After attacks, many Southerners fly different flag

The Charleston Post & Courier ^ | October 29, 2001 | ELLEN B. MEACHAM

[aomagrat]

Until recently, if you saw a red, white and blue flag sticker on a Southern pickup truck, odds were good that it was a Confederate flag.

That was before Sept. 11.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the once-prominent symbol beloved by both unreconstructed Southern partisans and Civil War buffs has been swamped in a wave of national unity.

American flags are popping up on cars, outside homes and businesses - and even on horse-drawn carriages in the city where the Civil War started.

In Charleston, unlike New York or California, the Stars and Stripes can often be seen displayed beside the controversial Confederate battle flag.

One local bumper sticker even has a message for Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network, "Terrorists: Your soul is the devil's and your butt's America's."

The sticker features a Confederate flag.

Another depicts both the U.S. and the Confederate battle flag and says "red-blooded American."

Area flag merchants say sales of Confederate flags have remained steady even as sales of U.S flags have increased.

"My American flag sales have increased 100-fold," Gary Shelton, president of 1abcstore.com in St. Simons, Ga., said. His Confederate flag sales are about the same.While it might strike some as inconsistent to fly the flag created by people who wanted to dissolve the United States next to the American flag during a time of national crisis, many in the region do not see it that way, says political science Professor Bill Moore of the College of Charleston.

"In general, I don't feel Southerners see it as inconsistent. You do have a few ultra-nationalists who would still like to secede from the Union. However, most of those who maintain a strong identity with the Confederate flag incorporate it into a historical context," he said.

In the Southerner's view, loyalty to the historical South is not necessarily incompatible with contemporary values as Americans, Moore said.

"Collectively, Southerners do tend to be stronger supporters of the military than their non-Southern counterparts and value a military career more," he said.

Also, because of limited immigration into the region and less exposure to different cultures, Southerners can be more parochial and suspicious of foreign populations than other Americans, and are thus more likely to support action on behalf of American interests abroad, he said.

Sen. Glenn McConnell is one of the brokers of the compromise that brought the Confederate flag down from the Statehouse dome to a monument on the Capitol grounds in 2000, and owns a Confederate memorabilia shop in North Charleston.

McConnell's sales of Confederate flags have continued and are unaffected by the terrorist attacks. He says he flies both an American flag and a Confederate flag and sees no inconsistency in his actions.

"We see it as a patriotic emblem of our ancestors, but the nation's moved on since then. We think our ancestors stood up for a Constitutional principle that was still considered an option back then - the issue of whether states can secede from the Union - and the issue was resolved on the battlefield. We had an unpleasant disagreement amongst ourselves, and it was settled. So now, if you punch at the United States, you've struck at all of us," he said.

Some Confederate flag supporters do embrace the flag as a separatist symbol. Before the attacks, neo-Confederate messages, like Southern independence, were said to be gaining traction, especially in the angry wake of several regional controversies. Debates about the removal of the flag from the South Carolina Statehouse, the changing of the Georgia state flag and a contentious vote on the Mississippi state flag riled Southern partisans and fans of Southern history alike.

In 1997, Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, wrote in one of his publications that "the American flag has, in fits and starts, come to stand for a corrupt central regime that increasingly visits upon its citizen-subjects expropriations that would have driven our ancestors to active resistance."

Hill said he considers himself an American, and he claims that Southerners are more American than people from other regions. He said the Confederate flag is the flag that truly represents states' rights and a Constitutional government.

On the other hand, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that also has been on the forefront in the battles over the public display of the Confederate flag, took a much different position.

After the attacks, the SCV's national commander-in-chief, Ed Deason, immediately issued a statement on behalf of its 30,000 members expressing sympathy and support of President Bush, Congress and the government and affirmed its intentions to "join all patriotic Americans."

That move is harmonious with the organization's mission, spokeswoman Lynda Moreau said.

"We were chartered over 100 years ago as a patriotic and benevolent organization. Our mission is to defend the good name of the Confederate soldier. The SCV does not advocate secession," she said.

Many of its current members are veterans who fought in the armed forces during wartime.

"They fought for this country, and they stand behind it. That doesn't mean they honor the Confederate flag any less. They honor both," she said.

The Rev. Joe Darby of the Morris Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Charleston, who is first vice president of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, views the issue differently. The NAACP continues its efforts to boycott the state because of the location of the flag on the Statehouse grounds and will raise it, as well as other issues, again in the next legislative session.

To Darby, the Confederate flag is a symbol of disunity in a time when the nation's citizens should come together.

"We need to be unified at a time like this. While I don't think everyone who flies it (the battle flag) is a member of a hate group, I would not fly it. When I see it, I see a symbol of white, antebellum unity. That leaves me out of the picture," he said.

