Well, once again you twisted it at the end with the state's right thing. Robert e Lee stuck with the Confederation as his state went so. Those soldiers were more loyal to the states and opposed a powerful central government thus wanting to form a confederate. We now what the flag meant during the war but the right guys won, imo and I look at the flag today as part of America's history, for better or worse. I see it as a tribute to all the young soldiers who died in the field, the ones who didn't write those words you quoted but rather were sent into battle by those guys. Slavery was an issue in the civil war, but most of the young guys, many teenagers who died on the field of battle were fighting for a belief that encompassed much more than the own slaves, they couldn't afford slaves anyway. The seeds of the civil war were planted long before Lincoln took office. Can I have a graph please brother.