@Qingu To address your post:
First of all, you state that they were the ‘culture that started a war and killed thousands of people for the right to own other human beings as property.
Look at the number of Native Americans that were killed for THIS culture. Look at the number of minorities that are discriminated against, often to the point of suicide or death.
Second, you seem to be, as so many are, under the mistaken idea that the Civil War was waged because of the right to own slaves. Period. Yes, they desired to own slaves, but the underlying question you need to ask is why it was so important, and why that desire would cause a war.
One of the main problems was about taxes paid on goods brought into this country from foreign countries – i.e. a tariff. Southerners felt these tariffs were unfair and aimed specifically at them because they imported a wider variety of goods than most Northern people. Southern exporters sometimes had to pay higher amounts for shipping their goods overseas because of the distance from southern ports and sometimes pay unequal tariffs imposed by a foreign country on some of their goods. This also affected Southern banks that found themselves paying higher interest rates on loans made with banks in the North. The situation grew worse after several “panics”, including one in 1857 that affected more Northern banks than Southern. Southern financiers found themselves burdened with high payments just to save Northern banks that had suffered financial losses through poor investment.
If you look into why slavery was so important, you will find that, in the south, the main crop in an agricultural south was cotton. Cotton was, at that time, a very labor-intensive crop to grow and profit from. In the north, things like wheat were grown, which could be harvested by machine. So the north did not rely on manual labor. I do wish, also, to point out that the self-same people that demanded an end to slavery often had indentured servants which were, in effect, slaves. The fact that there was a time limit on their slavery was inconsequential, as they rarely lived to see their contract come to fruitation. If they did, they were free, but were absolutely destitute. Not much of an improvement. Anyway, back to my point. If the North would have succeeded in abolishing slavery without a war, the south would have been devastated, financially. The north would have, quite literally, run and owned the country. The fact that it took a war, simply disguised the result. The devastation in the south, financially, after the war, was not so much due to losing the war, as the loss of so much aid and income.
As far as me ‘whining about some black people,’ first, it was not whining, any more than your post is. It was me, stating my position and belief. And if you remove those that complain the Confederate WAR flag (there were several Confederate flags, the one in question was used during the war) being a sign of slavery – mostly black people that feel the white people should apologize for slavery, even though their own people were the ones that sold slaves they had to the white man (thus the slave owners were black Africans in their own right – where is the outcry there?).
You comment says you do not see why I had to bring it up, and that it has nothing to do with this thread. Ok, tell me who it is that feels so upset about the Confederate flag being ‘a symbol of slavery and oppression’ then? Considering most of the slaves and oppression in this country have occurred under the ‘stars and stripes’ than under the Confederate flag, I believe your thinking is skewed. I also think you just skimmed what I said, had a knee-jerk reaction, and blew off, instead of thinking. I may be wrong, but at least I did not call you a whiner or suggest you research your topic. I know my topic better than you could possibly imagine. I debated it in school. I have sources to back up my findings, and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are the one that lacks knowledge. Not me.