Once the south seceded it was no longer their flag. It was the flag of an oppressor, and an invader. There is no shame it firing on that.

"Sic Semper Tyrannis, Thus always to Tyrants."

The Southern states didn't invade the North, they didn't go to New York and occupy a fort that controlled the harbor there. The Southern government did not call for 75,000 soldiers to subjugate the northern people. They called for volunteers to defend their homes.

The South did nothing wrong in seceding. Secession was not prohibited by the Constitution. Under the 9th Amendment of the Constitution secession was a right of the people which was not enumerated, because it was not specifically prohibited in the Constitution.

The 10th Amendment gave all power to the States that was NOT specifically given to the central Government. Both of these Amendments meant that the States, and their people in 1860, had more rights and powers than did the Federal Government. The Constitution limited the power of the federal Government. And the right to force people to remain in the Union against their free will was NOT a power granted to the United States government under that Constitution.

Like it or not, the right to no longer be a part of the United States was a right, under unalienable rights clause of the Declaration of Independence, that the people of 1860 had under the 9th Amendment. The rights of Life, Liberty and the Persuit of Happiness are three rights which are not emunerated in the Constitution, but were reconized under the 9th Amendment. Another right reconized in that same Declaration is "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter, or to abolish it."

The south simple exercised their God given right, as Jefferson said, to abolish their association with a government which they believe was "destructive" to their "unalienable rights".

God forbid that we ever fall into the grasp of an all powerful government.