The Confederate Battle Flag, fated never to prevail, must and will yet endure, come censors, compromisers, hell or high water. The Supreme Court has ruled that display of a flag, or burning of a flag, is a form of political speech which is protected by the First Amendment; thus laws against flag burning are an unconstitutional form of censorship and so would be a law banning display of this or any other political symbol.
This bloody but unbowed symbol means many things to different people. To patriotic Southerners proud of their heritage, it signifies admiration for the gallant struggle of Southern fighting men to achieve independence, which they consider the birthright of all people everywhere. It is a reminder of the debt of gratitude owed to those who died to defend their homes and families against overwhelming odds, and sorrow at the failure of the Lost Cause. This mixture of melancholy and pride is reflected in the unattributed stanzas:
The peoples’ flag is deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead
And ere their limbs were stiff and cold
Their hearts’ blood dyed its every fold.
Then raise the Rebel standard high
Beneath its shade we’ll live or die.
To many practical-minded people with little interest in historical events prior to the last election, the Battle Flag is a reminder of a great national trauma that should best be forgotten in the interest of addressing current problems. Too many mealy-mouthed Southern politicians are among their number. Deadly combat with shot and shell can never be forgotten, but mutual tolerance can help to heal the tragic scars of memory.
To NAACP leaders, it is the embodiment of the secessionist ideal: it is divisive, non-inclusive and reprehensible. To Senator Carol Moseley-Braun it signifies the most painful episode in American history and causes her to suffer the indignity of being reminded of slavery. Former Senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) said renewal of the United Daughters of the Confederacy patent would be throwing a bone to the old South. (During World War II when the Confederate Battle Flag flew over a thousand foxholes from Guadalcanal to Anzio and back to Tarawa, Senator Bradley wasn’t there.) Reverend William Avon King of the SCLC said it reminds him of separation and reminds whites of the good old days when blacks were slaves. Yet the facts are that the Rebel flag was raised in defiance of a constitution that sanctioned slavery, a President who said in his inaugural address he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed, and a Supreme Court that had ruled that neither Congress or a state legislature could forbid slavery anywhere in the United States.
To the Ku Klux Klan and to Nazi skinheads the flag expresses hatred, bigotry and racism, but so does the cross, a symbol common to the Ku Klux Klan and the Christian Church. The Battle Flag did not become a favorite symbol of the Klan until recent times. In the 1920s when the Klan paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., it was the United States flag and not the Confederate Battle Flag that led the way. Not even Senator Bradley has advocated trashing Old Glory, and the Pope is not about to give up the cross.
The State of Rhode Island was once primarily agricultural. The plantations were large, many containing thousands of acres. Roads and carriages scarcely existed and the planters’ families rode horses back and forth through each others’ fences in an incessant round of festivity, fox hunting, dances and other entertainment. Grass in the meadows was thick and high as the walls and fences, and large herds of sheep were kept. Grain was shipped to the West Indies, and most of the work was done by Narragansett Indians and African slaves. By the nineteenth century, in this American Eden with its lush grass, powdered wigs and abundance of sheep and cheese and slaves, the lush meadows had been turned to industrial use and textile mills utilized the water power of the small but swift-running streams. Do you think that Bradley or Moseley-Braun have any doubt whether it was morality or geography that placed Rhode Island on the opposite side from South Carolina in the debates then raging over the slavery question?
To many the Confederate Battle Flag represents disloyalty, treason, secession and rebellion. Of what other North American flag could the same be said? The United States flag also had its origin in an act of rebellion not only against political authority but against Heaven itself. George III, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain and Ireland, claimed to exercise the divine right of kings and to be responsible only to God. The Confederate Battle Flag is known throughout the world as a symbol of the free spirit and of rebellion against abusive authority and discontent with the existing order, whatever it may be.
But insistence on respect for Confederate symbols does not mean disrespect for the United States flag, under which Southern fighting men have served for more than two centuries. John Greenleaf Whittier celebrated the respect in which Southerners hold a worthy opponent and his symbols by the lines:
Up the street came the Rebel tread
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Shoot if you must this old gray head
But spare your country’s flag, she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame
Over the face of the leader came.
Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog. Ride on, he said.
