civil war

Last week Virginia's Orange County Board of Supervisors vote to approve the building of a new Wal-Mart Supercenter within the historic boundaries of the
Wilderness Battlefield - and one of the most significant battlefields of the Civil War. The Civil War Preservation Trust has been fighting Wal-Mart on this location for over a year - seeking an alternative location and compromoise - and after last week they desperately need everyones help to stop Wal-Mart from moving forward and opening the door to further destructive development.

Even State Senator Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, has written a letter to the president and CEO of Wal-Mart pleading with him to move the location off the historic battlefield. Wake-Up Wal-Mart is helping in this fight and you can too by also writing a letter on the Civil War Preservation Trust's website and also help spread the word yourself.

More from Blue Virginia and the Washington Post below:

I'm a relatively new resident of North Carolina, as I'm going to graduate school here. But yesterday a friend of mine who's from North Carolina, Durham in fact, said something that just boggled my mind.

We were talking about how people can't change what symbols mean in the minds of others, and my example was that even though some people might say that the Confederate flag is a symbol of states rights, to the majority of people its a symbol of slavery. I then quipped that the people who say that the Confederate flag is a symbol of states rights and not slavery just don't get it, because its a symbol of the states' rights... to own slaves, and that thats what caused the Civil War.

She responded that slavery was not a major cause of the Civil War, and the reason that I thought slavery was the major cause of the Civil War was because of my Northern education.