CSA Battle Flag
- Thread starter Double J
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From out West...
where the wounds of the Civil War do not burn as deep as they do in places where the war was fought. I acknowledge those wounds... though I do not understand them. Spending time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club made thier existence clear, but I could not, and cannot, feel them the way those back East do.
Here's my take.
Ignoring for the moment the rights and wrongs of seccession, I am forced to agree with James McPherson that, without slavery, there would have been no seccession. The State's Right for which the South left the Union was the right to own other human beings. That, I cannot support. You cannot do right in defense of such a wrong. The battles in support of that great evil were fought under this flag. For those who were the victims of that evil, I can easily understand how the flag could come to sybolize the evil itself. The fact that groups who beileve that slavery was not evil, and that white people are inherently superior to others, have appropriated that flag makes that association all the stronger. And rightfully so.
Against that, you have to consider the identity of symbols. For those whose ancestors fought bravely, and often died, under that banner, the flag has a different meaning, one which honors the sacrifice, while at the same time ignoring the evil. And it's an evil that many who fought under the Stars and Bars did not themselves participate in.
How do you separate the two? Can it be done? I doubt it. We humans are a symbolizing species. It's built into us, to associate real events and real emotions with abstract symbols. This symbol has two meanings, which are so fundamentaly different as to be irreconcilable. Both are correct, since the meaning resides in the person, and not in the symbol.
So, maybe the only thing we can do is to consider that the symbol may not mean to another what it means to you. At least when it comes to an individual's choices. If you choose to fly the Confederate battle flag, you should be prepared for others to take offence. And you shouldn't diminish their reaction. If you are, truly, not a racist, then you should be able to convince someone that you intend no racism by flying that flag. If you can't do that, then you've got a decision to make, whether the person with whom you're dealing is worth more to you than your symbols. Some people aren't going to agree with you. That doesn't make them wrong, because you're not definitively right.
When it comes to the actions of government, it's different. I don't see the problem with citizens deciding that thier State flag (or whatever) should not include this symbol. Given what it means to them, they're perfectly within their rights to object, on the basis that the inclusion of that symbol indicates that their government is in agreement with those ideas.
As a non-Christian, I would object to the inclusion of a cross on my State's flag. Because I don't think that the State should be Christian, even if a majority of it's citizens are. But if you want to put one on top of your house, I won't object. The individual citizen may express things that the government cannot.
--Shannon
where the wounds of the Civil War do not burn as deep as they do in places where the war was fought. I acknowledge those wounds... though I do not understand them. Spending time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club made thier existence clear, but I could not, and cannot, feel them the way those back East do.
Here's my take.
Ignoring for the moment the rights and wrongs of seccession, I am forced to agree with James McPherson that, without slavery, there would have been no seccession. The State's Right for which the South left the Union was the right to own other human beings. That, I cannot support. You cannot do right in defense of such a wrong. The battles in support of that great evil were fought under this flag. For those who were the victims of that evil, I can easily understand how the flag could come to sybolize the evil itself. The fact that groups who beileve that slavery was not evil, and that white people are inherently superior to others, have appropriated that flag makes that association all the stronger. And rightfully so.
Against that, you have to consider the identity of symbols. For those whose ancestors fought bravely, and often died, under that banner, the flag has a different meaning, one which honors the sacrifice, while at the same time ignoring the evil. And it's an evil that many who fought under the Stars and Bars did not themselves participate in.
How do you separate the two? Can it be done? I doubt it. We humans are a symbolizing species. It's built into us, to associate real events and real emotions with abstract symbols. This symbol has two meanings, which are so fundamentaly different as to be irreconcilable. Both are correct, since the meaning resides in the person, and not in the symbol.
So, maybe the only thing we can do is to consider that the symbol may not mean to another what it means to you. At least when it comes to an individual's choices. If you choose to fly the Confederate battle flag, you should be prepared for others to take offence. And you shouldn't diminish their reaction. If you are, truly, not a racist, then you should be able to convince someone that you intend no racism by flying that flag. If you can't do that, then you've got a decision to make, whether the person with whom you're dealing is worth more to you than your symbols. Some people aren't going to agree with you. That doesn't make them wrong, because you're not definitively right.
