The Northwest edition of the Democrat-Gazette follows the Rebel-centric vision of Little Rock leadership apparently. About 35 people turned out for a Confederate cemetery memorial Saturday and that was good enough for Page 1B in the regional edition of the state’s largest paper. (Why we not have in LR?)

But credit Robert Smith for going to some authorities for comment when one of the Lost Cause crowd dragged out the old saw that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery.

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There’s no denying it was an important aspect of the war, said Mark Christ, a historian with the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program that’s helped put eight Confederate cemeteries and other Confederate monuments on the National Register of Historic Places.

“The one unsolvable conflict between the North and the South was slavery,” Christ said. “There was no getting around it. No matter how you argue it, it’s my opinion that’s the core reason for the Civil War.”

WWDODD?

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