Guess what, that is what is happening in the south. To them the horse is still very much alive and kicking.

I am sorry this has become serious enough to be investigated and reported by the Smithsonian Institution. I value their research and reporting more than any individual.

@JackPedigo

OK, then where are the professional surveys that show such a serious looming problem? Cite those professional studies and reports please. Not some article concocted by a bigoted, hateful reporter.

In my experience, the only people who bring up the subject are people from other parts of the country, with a total ignorance of the South, and its history.

@WilliamFleming
bigoted reporter? there are two reporters. brian palmer and seth freed wessler. since you were unaware of this, i question your knowledge of the reporters. read any of their other stuff? hardly seems like propaganda to ask people questions that are not leading and have them respond in a ingnorant/bigoted way. nor does it seem likely they wrote the latter below from ol' jwbinion addressing the crowd. are the writers not supposed to or allowed to go to these locations? seems to me a well written and factual article. is it a bigoted publication?

from the article here are two quotes from your miniscule percentage of southerners that are far more bigoted than anything your not so liberal authors wrote. --- "After a discussion of the window treatments and oil paintings, the other visitors left, and we asked the guide what she could tell us about slavery.

Sometimes children ask about it, she said. “I want to tell them the honest truth, that slavery was good and bad.” While there were some “hateful slave owners,” she said, “it was good for the people that didn’t know how to take care of themselves, and they needed a job, and you had good slave owners like Jefferson Davis, who took care of his slaves and treated them like family. He loved them.”

The subject resurfaced the next day, before a mock battle, when Jefferson Davis—a re-enactor named J.W. Binion—addressed the crowd. “We were all Americans and we fought a war that could have been prevented,” Binion declared. “And it wasn’t fought over slavery, by the way!” ---

so if a reporter asks a question, and the response is ignorant, the reporter is at fault? or they are questions that shouldn't be asked? in light of recent history, i don't follow.

also i don't mind light being shed, myself. lift all the rocks. "sometimes the children ask about it." let's everyone tell the children the truth. even in your un-bigoted south. make the article required reading for every school student.

by the way "A few might, but what PERCENTAGE? I live in a rural part of Alabama, and in the ten years I’ve been back here I haven’t heard a SINGLE conversation about the Civil War in this neighborhood" is anecdotal. what percentage of people are klansmen? should i care it is small? or does the sentiment not exist? what if it spreads... even a little?

@larsatrg Apparently you are in very strong disagreement with the sentiments expressed in the two quotes you gave. Neither statement was all that extreme. You might disagree with what was said, but to claim that, based on such statements,the Civil War is still being waged, as the title suggests, is nothing but hyperbole.

Both of those statements, in fact, can be supported, and they are not ignorant/bigoted, as you said. It sounds to me as though you are the one still fighting the Civil War.

You might consider reading the actual narratives of former slaves if you want to know what slavery was like. There are many such narratives, compiled by the government in the thirties, and they can be downloaded.

It is a matter of historical record that the war was fought to prevent secession—Lincoln himself said as much. The US Army did not go marching into the South to free the slaves. If that had been the mission wouldn’t they have freed the slaves in your own Maryland first? It is true that had there not been slavery there would have been no war. It is true that the South mistakenly clung to slavery, which motivated secession. Slavery was one of the conditions which led to war, but was not the cause.To illustrate, the cotton trade was a condition, but was not the cause.

You ask what percentage of Alabamians are klansmen. I don’t know but I do know that a person could spend their entire life here and never once have any contact with such groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center there are 23 hate groups in Alabama, and there are 21 in Maryland.
So far as the KKK per se, here’s a link that is revealing:

[google.com]

@WilliamFleming to state that "slavery is good" in any way is about the most ignorant thing i can think of. to say that the civil war was preventable may be in fact debatable, but the intimation seems to be is that would be a good thing. debate that? why. it happened and debating that it is a possible good thing to delay or have it remain status quote leaves the institution you seem to think on some level is justifiable or acceptable (as the first quote the woman implies) as a white southerner; intact. not racist? okay, your opinion, but not fighting the civil war so you can continue your agrarian economy on the backs of an enslaved people seems ignorant at best. seems like things a white person would think. and sigh, i don't care if you find a person of color to agree with you. i am not fighting anything. i reacted to what you wrote. i don't think about the civil war until i see hateful people crowding around their symbols of hate as heritage. we don't fly the british flag. know why? same reason we don't fly the confederate battle flag.

i did not bring up the south. i responded to your question about how many southerners sit around and discuss it. i think from the piece and other things i have seen, that it is enough of a percentage to discuss it. it is not the number of people as much as the lunacy of the idea "slavery good." i believe the splc is a wonderful organization lifting rocks and should continue to do so. all hate groups. left and right. i am just betting here, having not looked in a while. white/right hate groups far outweigh ones of the left. i was pointing out that i don't care how small the population is that thinks like that. the thought and utter ignorance should be exposed. both sides. just like the TWO writers did in the smithsonian piece. and read it again. i did not ask what perecentage of alabama residents are klansmen. i said what percentage of "people". i don't give a rat's ass about alabama.

@larsatrg You are right about that—slavery was a terrible institution and our country is much better off without it. But I don’t believe in absolutes. Much good often comes from what is adjudged to be evil. One good is that our country is blessed with descendants of the slaves, and they are creative, intelligent and robust people who are an asset in about every way.

