Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The Confederacy and especially the predominant symbol of the Confederacy—the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—continues to spark controversy involving slavery. Might the participants of this 150-year-old controversy be reminded, the Civil War was about so much more.

Those who might be aware of the historical record involving this unnecessary but bloody war might recall that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves, either in the South or the North, as the proclamation addressed the slaves in the South and gave no respite to those in the North. It can be seen, however, that the Great Emancipator scored a significant propaganda victory as can be attested to today by the continuing repetition of the propaganda that was used so effectively to demonize the enemy of the then-government of the northern states.

The Civil War was about the huge economic issues of the era; in particular, the heavy tariffs on southern trade that...