The present status of use of the Battle Flag in Southern states is as follows:
- In Alabama the flag was placed atop the capitol building beneath the national and state flags by Governor Wallace in 1961. This action was periodically attacked by black legislators, and one of them was arrested for attempting to remove it physically. The flag was removed by Governor Jim Folsom in April 1993, following a ruling by a state judge that by state law only the state and national flags could be displayed on the capitol building.
- In Georgia the Cross of St. Andrew with the State Seal was incorporated in the state flag during the furor over school desegregation. Although Southern Initiative does not believe segregated schools are a practicable option under modern conditions, we understand the consternation and resentment felt by the people and their legislature at the time over such a sudden, drastic change in their long-settled customs. We feel that Confederate symbols have a broader meaning than the desegregation controversy, having existed in the state flag in some form prior to eruption of the controversy. To Southern Initiative the Battle Flag represents loyalty and self-sacrifice in defense of our land and people, and we oppose any change in the state flag of Georgia.
- In Mississippi the Battle Flag was incorporated in the state flag when it was created in 1894. Periodic efforts are made in the state legislature to change it, which we oppose.
- The Confederate Battle Flag has flown above the state house in South Carolina since it was placed there in 1962 as a part of the Civil War Centennial. State law prescribes flying of the state and national flags and does not mention the Confederate Battle Flag, but local sentiment as reflected by 1994 polls is overwhelmingly in favor of retaining it.
As the second item in our 10-Point Southern Initiative, we advocate incorporation of the Confederate Battle Flag in the state flags of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia (as is the case with the flags of Georgia and Mississippi). We maintain it would be unworthy of us to disown our noble heritage and repudiate those who suffered and died in the past on our behalf in the face of ill-informed and often malicious opposition. Particularly reprehensible is the attitude of many business and political leaders of spitting on the graves of our ancestors to attract corporate business.
We agree that Confederate symbols can be painful reminders of a tragic past to some sensitive African Americans, but the Confederacy and the Civil War are a part of their past as well as that of other Southerners and cannot be erased by banning flags or tearing pages out of history books. The picture of Abraham Lincoln on a five-dollar bill evokes painful memories in many Southern whites. He is as great a scourge to many as Attila the Hun. As he stated in his first inaugural address he did not intend to interfere with slavery where it existed. He chose to fight a war rather than let the South go to maintain Northern hegemony over the entire country, control expansion to the west, hold onto lucrative Southern markets behind tariff walls and control the outlet for commerce at the mouth of the Mississippi River. His decision cost the cream of Southern manhood for a generation, destroyed the major Southern cities and economy, and condemned generations of black and white Southerners to poverty, ignorance, disease, malnutrition, bigotry and hate. That he did not intend these consequences was no help to the sufferers.
An unintended consequence of Mr. Lincoln’s war was the end of slavery, but as he himself maintained, it was doomed already. Without replenishment with chemical fertilizers, cotton culture exhausts the soil in a generation or two. By 1861, cotton farming had shifted from Virginia to new lands to the south and west, where it exists today only through the use of modern technology. Daniel Webster had noted that although Congress refused to enact the Wilmot Proviso, almighty God had done so, as the new lands to the west of Texas were mostly rocky desert, inhospitable to the plantation economy. Slavery has come and gone in all societies, but only in the United States has the change come as the result of a war. Incidentally slavery is making a comeback in the Moslem states of Africa, a circumstance that evokes little outrage on the American political scene.
Confederate symbols are divisive, but what isn’t? Nothing we ever do will satisfy career complainers like the NAACP leaders and Jesse Jackson, or sycophantic whites, who would sacrifice their dignity and self-respect for the sake of good manners and liberal votes.
Confederate symbols offend some as do taxpayer-funded abortions, or sleeping in military barracks next to avowed homosexuals. It is the nature of democracy that a minority are offended, if that is necessary, in order to obey the will of the majority. Columnist Mary McGrory said, in commenting on Moseley-Braun’s feat in turning the Senate around on the UDC patent matter, that the Senate has the responsibility of respecting the minority. Yes, respect but not control. This stands democracy on its head. We advocate states’ rights and local self-government, so the people of each state can adopt whatever symbols they like, and those who disagree can move to some state whose symbols appeal to them.
And to those who say recognizing Confederate symbols is throwing a bone to the old South, we remind you that when Prometheus was chained to the rock it was the vultures, not the eagles, which came to tear at his entrails.
