I have read with interest the several letters about the legacy of the Confederate flag.

While there can be no doubt that slavery was the major underlying issue of the war, we must also keep in mind that the issue was not whether or not there should be slavery, but rather dealing with the economic and political ramifications of slavery.

Slavery existed long before the Confederacy and continued to exist in the United States after the end of the war.

Several slave states remained in the Union and slavery continued in those states until the passage of the 13th amendment.

It is disingenuous to paint the Confederate flag with all the stain of slavery and the subsequent racial equalities that still persist to this day.

The U.S. flag bears as much, if not more, of the stain as it flew over slave ships.

Further, the racial problems of the Northern states cannot be placed on old flags from a nation that never existed here.

The very fact that we have these problems in a state in which slavery ended long before the Civil War demonstrates that there is something much more significant and difficult to fix going on.

If we spent half as much time trying to fix those underlying problems as we do attacking symbols that have little to do with them, maybe we'd be making more progress.