| Yes, I agree the civil war was mostly about slavery from a geopolitical perspective - but it was not mostly about slavery for those involved. Soldiers in the South were not going to kill the Yankees so that the 5% richest among them could keep slaves. Have a look here [1]. This is a google image search for 'Confederate Recruiting Posters'. There are dozens of images there and zero of them even mentions slavery. Not one. This is a 'a war about slavery' and yet 'slavery' is not even mentioned as part of the motivation to get soldiers to actually fight? Once one 'nation' is fighting with another, the call to duty is tribal: it's 'the south' (i.e. 'us' ) vs. 'the north' (i.e. 'them') Finally - the 'Confederacy was about slavery' but the 'early US was not' is not a very strong argument if in factual reality both the early US and the Confederate were 'political movements ultimately based on slavery'. I accept there is a difference, but I'm wary that the implied difference is meaningful at all: both Washington's America, and the Confederacy were states fundamentally dependent on slavery. In that vein, it's reasonable to contemplate the Washington monument in a similar vein to how statues of the South are contextualized. It's more than a little hypocritical to hold one monument in perhaps the highest moral regard, the literal 'centre point' of the nation ... while the others are broadly condemned. From an outsiders perspective (I'm not American, but lived there for many years) - it's really obvious. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=confederate+recruiting+poste... |