That’s a great point, but you could also ask why the Libertartians don’t go after the Confederacy in their attacks on “big government.” After all, the Confederacy was much more intrusive compared with the United States during the Civil War.

I’m planning to do my dissertation work on Confederate loyalties in Mississippi, and in my preliminary research one of those most interesting things I’ve found is that many Mississipians seemed to have held generally weak ideas about national loyalties. Poorer whites especially often viewed military service for the Confederacy as a chance to get a paycheck, get some action, and in general participate in someting great and exciting, but ideas of a great national mission are not as common as popular culture claims. One of the points I may end up making is that some people in the Civil War, as is the case today, were generally apolitical, and even if they held political beliefs those beliefs were often never set in stone and were subject to change depending on the circumstances. Sa you know, Dr. Bynum’s fantastic book “The Free State of Jones” and her exhaustive research on the Kinght clan provides an excellent example of how loyalties are often cloudyand not easily labled concepts. Thus, regarding the book cover, I think the fractured flag is about right.

- Jarret Ruminski