Erasing the Confederacy -How Far Would you Go?

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

All except option 6 (which would almost certainly be unconstitutional).

The Confederacy was a treasonous alliance and established for the ultimate sole purpose of protecting the institution of slavery; every reason for the Civil War can be easily brought back to the issue of slavery. Local and state governments should not be glorifying the Confederacy and its morally reprehensible figureheads in any way. That doesn't mean we are "forgetting history." No one wants the Confederacy out of our museums of history books. But it doesn't belong anywhere else.

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

To say that "the civil war was about slavery" is just reductionist thinking. I am not saying it wasn't an issue, it certainly was an issue but when you consider that;
a) Lincoln himself said said in his inaugural address that he didn't have the lawful right to interfere with slavery.
b) Lincoln's emancipation proclamation was in 1863. The war started in 1861. So slavery isn't made an issue by the North until the second year of the war. Also frees zero slaves.
c)The fugitive slave acts, where escaped slaves would be returned to their owners would no longer be enforceable for slave states that secede.
It becomes clear (at least to me) that things aren't so clear cut with regards to slavery in the war between the states.

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

...the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
  I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration.

...slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free... [States] in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

Doesn't free a single slave he actually has jurisdiction over.

The confederate flag is racist?




symbol of the south and southern pride?



If the flag is racist does this mean that the US flag is racist?

For the record I don't think either flag is inherently racist. What makes the "confederate flag" so much worse?

Is slavery wrong? well duh.

Yes, the Union, including Lincoln, had lots of other reasons to fight the war. But just because ending slavery wasn’t the North’s top priority didn’t mean that preserving it wasn’t the South’s.