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HOOOWHEEEEEE! Man, has my e-mail been on fire since last Saturday's column suggesting that H.K. Edgerton give his Confederate flag-waving a rest.

I also facetiously suggested that Edgerton, a Black man who waxes rhapsodic about the mutual love and honor the races shared under slavery, could be my slave for a while to experience the indignity personally.

Add in a couple of historical references to slavery causing the war, and hello e-mail barrage.

"Your attack of Mr. Edgerton puts you in the same boat as the other liberal, vomit spewing, anti-Southern, bottom dwelling, scum sucking buzzards in the 'media'!!!!!!!!!!!!" wrote an inspired South Carolinian.

No need for a clarification there - or here: "You're a tick on a festering wound, trying to suck it dry and make something of yourself. Get a life."

One woman wittily stated that I was "a Boyle on the butt of the South."

Better than being a tick on a wound, I suppose.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to reply to most of the 150 good folks who shared their opinions.

And I'm sorry I missed the demonstration in front of our building Wednesday (Loved the "Lance the Boyle" sign, Kirk) by a handful of protesters.

I should note that I did get a dozen or so letters and calls of support, mostly saying I was right on the mark.

But the Confederate heritage network generated e-mails from across the South.

Many were quite lengthy, so I'll summarize: I'm an ignorant sniveling liberal racist scalawag who doesn't know his history and won't ever get another job with any Southern newspaper. The war was about states' rights, you moron!

Dozens of writers expounded upon Abraham Lincoln's racist views and how the Emancipation Proclamation freed only the slaves in rebellious states, not in the border states.

Many pointed out that less than 10 percent of White Southerners even owned slaves, and that slaves were generally treated well.

"If you were to buy a brand new car for $75,000 would you go and beat it with a baseball bat?" one person wrote, implying, I suppose, that cars respond to beatings just like humans.

Many suggested I take my Yankee carcass back north.

Sorry, but I was born in Rocky Mount, N.C., and grew up in and around Richmond, Va.

I graduated from Lee-Davis High School, home of - you'll love this - the Confederates.

I stand by what I wrote. Free speech - mine and H.K.'s - lives.

John Boyle's column appears on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Contact him at 232-5847 or JBoyle@CITIZEN-TIMES.com