Earlier this month, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) declared April 2010 Confederate History Month. The declaration didn't mention slavery.

McDonnell claimed:

...there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.

McDonnell later apologized and added language denouncing slavery to his proclamation. But before that apology and even after, others have defended him.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) defended McDonnell. When asked What about the sensitivity of it? Because we heard from a number of African American politicians and just people on the street that were interviwed in Virginia going “this is offensive to celebrate something that was really about slavery and has no mention of it?” he replied:

To me it’s a sort of feeling that it’s just a nit. That it is not significant. It’s trying to make a big deal out of something that doesn’t matter for diddly.

Many Conservatives have gone to great lengths to claim the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

They are wrong.

On March 4, 1861, seven states seceded from the Union.

On March 21, 1861, Confederate Vice President, Alexander Stephens gave his "cornerstone speech" which outlined what the Confederate beliefs:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

When the Confederate Vice President states emphatically that the foundation of the Confederate constitution is that slavery is the "natural and normal condition" for black people...then yeah...it kinda is about slavery.