Monday letters: Why celebrate manipulation by plantation owners?

The wealthy plantation owners instituted slavery because they wanted cheap labor; no salaries meant obscene profits. So they fabricated lies about their government — “The Northern aggressors want to take away your freedom” — and convinced the undereducated to commit treason and take up arms against their countrymen.

They convinced the ignorant to lay down their lives and be slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands in a war that could never be won. There was no industry to support a war, no tax base and no chance the British would help.

Death, destruction and devastation were inevitable, so why would someone revere the battle rag?

The people were duped, made fools of, and one would think their descendents would want to forget the whole thing.

Take down the rag and give up the stupid romantic notion it was about individualism. It was not; it was about the manipulation of unsophisticated farmers to keep the profits flowing to the heartless plantation owners.

Lexington