Interesting perspective of politics upon history.

Every historian with a grain of credibility agrees that the reason the south succeeded from the north was because they depended upon slavery for their economic interests and they didn't believe that African-American slaves were inferior and should not be free citizens.
Actually, anyone who has every taken a decent American history course or read a book on American history knows this. There was a movement in the United States at the time, especially in the north, to abolish the institution of slavery. IT was THE issue of mid 19th Century America. The nation was growing and the thing that was causing it the most growing pains was slavery. Google "dred scott."
So the south went traitorous and succeeded from the Union. They set up their own gov't and basically declared war on the United States of America. See, they set up a separate country and went to war against (began killing) the troops that were in that area of the mother country. That's treason of the worse kind.
They were defeated by the United States of America and the Union was reunited and preserved. From that era rose the American hero Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was an extremely strong man who was also extremely intellectual and did absolutely nothing and made no decisions without intense study of the facts and all sides of the issues. This trait on the part of this great man is one of the big factors in the fact that the United States exists today as a single whole nation. Imagine the chaos wed have if the southern states were a separate country. When would slavery have ended? How? What kind of sad socio-economic mess would we have in the SE corner of this part of the continent?
Now take a look at the information below.

Civil War still divides Americans
By: CNN Political Unit
Washington (CNN) - . . . When asked the reason behind the Civil War, whether it was fought over slavery or states' rights, 52 percent of all Americas said the leaders of the Confederacy seceded to keep slavery legal in their state, but a sizeable 42 percent minority said slavery was not the main reason why those states seceded. . .

When broken down by political party, most Democrats said southern states seceded over slavery, independents were split and most Republicans said slavery was not the main reason that Confederate states left the Union.
Republicans were also most likely to say they admired the leaders of the southern states during the Civil War, with eight in 10 Republicans expressing admiration for the leaders in the South, virtually identical to the 79 percent of Republicans who admired the northern leaders during the Civil War.

That's kind of incredible. I'm not surprised that 40% of southern whites sympathize more with the confederacy than the union. Afterall, they're southern whites, need we say more? But the fact that 25% of ALL Americans feel this way sorta knocks me around a little.
The real kicker however is that 80% of republicans "admire" the confederate leaders is scary. The confederate leaders were traitors of the worse kind. They should have been rounded up and shot at the end of the Civil War. Really, it would have alleviated a lot of the problems we have today. Instead, the south was allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened despite the fact that they were sworn enemies of the United States of America.

So now 80% of the republican party "admire" with those traitors and racists and while I hesitate to divide us along party lines, I have to ask what this says for the conservative elements in political America. Are they racist to the degree that they "admire" a faction that wanted to keep slavery in America? Is the racial issue what really drives them to "admire" the confederacy? How does that all apply to their gravitation toward movements like the "tea party" and other extremist right wing groups? Do they also "admire" the extremist right wing white supremist groups? Afterall, these are the modern day confederates.