When it comes to the actions of government, it's different. I don't see the problem with citizens deciding that thier State flag (or whatever) should not include this symbol. Given what it means to them, they're perfectly within their rights to object, on the basis that the inclusion of that symbol indicates that their government is in agreement with those ideas.
As a non-Christian, I would object to the inclusion of a cross on my State's flag. Because I don't think that the State should be Christian, even if a majority of it's citizens are. But if you want to put one on top of your house, I won't object. The individual citizen may express things that the government cannot.
--Shannon
McPherson, while he has done a lot of valuable work, is wrong. Slavery was more the weapon than it was the issue. Also, the North and South were (and are) two different countries and cultures with two different worldviews which have been in existance since the original colonies were settled in the 1600s. They were also present during the Constitutional Convention with the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Economic forces were at work. The mindset of the Northeast was so that even if slavery wasn't around, it would have found something else (and still does even to this day in other issues, such as anti-Guns, Animal Rights, Gay Rights, Environmental regulations, etc. which all boil down to controling property and rights of other people) to crusade against to use as a weapon against the rest of America.
As to whether owning slaves in and of itself is evil is a very simplistic view of history. I am not for manstealing (the international slave trade) I am not for going back to slavery, I think slavery had many evils attached to it and we are far better off without it (or are we really without it? Now we are all slaves under a National Plantation to a large extent), but the issue itself was a complicated matter in it's day and was not soley the South's responsibility. The New England slave traders were the ones who brought the slaves from Africa (most of whom were sold to the Caribbean not the South). The condition of the slaves from Africa and how 8,000,000 ignorant slaves (who were far removed culturally and educationally from Western society) would be freed in America. How a fortune in property in slave labor would be compensated to owners, many of whom had inherited these slaves from several generations back. Then you had the attitude of the majority of Americans, north and south, towards black people. Many would not accept them into society. Northern states passed laws discouraging and even banning migration of blacks across their borders. The whole Slave State/Free State controversy was not over people who "loved slavery" and people who "loved freedom" but rather people who wanted to bring their slaves into common territory and people who didn't want black people "contaminating" the new Territories. Even Lincoln's motivation was to keep the West "A white man's" territory or land. It is far more complicated than silly 2nd Grade history lessons (from Public schools) make it out to be.
This whole notion that the North were "good people who hated slavery and loved freedom" and the South were "eeeeevil people who wanted to keep slavery and hate black people" and that's the story of the Civil War is asinine.
Fly it!
I'm New York born and Massachusetts bred, but I fly the First Pattern Confederate National flag; i.e., the "Stars and Bars," on the birthdays of Lee and Jackson (if the pole isn't frozen) and April 30th - the Original Memorial Day.
Note also that my high school teams are the "Rebels;" there was an ANV battle flag painted on the back wall of the playing field for DECADES and, while I was there, home football games began with the tallest senior boy leading the team onto the field dressed as Robert E. Lee.
And all this in Kennedy Country!
I'm New York born and Massachusetts bred, but I fly the First Pattern Confederate National flag; i.e., the "Stars and Bars," on the birthdays of Lee and Jackson (if the pole isn't frozen) and April 30th - the Original Memorial Day.
Note also that my high school teams are the "Rebels;" there was an ANV battle flag painted on the back wall of the playing field for DECADES and, while I was there, home football games began with the tallest senior boy leading the team onto the field dressed as Robert E. Lee.
And all this in Kennedy Country!
Doug.38...
Just for clarity, this is a moral judgment, not a historical one. To my mind, there is and can be no moral justification for one man owning another. Ever. Slavery, in any form, and wherever it's found, (and the United States has plenty of bad comany on this one), is wrong. Period.
Slavery is in a class with forcible rape and child molestation. Crimes for which no defense is possible. It is (for me) morally worse to enslave a man than to kill him.
