On April 17th, the citizens of Mississippi voted to retain a state flag that has the Confederate St. Andrew's cross in the upper left corner. In Georgia, the General Assembly's failure to change the state's Confederate-honoring flag will soon lead to a federal lawsuit with U.S. Representative and civil rights activist John Lewis as a plaintiff. And South Carolina has already endured a divisive and highly publicized battle over the flying of the Stars and Bars at the capitol building in Columbia, a fight that spilled into the 2000 Republican primary and prompted a tourism boycott by the NAACP. In all three states, the fundamental issue is the same: Does this emblem of the Confederacy commemorate a proud heritage, or promote racism?

Author Charles Dew believes that the answer to this question lies in the reasons that the Southern states seceded in 1860-1861, and in the way that historians and the general public have continued to disagree about those reasons. In his new book, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, Dew strongly and convincingly argues that slavery, not the constitutional issue of states rights, was the primary motive for secession. Therefore, Dew believes, it is difficult to deny that the Confederate flag is in part a symbol of white supremacy.

"The Civil War was fought over what important issue?" So reads one of twenty questions on an exam administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to prospective American citizens. According to the INS, you are correct if you offer either one of the following answers: "Slavery or states rights."

It's reassuring to know that the INS has a flexible approach to one of the critical questions in American history, but one might ask how the single "issue" raised in the question can have an either/or answer in this instance -- the only time such an option appears on the test. Beyond that, someone might want to know whether "slavery" or "states rights" is the more correct answer. But it is probably unfair to chide the test preparers at the INS for trying to fudge the issue. Their uncertainty reflects the deep division and profound ambivalence in contemporary American culture over the origins of the Civil War. One hundred and forty years after the beginning of that fratricidal conflict, neither the public nor the scholarly community has reached anything like a consensus as to what caused the bloodiest four years in this country's history.

http://www.upress.virginia.edu/apostles/index.html

Revised 3/23/01