Denying history doesn't change it

The good news: More than 140 years after the Civil War ended, a Mobile Register poll has found that Abraham Lincoln has a higher approval rating among Alabamians than Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee. The bad news: More than half of the state's adults believe states' rights, not slavery, was the war's main cause.

A follow-up question I wish the pollsters had asked: The states' rights to do what? Sorry, Confederate apologists, but a review of 1860s secession documents makes the answer pretty clear.