I, too, am a Civil War enthusiast. But I am compelled to rebut the argument of the previous writer ("Confederate flag a symbol of lost personal freedoms," Sept. 15").

First and foremost, the Civil War was about slavery. While we can romanticize Southern soldiers, Civil War battles and "great" traditions, the truth remains that the Civil War, which caused over 600,000 deaths, was fought over the issue of slavery. Frequently, Civil War romanticists cite two causes of the war: economics and states' rights.

These arguments, while facially valid, disregard the underlying issue of slavery.

While fought between the industrial North and agrarian South, the central focus of this economic conflict involved the issue of slavery. Slavery was the driving force behind the Southern economy. Free labor in the North, while experiencing enormous strife from industrialization, saw Southern slavery as a competing institution that denied free, "white" labor employment opportunities. Again, the central focus of this economic conflict argument was slavery.

As for the states' rights argument, Southern states wanted autonomy to manage slave labor without interference from the North. The Missouri Compromise and Kansas-Nebraska Act were tools used not solely to ensure states' rights, but to mitigate the divisive slavery issue.

As an undergraduate student, I have taken graduate courses in labor and Civil War history. Historians like Eric Foner and Howard Zinn agree that slavery was the driving issue behind the Civil War, not economics and states' rights.

Therefore, in my view, the Confederate flag symbolizes slavery, not romanticized tradition.