Is it wrong of me to resent the inclusion of Confederate Soldiers in that list? They were traitors, after all.

Walter Williams might disagree.

Yeah, well. You seced from your country, you're a traitor to that country. Maybe you're a patriot to your next country. For example, I don't have any problem if the British were to regard Washington, Adams, et. al. as traitors.

You are 100% wrong, Doug, and you need a different history education than you can obtain from Paul. The "nation" to which you have been led to believe in is certainly not the same "nation" that existed prior to the War between the States. In many, many respects the consolidated government or centralized one is much worse.

So you would have taken up arms on behalf of the rebels and against the United States?

I happen to be glad that the Southern traitors were beaten, were forced to surrender, and were forced to stop buying, selling, and owning people.

(Oddly enough, I just stumbled across a New York Times Magazine article that looks to the United States' occupation of the South for lessons about our current occupation of Iraq.)

Yes, fear me, for I alone preach the gospel that slavery was wrong and slaveowners deserved what they got.

In many, many respects the consolidated government or centralized one is much worse.

Can't you just see the slaves working in the fields, rejoicing that at least they don't live in a social democratic state? (Nota bene to our tonedeaf commenters: This is sarcasm.)

The main lesson from Reconstruction is: don't emulate the worst traits of the carpetbaggers and alienate them from generations on end. Destroying a region and then stealing from it is not how to build a working relationship. Thank God we didn't do that to the Japanese.

Okay, now I'm reading the NYT article...

Huh? What lessons? I see some rambling observations in the article, but no real lessons.

There is little to fear from a preacher with small to no congregation but we can correct his misrepresentations. A reading of Jaffa or two, some Randolph of Roanoke, Washington's last will, and documents of slaveholders will reveal that no one was particularily happy with having slaves and a system of slavery imposed upon them by England. Resentment and distrust of the Negro was widespread in the North for a number of reasons-histories of early Indiana give them as do Lincoln's speechs. Racism in the North remains firmly in place more than 100 years later.