The Confederacy was wrong.
Most modern nations would concur that the cause that brought the southern Confederacy into being was slavery and slavery was wrong.
Be that as it may, a number of the 11 states that formed the Confederate States of America are planning events over the next few years to mark the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy, which existed from 1861 to 1865, and honor and celebrate the noble cause of secession.
Charleston, S.C., where the war began, is planning to host a "secession ball" with dancing, food, music and libation. Montgomery, Ala., is planning a parade capped with a mock swearing-in of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis.
The "Sons Of Confederate Veterans," an organization with chapters across the South, is preparing to air television commercials asserting that upholding states' rights was the principal cause of the war.
It's not clear how these boosters of the Confederacy expect black people to react, but already some NAACP chapters are planning protests.
What seems clear is that although Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, the war is not over, at least not in the minds of a significant number of Southern citizens.
In several states below the Mason Dixon line, the Confederate flag still flies over government buildings and state capitols. For decades, white children in segregated Southern schools were taught not about the Civil War but the "War of Northern Aggression," as if the first shot in the conflict wasn't fired by Confederate troops on a Union fort in South Carolina.
When the shooting stopped, white Southerners banded together to terrorize their black neighbors, trying to drum it home that constitutional amendments guaranteeing blacks their freedom were paper thin.
A recent book written by Wall Street Journal editor Douglas A. Blackmon recounts this heartbreaking history in his "Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II."
After President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through a series of civil rights laws in the 1960s, the states below the Mason Dixon line became a solid Republican bloc.
There remain private academies and "Christian schools" closed to black students in some Southern states.
There has been remarkable progress in race relations in this country in the past 50 years, culminating in the election of the first black U.S. president.
But if you venture into a room full of African-Americans and ask them what they think about the latest political phenomenon, the Tea Party movement, they will talk of their suspicions of a group that seemed to come out of nowhere to oppose the first black president.
And as for Tea Party rhetoric about states' rights, well, we've heard that song before.
Earl Morgan's column runs every Wednesday. Readers can comment at nj.com/Hudson/voices.