Symbolism or Substance
The controversy over what the Confederate Battle Flag symbolizes obscures some ugly matters of substance, such as poverty, crime, substance abuse, educational failure, all kinds of problems and difficulties. People with a real grievance against American life have seized upon the flag as a scapegoat on which to vent their rage and disappointment. But censoring the flag can never relieve their distress. Real problems remain to be solved, whether the flag waves or is furled. And censoring the flag would be one more blow against the truth.
The basic facts of the situation are simple:
- most Confederates did not own slaves;
- slave owners served in the Confederate armies, but also in the Union armies of 1861–65 and in the Revolutionary War armies of 1775–83 as well as the U.S. armies of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War;
- Lincoln announced in his inaugural address in 1861 he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed and that war, if it came, would be against secession and not against slavery;
- Lincoln never freed a slave in his life. The Emancipation Proclamation, which he described as a war measure, applied only to those in areas controlled by Confederate forces;
- if an attempt to secure independence is a crime the first five presidents of the United States were criminals;
- the primary symbol of the KKK is not the Confederate Battle Flag but the cross, which is universally revered by all Christian denominations. In the 1920s the Klan marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington under the United States flag not the Confederate Battle Flag;
- the Confederate Battle Flag is not an official flag of the Confederacy, since it was never authorized by the Confederate government; and
- those in the present generation who honor the Confederate Battle Flag also abhor slavery and every form of oppression, but admire the dauntless courage shown by their ancestors in asserting independence against great odds, and their gallant defense of their homes and families.
Out of these simple facts professional agitators bent on keeping alive their heretofore profitable status as victims, have created a near universal impression that our respect for our fathers and reverence for heroes who struggled for independence on our behalf in past generations is somehow responsible for their perceived mistreatment. The dilemma of race in America is indeed tragic. It may be that the society as a whole needs to do more to alleviate harm. But to blame those who revere the flag is preposterous. Such a contention is not worth serious consideration, and those who have created a furor over the display of the flag have shown themselves to be either stupid or malicious. Self-respect demands that their slanderous claims be rejected out of hand.
Confederate Battle Flag
Southern Initiative proposes that the Confederate Battle Flag be incorporated in the state flags of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia (as is the case with the flags of Georgia and Mississippi) in order to foster unity and cohesion among the people to the end that forcefulness and credibility be restored to the voice of the South in the national political dialogue. In today’s climate we cannot rely on the schools to inculcate in the young a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves. It seems to us that the flag at the school house door teaches a powerful lesson that the Confederacy they read about in their books, usually in very disparaging terms, existed here in this place and that they, the students, are a part of the chain of life that extends back to those who loved and sacrificed for it.
On a more practical level, we would say that we are on a mission to restore democracy and local self-government as envisioned by the founders of the republic; that such a project must involve a profound restructuring of present social and political life and consequently involves great difficulties; that the flag question is auxiliary to enthusiasm and fervor in that struggle in the same way that bands and cheerleaders inspire supreme effort and excellence on the football field. We are using the Confederate Battle Flag as a means to an end, which is exactly what our Confederate ancestors did.
Correspondence and Southern Initiative Responses
Barbara Blackmon
Mississippi State Senator
I appreciate your e-mail regarding the state flag. Personally, there are so many more important issues than waving the State flag in front of a school. Join me in helping our children have a safe, nurturing, creative, technological environment in our schools. Let us prepare them for the next century.
Southern Initiative reply:
Thank you for letting us know your response to our proposal to enforce the law regarding display of flags in close proximity to school buildings.
We share your desire for a safe, nurturing, creative, technological environment for our children. We believe that these conditions can best be created by the achievement of credibility by officials who are telling the children not to bring guns or drugs to school by themselves obeying rather than violating the laws, by allowing parents to choose the kind of school they wish rather than forcing them into a government monopoly, and by allowing parents to keep more of their earnings so as to be able to better supply the needs of their children.
Earle Banks
Mississippi State Representative
I don't support the confederate emblem in the MS state flag and have filed a bill to remove it!
Date: Saturday, November 21, 1998
Subject: The Confederate Battle Flag (C.B.F.)
I agree with you in that the C.B.F is misunderstood and wrongly vilified.
The only thing I disagree with is the idea that the design should be incorporated into state flags that do not already contain it. Only the voters of the various states involved should be able to mandate such changes. If Floridians want a state flag incorporating oranges, Anita Bryant and Mickey Mouse, that should be left up to Floridians. If Georgians chose to adopt the Atlanta Braves banner as their state symbol, by God, LET 'EM! And if you want war with Texas, try to tell them that the Lone Star Flag has to go!
