The Confederate Flag
Posted: October 28th, 2015, 3:29 pm
Anyone have a problem with it?
My ancestors on my father's side fought for the Confederacy through the entirety of the war, made it through the whole thing alive. They fought with a Missouri regiment of "dismounted cavalry" which I think pretty much meant they were once cavalry but had their horses shot out from under them. I hear my great-great grandfather often went through the war barefoot, as well. He was young when he joined in 1861, a teenager. He died in the 1920's.
So, I honor the flag.
And not just because of my ancestors, but because of the good things it represented, like the emphasis on states' rights and the ability to secede if need be. I don't believe the South necessarily should have seceded, but they did, and in those times, the cultural and economic differences were much more stark. People also believed in fighting for honor back then, too. Robert E. Lee wasn't particularly pro-slavery or pro-secession, but when asked by Lincoln to lead the Union army before the war, he turned it down because he said he could not fight against Virginia.
Jefferson Davis wrote a large, 2 volume series called The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government - and in it, he also disputes slavery being the chief cause of secession and subsequently the war. I haven't read it all, but the parts I have read make a pretty interesting case having largely to do with tariffs placed on the South by the U.S. government, and southern states being wedged out of power in the U.S. congress, and essentially this was a North vs. South economic interest where the Northern states were benefiting apparently at the expense of the Southern states, so when Lincoln was elected, it was the final straw. I'm not denying that slavery had anything to do with it, obviously it's part of the declared reasons for secession in the various state's official declarations of secession - but I am saying that I think the history books are written by the winners (and these days, by those who want to marginalize the conservative South through political correctness) and I think there is a large emphasis on slavery and a deliberate de-emphasis, if not total ignoring, of all the other reasons which were valid and all part of what lead to the decisions for individual states to secede and form a Confederacy.
I realize the flag has been the symbol of racism and segregation through the Jim Crow era, and I find that very unfortunate. I feel like real, bigoted racists took the flag and applied it to a cause not even Nathan Bedford Forrest would have endorsed, who ironically founded the original KKK, but disbanded it due to it getting out of control and straying from its intended purpose, which was to fight the Northern occupation and the carpetbaggers. The KKK we know today was founded much later, for a very different set of reasons that were all about anti-immigration, anti-Catholic/Jew/Mormon, pro-Protestant, White-Anglo-Saxon-Celtic culture. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying the original KKK was "good," I'm just saying the founder had a different set of motivations and objectives in some significant ways. But that's a taboo subject that people don't want to hear about, they'd rather just totally demonize anyone and everyone ever involved with the organization at any point in history - but in the South, Nathan Bedford Forrest is considered a hero, despite some of his faults.
So I understand why a lot of people are offended by the flag. But I also believe that most of those people don't know their history very well at all, and if they do, they don't appreciate it.
I might be wrong, but I heard that Confederate veterans are considered, by law, to be U.S. war veterans and deserve the same honor as any solider that fought and died in any U.S. war at any time. So honoring them by flying their flag would then be backed up by U.S. law.
Furthermore, in this age of political correctness, where everyone is offended by every little thing - everyone considers how people might be offended by the flag flying. People play victim and say how offensive it is to them - but in the same breath, they don't consider how offensive it is to the descendants of those veterans to dishonor it, take it down, and treat it as a thing of pure evil. Because I can promise you, the Confederate flag is no more evil or racist than the Star Spangled Banner we all fly and salute and pledge allegiance to has ever been.
I feel like the Confederate flag and those that hate it need to come to terms of understanding and respect, if not acceptance and embracing. I feel like black people, in particular, have a stake in the South, because it's where most of them have their ancestry before the diaspora that happened after the Civil War. They built the South, they built much of this nation, and they should be honored or it, and although the South initially seceded to preserve slavery, there was still (among many, but not all) a paternal aspect of white/black relations that was much less harsh than how blacks were treated by many in the north. If you read text books these days, you'd think that everyone in the south was an abolitionist and everyone in the south was a cold-hearted slave-whipper, and that's just not the truth.
