The old arguments over the Confederate battle flag (pride or racist symbol, or both), intensified after a photograph surfaced of a mass murderer in Charleston, South Carolina, holding one.

This war retrospective, by contemporary Knoxville journalist Jack Neely, whose title forms the headline of this post, speaks to some of the complexities of the war which are explored in Knoxville 1863:

“The Civil War is a big bagful of ironies and paradoxes, and not a recommended study for folks who like to keep things simple. It would be a particular challenge for anyone to survive the 1860s in Knoxville and either idealize one side or demonize the other. It took a later generation, one that didn’t remember the war, to glorify it…”

No better time, perhaps, than Independence Day to consider all this anew. Give it a whirl.

Via Instapundit.

UPDATE:  And if you care to get really bogged down in the war’s minutia, there’s this one.