The mere fact that it's the "CIVIL WAR" to Northerners and the "WAR
BETWEEN THE STATES" to Southerners shows that each side had a different
perception of what the conflict was about. 

The war initially was  not about ending slavery, at least not
explicitly. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 made it about slavery,
and I think today we tend to adopt that retrospective view of it.

For many Southerners, support was for their state, their community,
their people, who had - as they saw it - been attacked. It was simple
loyalty, that they saw as patriotism. Any of us might react the same
way, regardless of the larger abstract principles involved. I'm not
denying that ultimately the sense that there were two distinct nations
within the concept of "America" was due largely to the fact that the
North and South had different attitudes and laws about slavery. It was
both about slavery, and about many other factors - AS PERCEIVED by the
participants.

Today's "Confederate" enthusiasts as individuals have many agendas, from
overt racism, to basic family loyalty. Some have learned more from the
past than others. Some organizations may have hidden agendas. But many
want to make "Confederate" not automatically mean shame, and racism. 

The artist is challenging and deconstructing all these meanings. It's
all very complex. Maybe because I've lived and worked and taught on both
sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and have ancestors on both sides of the
"late unpleasantness," the Civil War has come to seem to be an American
tragedy, in which wrongs are so twisted with rights that none of us
comes out of it with the right to be self-righteous.

Carol Ely
Locust Grove
Louisville, KY

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