To the editor:
    
I have lived in Alexandria for about a month and read my first Alexandria Times this past June. I was interested in getting a more intimate political feel of this new town I now call home.
    
I was surprised to read the letter to the editor, Coverage focused too much on slavery during the Civil War (June 2, 2011) by Daryl M. Plunk, who seems to be one of those holdouts attempting to rewrite Civil War history a revisionist. He wants to convince us not to pay any attention to newspapers of that time, as well as the most obvious evidence: The Confederate Constitution explicitly denied the right to abolish slavery within a member states borders. Gen. Robert E. Lee took orders from politicians whod formed their government for the sole purpose of preserving their peculiar institution and who gladly said so.
    
Ill take their words over those of their contemporary apologists.
    
Plunk seems to believe it was about greater issues of disputes between the state and federal governments scope of power and constitutionality of state secession. I find it so frustrating and exasperating when people cannot realize that the issue of power and control between the states and federal government during this time was partly about expanding slavery to the West, into the new territories. Southerners wanted to spread slavery their bread-and-butter economy while the Lincoln administration and the Northerners, whose economy was not based solely on slavery, thought it immoral. 
    
So you can say the war was about economics, power, control or states rights, but they are all stemmed from one thing: slavery. Can we, in the 21st century, stop playing these word games, these delusional denials, and face the facts? The South needs to face its history, just as the Germans have following the Holocaust and World War II once and for all.