In reading those slave narratives I get the definite impression that the life of a typical slave was not one of torture and unceasing toil. Many of the former slaves in fact looked back with pleasure on the old days. I know I shouldn’t let it needle me, but the left-wing media seems intent on re-creating history to stir up anger, violence, and a sense of grievance and victim-hood. “Your great-great-great grandparents were slaves and you are a victim” seems to be the line. There is that all-out effort to demonize the evil white southerners—to assume a pompous air of moral and intellectual superiority, and yes, to promote the false idea that southerners are still fighting, chomping at the bit to reopen the Civil War and reimpose slavery.

Thanks for clearing that up about the klan. I propose to move forward in an attitude of peace, harmony and mutual respect if possible. Sometimes I slip up.

@WilliamFleming i am no expert, but i believe your and other's 'slave-master relationship as agreeable' is flawed. you cannot deny a person an education systemically, deny a people education systemically; and any number of documented cases of ill treatment, rape, and break up of family by selling them, and complete attempt to strip them of all dignity then call their required subservience a symbiotic relationship. coercion at a minimum. my perception, you've made someone property by force for generations, probably feels like your station in life at some point for some people. smacks of necessity to me, maybe even apathy. had and has nothing to do with ability to perform... or you know, actual worth as a human. as granted by the white dude?

@larsatrg I haven’t done any of the things you say.

Goodbye.

@WilliamFleming never said you did. you did however invite the response because you've invoked slave's testimony to justify their situation or at a minimum view it through rose colored glasses and i would dare say from your first post seem to have a sense of victimization incurred by the original poster's article. i wonder if the guy with the whip was in the room when the real victims were giving testimony. i am not saying he was. just wondering.

good bye.

@larsatrg What seems to be lost in the conversation is the apologetic's for the issue of slavery from a southerner. It was the south that fired the first shot and it was the southern legislators that tried to force congress to take away new states rights to chose slavery or not. The south was concerned about becoming a minority and losing clout when new states did not have slavery. The south was totally at fault and northern legislators tried to constantly mollify the south to no avail. The sickening thing is that they are still supporting a slavery attitude by saying benevolent dictators are good (even though these were few and far between) and an attitude of racism is still predominate in the south. All reputable historians agree the issue was slavery and just like today it is the wealthy pushing their propaganda on others to justify their selfish and greedy ends. One point I noted, was the idea of so called narratives from the slaves. Education was not allowed and very few did learn to read or write and the oral narratives were probably mostly coerced. If life was so great why did almost 190,000 blacks fight for the union during the civil war? [archives.gov]

@JackPedigo agreed. i tried to indicate that the narratives could be forced with my notion of the whip in the room, but i thought about it further and don't even think this is required. how many black families do you think had a "don't say anything bad about the master" policy? self preservation? maybe not, maybe i made the idea up just now, but it seems more plausible than "i would like to remain a slave because that guy is a good dude and i get three squares and he doesn't beat me or rape my wife and offspring." even if that is the case it doesn't justify the practice (slavery) or merit its continuation.

I also saw that someone noted that there was a desertion spike among the northern troops after the emancipation proclamation (see this proves the north didn't fight over slavery... ? no, it doesn't. Its a component of a pointless argument about again... what "slavery intact is good." ??? uh. no it's not.) plus, wow. people in the north were/are racist? who knew? I don't understand what that fact has to do with whether ending slavery was good or bad. i submit that those awol for that reason then are on the same wrong side of history as the folks who still fly the confederate battle flag.

It would be nice if both sides would listen to each other but we need to get around big corporate and the wealthy who control the media. I agree both sides are culpable, the left just tends to be less racist.
I have almost reached the point where the states that can not seem to get over losing the Civil War still want to be separate from the rest of the United States then get out. Form your own country. The states that want to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights must get their acts together and make it so for ALL Americans.
I truly do think the big money people are a huge part of the divide and conquer problem we have in this country.

I see some merit in the comment but, to me, it goes deeper than just not talking to each other. Many people have a real conflict of interest issue and seek power. The south refuses to admit their cause was wrong and they lost. A mature society learns from their mistakes but some societies refuse to get it. Israel is one such society and a lot of people in the south have such low self esteem they feel the need to push their racist beliefs on those they feel are inferior.
The legislature prior to the civil way was bending over backwards to placate the south in order to avoid violence. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Hopefully, we won't back down from threats from a bunch of armed thugs with guns. They do not present a match against the U.S forces. But I can tRump playing on this to avoid justice.

@JackPedigo Yeah about that. We weren’t told the full truth about the civil war. It seems that shortly after the slave revolts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic they spread to Jamaica as well as other little islands here and there.

And since the French and Spanish had pretty much exhausted a lot of their resources fighting their wars that they requested that we go in and get their colonies back for them.
Most southern leaders were all for it especially considering that the news of the successful uprisings might reach back here.

But the U S government not declined to do so they actually were the first to recognize these islands as free nations and began to conduct business with them considering that they could now get raw materials for a lesser price and force the hand of the southern leadership.

Which led to several southern states offering their resources ( military and ships ) to go and reclaim those islands on behalf of France and Spain.
Therefore causing the blockades at Charleston and later New Orleans.

But anyway it does go further than the civil war but like I those who’d benefit from us having a rematch have chosen to it and race as a catalyst.
Oh and one more surprise for ya just how many of our troops do you think will stay loyal?

@Alshaytan I agree and I also see that this was a complex fight. Even the British helped the south for a while, by accepting their cotton to spin into cloth. The south was their main supplier and blockades hurt their cloth industry. A lot of side issues with the American Civil War.