This colors all of my perceptions of the Civil War, it's true. But I don't see that, without slavery, the South would have seceded. Were there cultural differences? Sure. But none of those differences were ever the impetus behind Southern secession. Every time they started shouting "Disunion!!", restrictions on slavery or it's expansion were the cause.
As to the compensation of Southern slaveholders for their "property"... They deserved none. No matter how they acquired "property" in slaves, that "property" was something that they never should have been allowed to own. To argue otherwise is automatically to argue for the inferiority of the slave to his master. It would be like compensating a pimp for the loss of revenue when one of "his" hookers was arrested.
Slavery is one of the two greatest stains on our national honor. No defense or justification is possible.
--Shannon
Just for clarity, this is a moral judgment, not a historical one. To my mind, there is and can be no moral justification for one man owning another. Ever. Slavery, in any form, and wherever it's found, (and the United States has plenty of bad comany on this one), is wrong. Period.
Slavery is in a class with forcible rape and child molestation. Crimes for which no defense is possible. It is (for me) morally worse to enslave a man than to kill him.
This colors all of my perceptions of the Civil War, it's true. But I don't see that, without slavery, the South would have seceded. Were there cultural differences? Sure. But none of those differences were ever the impetus behind Southern secession. Every time they started shouting "Disunion!!", restrictions on slavery or it's expansion were the cause.
As to the compensation of Southern slaveholders for their "property"... They deserved none. No matter how they acquired "property" in slaves, that "property" was something that they never should have been allowed to own. To argue otherwise is automatically to argue for the inferiority of the slave to his master. It would be like compensating a pimp for the loss of revenue when one of "his" hookers was arrested.
Slavery is one of the two greatest stains on our national honor. No defense or justification is possible.
--Shannon
I don't know if this is true but I was told in the early battles the Southerners sometimes used flags with a predominately white background. From the distance it appeared to be a white flag. The Southerners didn't want to be accused of firing under a flag of truce so they come up with the red flag of war with the cross bars. Then there would be no more misunderstandings.
The soldiers then fought for the guy next to him, just as we do today. Politics didn't mean too much. Their homes and family were at stake.
The soldiers then fought for the guy next to him, just as we do today. Politics didn't mean too much. Their homes and family were at stake.
You must take into consideration that northern states had slaves to, and had only found their sense of morality when technology came around to reduce the need for large quantities of labor. So in the eyes of many in the south the north was only stopping slavery because they no longer needed it.
It could perhaps be compared to us telling South America to stop cutting their rain forests down and to stop killing the natives. Problem is they know that we did the same thing to get where we are now. So should we move the army in to stop them? And is it morally wrong to pay them to stop?
Well, you are of course entitle to your opinion, but that is a perfect illustration of what I have said in this and on the side in the militia thread. It is a simple minded view. (I don't mean that as in, "you're stupid") You are judging something and someone based on modern living conditions and applying them to conditions 200 years ago. You don't learn anything by looking down your nose at people in history. All you're doing in that is just trying to make yourself look good at someone else's expense.
Hugh Damright
New member
I tend to believe that there would have been civil war even if the South hadn't had slavery. Let's not forget that slavery had already ended when military rule and reconstruction was forced upon the South. Ending slavery was not enough.
By my lights, slavery was as wrong then as it is now. This falls into the category of moral absolutes. The idea that one man can own another is simply repugnant. That we have, as a society, grown beyond it, is to our credit. That our ancestors could not see this truth is to their shame.
Man has not essentially changed in 162 years. That my ancestors then either owned slaves or tolerated slavery (I'm not sure which, but some of them were here then, so it's likely one or the other, or both) is something which I can pity them for, and I can even acknowledge that the injustice was probably larger than they could fight effectively. (Assuming they were not slave owners.) But to say that it was not wrong, that no crime was committed?
That I cannot do.