The Tenth Amendment leaves such decisions to the states and to the people, not the Federal Government, the Supreme Court, not even to Southern Initiative.
Southern Initiative reply:
We do not make any decision. We recognize the adoption of a state flag is a matter for determination by the voters in each state. We do advocate to our members and others residing in the thirteen states represented by the stars in the flag that it would be a fitting response to the attacks on our heritage for their legislatures to recognize Confederate symbols in addition to the symbols already included in their state flags. The Tenth Amendment does not prohibit suggestions across state lines.
Subject: Battle flag
Date: Friday, January 8, 1999
"Rich mans' war, poor mans' fight". The Civil War was about the enemy within attempting to rip apart a country for their own means, "money". So what if it came from the evil institution of slavery, so what if it tore apart a country, so what if it cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. The Battle Flag of the "lost cause" Confederacy should not fly over any state or federal buildings, it stands for a country and a horrible bloody time that no longer exists, and if those who do fly it do so as a veiled threat of a future Civil War if things don't go their way, they are living in a fantasy world, if their is one thing the Civil War gave us, it is that the United States of America is one, and no attempt to take her apart will ever again be tolerated or be allowed to progress as far as it did in those sad old times.
Southern Initiative reply:
We don't fly the Battle Flag as a veiled threat but as a sign of reverence for those who dared to defend the idea of states' rights and local self-government. Ideas are a threat to the establishment, whatever its form. One idea in the Declaration of Independence is that all just powers of government are based upon consent of the governed. Ideas never die.
Scott Wiesman
A Yankee in Ohio and a descendant of Union veterans
First let me assure you I am not now nor ever have been a member of the NAACP. I am also not colored but white. I agree however with the drive to take the Confederate flag off of govt. buildings and think if a private company wants to remove them it's great. Your flag may stand for southern pride and those who gave their life for your cause, but, being from Ohio I say it also stands for something else. To me it stands for the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who gave their lives against it and what it stood for. It stood for secession and slavery. It cost all of those lives so that the union could be preserved. It cost all of those lives to end slavery and preserve the union.
Slavery and secession: not two things I would think of to be proud of. If the South hadn't felt the need to break up the country so they could own other people, none of your "proud southern boys" would've had to die in defense of it. I'm sorry but I can't understand for the life of me what there is to be proud of on the South's part and why they would even want the flag around to remind them of what they caused and why.
Southern Initiative reply:
What you can't understand for the life of you would be simple if you would read Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, "I have no intention of interfering with slavery where it exists," or your fellow Ohioan William Tecumseh Sherman's letter, "If the South had been true to the constitution I would have fought for slave property as much as any other type of property." Why would Southerners have felt it necessary to break up the country in order to own other people? Since Ohio was never invaded by Confederates,* the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who gave their lives against the Confederate flag could have stayed safely at home. Confederate soldiers had no such choice, since a tragic and destructive war erupted on their doorsteps, their homes were destroyed and their wives and children killed, starved or raped, whether they supported slavery and secession or not.
Finally, since secession is one of the things you would not be proud of you logically disapprove of the forcible separation of the United States from the British Empire and condemn the traitors Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, the Adamses, Patrick Henry and the rabble that fired the shot heard round the world at Concord Bridge.
* Since this response was published, Kenneth Mong pointed out that this is wrong and that General John Hunt Morgan invaded Ohio with 2,500 cavalry. We acknowledge this is literally true but we would distinguish between Morgan's sporadic raids and an invasion on the basis of intent as well as scale. There were also raids across the Canadian border and what is generally thought of as the climactic struggle of the war occurred at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. While it was the hope of the Confederates to resist long enough to so encourage war weariness in the North as to be allowed to be left alone, it was the intention of the Lincoln administration to invade and occupy the major centers of resistance in the South. While Mr. Scott Weisman has a point, and some Ohioans may have died in resisting Morgan's Raiders their numbers would be insignificant compared with the "hundreds of thousands" who gave their lives invading someone else's home.
Kenneth Mong
Date: Monday, July 13, 1998
You are so very wrong that Ohio was never invaded by Confederate forces during the Civil War. Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan invaded Ohio in June 1863 2,500 cavalrymen. I support your cause but please get the facts right!!