Anyway, your thoughts?
My ancestors on my father's side fought for the Confederacy through the entirety of the war, made it through the whole thing alive. They fought with a Missouri regiment of "dismounted cavalry" which I think pretty much meant they were once cavalry but had their horses shot out from under them. I hear my great-great grandfather often went through the war barefoot, as well. He was young when he joined in 1861, a teenager. He died in the 1920's.
So, I honor the flag.
And not just because of my ancestors, but because of the good things it represented, like the emphasis on states' rights and the ability to secede if need be. I don't believe the South necessarily should have seceded, but they did, and in those times, the cultural and economic differences were much more stark. People also believed in fighting for honor back then, too. Robert E. Lee wasn't particularly pro-slavery or pro-secession, but when asked by Lincoln to lead the Union army before the war, he turned it down because he said he could not fight against Virginia.
Jefferson Davis wrote a large, 2 volume series called The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government - and in it, he also disputes slavery being the chief cause of secession and subsequently the war. I haven't read it all, but the parts I have read make a pretty interesting case having largely to do with tariffs placed on the South by the U.S. government, and southern states being wedged out of power in the U.S. congress, and essentially this was a North vs. South economic interest where the Northern states were benefiting apparently at the expense of the Southern states, so when Lincoln was elected, it was the final straw. I'm not denying that slavery had anything to do with it, obviously it's part of the declared reasons for secession in the various state's official declarations of secession - but I am saying that I think the history books are written by the winners (and these days, by those who want to marginalize the conservative South through political correctness) and I think there is a large emphasis on slavery and a deliberate de-emphasis, if not total ignoring, of all the other reasons which were valid and all part of what lead to the decisions for individual states to secede and form a Confederacy.
I realize the flag has been the symbol of racism and segregation through the Jim Crow era, and I find that very unfortunate. I feel like real, bigoted racists took the flag and applied it to a cause not even Nathan Bedford Forrest would have endorsed, who ironically founded the original KKK, but disbanded it due to it getting out of control and straying from its intended purpose, which was to fight the Northern occupation and the carpetbaggers. The KKK we know today was founded much later, for a very different set of reasons that were all about anti-immigration, anti-Catholic/Jew/Mormon, pro-Protestant, White-Anglo-Saxon-Celtic culture. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying the original KKK was "good," I'm just saying the founder had a different set of motivations and objectives in some significant ways. But that's a taboo subject that people don't want to hear about, they'd rather just totally demonize anyone and everyone ever involved with the organization at any point in history - but in the South, Nathan Bedford Forrest is considered a hero, despite some of his faults.
So I understand why a lot of people are offended by the flag. But I also believe that most of those people don't know their history very well at all, and if they do, they don't appreciate it.
I might be wrong, but I heard that Confederate veterans are considered, by law, to be U.S. war veterans and deserve the same honor as any solider that fought and died in any U.S. war at any time. So honoring them by flying their flag would then be backed up by U.S. law.
Furthermore, in this age of political correctness, where everyone is offended by every little thing - everyone considers how people might be offended by the flag flying. People play victim and say how offensive it is to them - but in the same breath, they don't consider how offensive it is to the descendants of those veterans to dishonor it, take it down, and treat it as a thing of pure evil. Because I can promise you, the Confederate flag is no more evil or racist than the Star Spangled Banner we all fly and salute and pledge allegiance to has ever been.
I feel like the Confederate flag and those that hate it need to come to terms of understanding and respect, if not acceptance and embracing. I feel like black people, in particular, have a stake in the South, because it's where most of them have their ancestry before the diaspora that happened after the Civil War. They built the South, they built much of this nation, and they should be honored or it, and although the South initially seceded to preserve slavery, there was still (among many, but not all) a paternal aspect of white/black relations that was much less harsh than how blacks were treated by many in the north. If you read text books these days, you'd think that everyone in the south was an abolitionist and everyone in the south was a cold-hearted slave-whipper, and that's just not the truth.
Anyway, your thoughts?