I'm not trying to raise myself up by pushing someone else down the moral ladder. Those who owned slaves or tolerated slavery were acting within the standards of their time. Granted. But those standards were, objectively, as morally wrong then as they would be now. I'm not enough of a relativist to think otherwise.
Some things are simply wrong Slavery is one of those things. For all that they gave us, the Romans' legacy is as stained by this wrong as the American South's is. The ownership of human beings was wrong 2000 years ago, it was wrong in 1789, it was wrong in 1861, it is wrong today (it still exists), and it will be wrong for as long as the human race endures.
It cannot be defended, justified, or excused. Now or ever.
--Shannon
The North and the South had fundamental economic differences that led to the Civil War. In the latter part of the 19th century, fundamental economic differences led to tension and violence between cattlemen and farmers in the West.
As to the North fighting against slavery, I can only point out that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in areas not under Union control. Slavery was specifically allowed to continue in both Union border states and former Southern territory controlled by the Union when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Secretary of State William H. Seward summed it up succinctly when he said "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
As to the North fighting against slavery, I can only point out that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in areas not under Union control. Slavery was specifically allowed to continue in both Union border states and former Southern territory controlled by the Union when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Secretary of State William H. Seward summed it up succinctly when he said "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
Well tubee, I belive in moral absolutes too. But you are claiming moral absolutes in abstract terms in a situation that in reality made up a wide range of events, conditions and people. You say "slavery is wrong period." Well, what part, what do you mean by that. What is slavery to you? What was it to people 200 years ago? What was it to peole 2000 years ago in ancient Rome? What you consider it now, what they considered it 200 years ago and 2000 years ago were three entirely different things. The conditions surrounding it between those three time periods was different too. Even the conditions under which slavery existed for the nearly 500 year period in the West from the time of the opening of the Atlantic slave trade until Brazil did away with slavery in the 1880s (1887 I think it was) were different from era to era and country to country. You are also dealing with a lot of different individual people.
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Doug...
The classification of any human being as property, which can be bought, sold, and inherited like other forms of property, is what I was referring to.
Property rights are somewhat sacred around here, and many of the arguments for secession centered around the defense of property rights. I don't classify property as high on the scale of human rights as some others do, but I doubt that's germane to this discussion. I don't think that there's anyone here who would support the idea that the concept of property can be extended to human beings. If there are people who hold that opinion, then I'm forced to not only disagree with them, but to condemn them.
People are not property, and cannot be owned. Any definition of property which includes human beings is indefensibly wrong. I don't know how to state it any more clearly than that.
Either we have a communication problem (which might well be my fault, although I've tried), or we fundamentally disagree on this principle. In which case I doubt further discussion will be profitable.
--Shannon
The classification of any human being as property, which can be bought, sold, and inherited like other forms of property, is what I was referring to.
Property rights are somewhat sacred around here, and many of the arguments for secession centered around the defense of property rights. I don't classify property as high on the scale of human rights as some others do, but I doubt that's germane to this discussion. I don't think that there's anyone here who would support the idea that the concept of property can be extended to human beings. If there are people who hold that opinion, then I'm forced to not only disagree with them, but to condemn them.
People are not property, and cannot be owned. Any definition of property which includes human beings is indefensibly wrong. I don't know how to state it any more clearly than that.
Either we have a communication problem (which might well be my fault, although I've tried), or we fundamentally disagree on this principle. In which case I doubt further discussion will be profitable.
--Shannon
tube_ee,
When in Rome do as the Romans.
I know that is not a great way to put it but it was a different time with a different mind set. I agree with you on owning people but lets not condemn those that did then till we have walked a mile in their shoes, which of course we can never do, so how can we fairly judge them? or mankind for thousands of years before them?
It never ceases to amaze me how hard we are on our forefathers when every civilization since time began had slaves. Our very recent forefathers were the only people almost since recorded history began that put a stop to slavery, why are they so vilified?
We seem to never hear how terrible the Egyptians, or the Aztecs, or the Romans, or any great civilization was and most if not all had slaves.
When in Rome do as the Romans.
