I doubt very much that anyone here thinks that slavery was anything other than odious. However, would one of those who thinks that everyone in the American South believes exactly the way a minority of those in the region did in 1860, or that they behave in the manner that a minority of those in the region did between 1865 and some date (according to them) that is yet to be determined, tell us precisely how Southerners are supposed to recognize their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy? It is certainly true that much of the economy of the Old South was driven by industrial agriculture with an enslaved workforce, and it is also certainly true that, at state and national level, politics was driven by the desire to retain the South's "peculiar institution". However, it is also true that the vast majority of those who fought for the South neither owned slaves nor cared particularly if slavery stayed or disappeared. Rather than assuming that everyone who displays the Confederate battle flag is a racist bigot, what alternative would you propose?