary for a "modern" way of life. The Free/Slave state debates in congress were just as much about pride, than they were about slavery itself, the question of slavery was the final nail in the trembling relationships. So in conclusion, yes the civil war was most definitly about slavery but I believe it would have happen eventually.

One must put history in context, judging yesterday with today's mores doesn't cut it. The Confederate Battle Flag presently represents many things to many people. The southern Dems revitalized it as their symbol for segregation in the late forties on.