I know that is not a great way to put it but it was a different time with a different mind set. I agree with you on owning people but lets not condemn those that did then till we have walked a mile in their shoes, which of course we can never do, so how can we fairly judge them? or mankind for thousands of years before them?
It never ceases to amaze me how hard we are on our forefathers when every civilization since time began had slaves. Our very recent forefathers were the only people almost since recorded history began that put a stop to slavery, why are they so vilified?
We seem to never hear how terrible the Egyptians, or the Aztecs, or the Romans, or any great civilization was and most if not all had slaves.
applesanity
New member
Let's try this again. Read post #15.
Top reasons why The Civil War was not about slavery.
1. Missouri and Maryland were slave states that were having a good ol' slaving time as union states. They didn't secede. They kept their slaves.
2. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, 2 years after the fact.
3. The Emancipation Proclamation allowed slavery to continue in Missouri and Maryland.
4. Lincoln quote "a house divided against itself cannot stand." (maybe a misquote) Within context, Lincoln cared more about preserving the Union.
5. Lincoln wasn't too fond of Black people. He has written that he didn't care one way or the other about slavery. Post war, he tried to send black people back to Africa (Now known as the country, Libera).
6. Robert E. Lee was morally against slaves. So was Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. But these men had loyalties to their states. It was a different time back then. Nowadays, we have interstate highways, 65mph speed limits, and internet. Back then, loyalty to your state really meant something, because that was probably all that you knew.
7. If the Northerners really, really wanted to help out black people, they wouldn't have totally, absolutely screwed them over, post-war. Reconstruction destroyed the South. You thought slavery was bad? Try sharecropping. 40 acres and mule? Say what?
8. The vast, overwhelming majority of southerners didn't own slaves. Slaves did cost a lot a money that most couldn't afford.
9. Of the minority that did own slaves, a vast overwhelming majority only owned one or a few slaves. Which means the vast, overwhelming majority of slaves were owned by a very, very, very small number of very, very rich plantation owners. To be honest, why would you fight a war to defend the livelihoods of like, 1% of your population? Please.
10. Alan Brinkley, historian, Provost at my Alma Mater, Columbia University. He gets a kick out of using his modern day standards and morality, to re-interpret history by his narrow viewpoint. He either writes, or is the inspiration for many high school history textbooks. As in big-time indoctrination.
11. Northerners. Why write history books that say, "the civil war was about money and power", when you can say, "the civil war was about freeing enslaved people from those crazy racist redneck southerners."
12. White people. Talking about how you freed the slaves is much more comforting than talking about how your kind used to own slaves.
13. Black people. How did white slave traders get their slaves? by buying them from African slave traders. To this day, slavery is still practiced in certain parts of africa.
So, if you want to talk about slavery, talk about slavery within the context of 1860, not 2007.
Let's try this again.The civil War was all about money and power. The North had the industry, the banking, and by the look of things, federal power.
The south had.... farms. If you wanted to sell your cotton, some Carpetbagging middleman has already skimmed some of your profits.
Here's the test to see if you were educated properly about the Civil war..... SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA.
How do YOU feel about Sherman?
applesanity
New member
Wow, we agreed on something. And to throw a twist on things, I have no real familial connection to the Civil war. I'm a first generation American born from Asian immigrants.
For me, the Confederate battle flag doesn't evoke feelings times gone by, tradition, and such, simply because I just don't have the roots. But I still believe in its original principles, standing up for yourself in the face of aggression, that spark of rebellion that we all have, and a willingness to fight for all that you hold dear. Oh, and getting the facts straight on your history lessons.
Lincoln made a speech as the War between the States began. He said he had no intentions of freeing the slaves. As the war dragged on he realized the potential effects that 11 million slaves could have if they turned against the North.
Then he made the Emancipation Proclamation and freed the slaves in the South. The North kept their own slaves.
At the time Slavery still wasn't the main issue. But blockading the South and taking away the manpower was high priority.
Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia but skirmishes continued for many years.- Status