"The Confederate flag has been used by racist hatemongers, therefore it must be banned!"

"There were baddies among the Bushwhackers, therefore the name must go!" This is as sensible as to say, "Airplanes have been used to bomb and kill people, therefore those works of the devil must be banned!"

The Romans long ago came up with the perfect squelch for such arguments: Abusus non tollitusum "Abuse is no argument against (proper) use."

The idea even appears in a legal maxim still recognized by jurists --valet conseguentia "The consequences of abuse do not apply to general use."

And we're told; "The Confederate flag flew over slavery." Yes; for four years. The Stars and Stripes flew over it for 80 years. To be consistent, we must ban both or neither.

Without half trying, I've dug up seven arguments why slavery wasn't the cause, certainly not the whole cause, of the War Between The States.

1. As Frank Canton recently reminded readers, Robert E. Lee was burdened with the care of slaves inherited by his wife. He didn't just free them. He agonized for years over their future, making sure they had livelihoods, the means to survive as free men. Why would this man, recognized as one of the decentest and most honorable Americans of all times, brilliantly wage war for four years for a cause he, judging by his actions, didn't believe in?

Ulysses Grant also acquired slaves via his wife. He never bothered his head about them. They remained slaves till the 13th Amendment. Yet he was the one fighting slavery?

2. As Frank Carlton also noted, only one in 10 Southerners owned slaves.

Does it make sense to fancy that hundreds of thousands of men were such fools as to fight for four years, with incredible valor and determination, for a cause in which they had no stake? And most of those few owned only one or two. Their status and treatment was much like that of white hired hands.

Masters and slaves knew each other as fellow men.

Like most humans, they did their best to make a world of decency and mutual respect. Hatred and cruelty, so harped on by the politically correct, were the exceptions, not the rule. Ab abusu ad usum non

3. The Civil War almost happened during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, when South Carolina "nullified" the so-called "Tariff of Abominations" which like all tariffs of the day punished the South, which supplied the major U.S. export, cotton, yet was unable to buy cheap manufactured goods overseas, rather than the higher-priced Northern manufactures. Slavery wasn't even mentioned as a possible cause of this near-war between North and South.

4. There were volunteers from every Northern state in the Confederate army. In Nevada once lived a Mr. Collingwood Jewell. He was a native of Maine, yet he fought in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in all its major battles. Nor was he an exception. The Civil War was a nationwide quarrel over the nature of the Union, not an Armageddon between sections.

5. The Confederate government formally offered freedom to any slaves who'd fight for the South (and more than a few did). Why would the Confederates have voluntarily given up the very principle for which they were supposed to be fighting?

6. Abe Lincoln repeatedly said he was fighting to save the Union, not to abolish slavery.

He conceded he lacked the Constitutional power to abolish slavery, a state prerogative under the Constitution.

He had to disguise his eventual "Emancipation Proclamation" as a "war measure," even though he denied it was really a war. Ironically his Proclamation freed not a single slave, since it applied only to territory over which he and the Union army had no control.

Slaves in Union-held regions (including unconstitutionally created West Virginia) remained slaves.

7. Like it or not, the issue was race, not slavery. Most whites, by far, were uneasy at the presence of so many Africans among them, legally not citizens, uneducated, culturally backward.

Hate and violence in Southern race relations came late, after the North had done its best, in war and peace, to destroy the Southern leader class, the "Bourbons," who kept order among blacks and poor whites alike.

"Race-baiting" was the work of lower-class politicians who at last overthrew the patricians who'd led the South before, during, and just after the Civil War.

Equally uneasy, Northerners reacted by distancing themselves from blacks, by law and by violence.

The motto of Kansas freestaters was, "Free soil for free (i.e. white) men."

One of the first laws of "free" Kansas "prohibited even free blacks from coming into the state."

Other Northern states had such laws. The bloodthirsty lynchings and arsons in New York City and elsewhere are well-known.

The Missouri Unionist leader Frank Blair conceded in a speech after the war that it was the mere presence of the blacks that caused the conflict, not their status.

White Aryans conquered black India 3,000 years ago. Despite laws, the result, the caste system, still prevails. The Hindi term for it is -- varna "color."

The Civil War solved the problem for us no more than three millennia have settled it for India.

Indeed, it's unlikely ever to be settled. Genetics decrees that race isn't going to go away. Human perversity prophesies that "racism" too, like most basic human problems, is here to stay; indeed, as R. H. Williams put it, made "daily more difficult."