the southern culture valued family and friend connections and by tradition held onto their land and possessions.

And their 'possessions' included human beings.

culture of ease found a thousand miles farther south.

W@hich "culture of ease"" so-called, was based on chattel slavery and consisted in the southern gentry believing that they were characters in a Walter Scott novel.

essentially unpaid

Essentially? Please. Slaves and draft cattle were certainly ACTUALLY unpaid labor.

Pocketed with slums and hardscrabble immigrants,

The same was true of the south - ask any of the Irish emigrants who died there, because killing off laboring "bog-trotters" was a lot cheaper than killing off slaves.

War on the South's homeground with its loss of so many young healthy men

Tha south brought the war on itself. vide Lincoln's first inaugural address & the Fort Sumter run-up to hostilities.

Nowadays, wouldn't the Federal Government come in with the equivalent of the Marshall Plan?

No. The Marshall Plan was aid to America's ALLIES - the Confederacy took up arms against the government of the United States - many of the rebels deserting postsin the U.S. government and the U.S. armed forces where they had taken an oath to defend the U.S.- and thus were traitors, pure and simple.

Anyone who doubts that the war was about slavery has only to read the several ordinances of secession from the rebel states and the editorials/articles in the southern papers at the time. One example here: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

the view I give here is the view that Southerners today frequently proffer.

Yes they do, and its NeoConfederate Bullshit, and they should be ashamed of themselves, as this "Lost Cause horseshit has been proven to be just that - horseshit, and they should know better.

Its disgusting that they still cling to this racist fairytale. No wonder institutionalized racism in the U.S. refuses to die.








Anyone who doubts that the