It's probably got other commonalities with Scotland; the south was on the losing side of history, and assimilated ink a union with a more powerful neighbour - sound familiar?
I expect the sentiments behind the flag are related to those experience by scots in brave heart mode. I 'd agree with the article that it was all about far more than slavery.
Allowing for some minor local resistance here and there, and the facts that the Southern political elite took very little heed of their white working class and dictated both public opinion and policy throughout the South, it can be stated without any hesitation that secession and civil war were the direct consequences of Southern slavery. The South would not have seceded and there would have been no war without that defining factor.
The Southern states in 1860 were still pre-industrialised economies, utterly dependent on slavery. Their prosperity (not widely shared), their capital, their culture and their institutions were each founded on the principal that the natural preserve of black people was slavery (please note: there were no white slaves in the United States in 1860). Those states that seceded from the Union in 1860/61 broke away in order to preserve slavery in their own domains, because they were frustrated that the North was preventing the extension of slavery into the new territories of the United States and because they feared that the North was intent on abolishing slavery entirely. They said so unequivocally at every opportunity, in conventions, in speeches, in state legislative houses, in newspaper articles and editorials, in letters. Their representatives and senators proclaimed the same on the floors of both houses in Washington and it was
the platform of those from their side who ran in the 1860 presidential election ace.
The Southern political elite had bullied and threatened the rest of the United States since independence, distorting the democratic balance, suppressing with violence anyone in the South who opposed slavery, to ensure that the 'special institution' was preserved. The comment I find most laughable in that article is the one claiming that most Southerners abhorred slavery. To abhor slavery in the pre-war South was to invite tarring and feathering and running out of town at the very least!
When Lincoln was democratically elected in 1860 on a ticket opposing the extension of slavery into the new territories the South threw its toys out the pram and seceded. They made no secret that they split because of slavery. In every instance it was written into their declarations of independence and their constitutions in the clearest possible language -- some of these documents virtually talk of nothing else.
The North went to war to preserve the union, the South went to war to preserve slavery. There may have been other minor differences, on trade and tariffs for instance, but everything leads back to slavery. The myth promoted by Southern apologists since the end of the Civil War that the South fought for something other than slavery is just that, a myth.