Darby acknowledges that there are South Carolinians who see no conflict in flying both flags.

"What do I think when I see both flags flying together? I guess I rejoice that we live in a country where people can hold strange views," he said.

Since the Civil War, major events such as the terrorist attacks have moved Southerners toward a stronger view of themselves as Americans first and Southerners second, even if they created some subconscious tugs between regional and national loyalties along the way, writes Charles Reagan Wilson in his 1980 book "Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920."

"The Spanish American War and World War II provided the perfect backdrop for Southern ministers to identify again with the values of the American nation," he writes.

"In 1917 the raising of Old Glory on Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans became a symbolic event marking renewed patriotism. Ministers even wrote poems praising the flag, although acceptance of the prime symbol of national unity created a tension with continuing adoration for the equally potent Confederate battle flag," Wilson writes.

One Southern writer of the time, according to Wilson, suggested "that Southerners should still 'consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross'," but that it should be honored not as '"a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of a heroic epoch.'"

In Charleston, evidence of those competing loyalties still remains.

Until May, the Old South Carriage Company downtown displayed three flags, the United States flag, the state flag and the Confederate flag. However, the flags were stolen on Mother's Day weekend and have not yet been replaced, manager Kay Motley said. When they are replaced, one flag will still represent the Confederacy, but it will be another, less controversial flag, she said.

The company currently displays an American flag inside its barn and quickly put American flags on its carriages after the terrorist attacks.

"We're proud of our Southern heritage. Our company is named Old South, but we are patriotic enough to add American flags to our carriages at a time like this," Motley said.

[aomagrat]

Thanks for the history lesson on G. Washington. I am currently reading "John Adams" by David McCullough and it confirms G. Washington as being for a strong central government. To get back to the original topic, I posted this to show that a lot of people who fly the Confederate flag are Americans first. I fly the Confederate flag to honor my Southern Heritage, but I am an American first. I have spent the last 20 years in the US Navy defending America, and when I retire, Old Glory will fly from my flagpole, along with the Southern Cross.

[Palmetto]

...Well maybe on SOUTHERN pickups, but the ones I see on most of the ones you "SANDLAPPERS" drive are either a stupid garnet chicken proclaiming "Go Cocks" or an ugly ornage and white polecat paw heralding 'Tigers"!

Folks around here can be logically consistent by flying Old Glory as well as the Stars and Bars, but if you see a stupid garnet chicken bumpersticker beside a glorious "My Blood Runneth Orange" sticker, you'll know you are looking at one confused automobile.

[Palmetto]

"We see it as a patriotic emblem of our ancestors, but the nation's moved on since then. We think our ancestors stood up for a Constitutional principle that was still considered an option back then - the issue of whether states can secede from the Union - and the issue was resolved on the battlefield. We had an unpleasant disagreement amongst ourselves, and it was settled. So now, if you punch at the United States, you've struck at all of us," he said.

I believe McConnell summed it up pretty well here.

Flying the two flags together is no more traitorous than flying the US flag with your state flag. Or the Gadsden flag.

People who are in touch enough with their inner selves to feel offense at the sight of the Confederate battle flag should look to their Southern countrymen as an example. How offensive should it be to locals in Columbia and Atlanta who have ancestors dating back to the Civil War to see the same colors flying over their Capitol domes that was flown by the invading army which saw need to burn said cities to ash heaps, loot the homes, and rape and kill the local women and children?

I would think there would be profound offense at the mere thought, but these proud folks have set the example.

Get over it!

[bluecollarman]

"Lee lived off the land throughout his campaigns in the north. His troops routinely issued demands for food and supplies from northern towns that they occupied, threatening to burn the towns if demands weren't met."

Lee left I.O.U.'s for supplies and he burned nothing. Contrast this with Sherman who had acquired by force the best of every kind of provision and the finest steeds in the nation by the time he ended his "March to the Sea"

"And when Early's men burned Chambersburg"

This was Early's decision alone as a revenge for atrocities by the Union in the Shenandoah Valley. Early asked for compensation first to pay for homes that were destroyed. The town refused, he burned it. Interesting that it did not happen again and you do not know what Lee said to Early. Either way it is a far cry from Sherman's plan to put innocent civilians in freight cars then pull them "by means of a long rope" across places where explosive charges were suspected so they could blow themselves up.

"As for the Indians, you seem to forget that the Cherokee nation was uprooted and sent west on their Trail of Tears in the 1820's at the behest of the people of North Carolina and Georgia. Most of the initial troops were Georgia militia."

Although I would dispute your facts, I will accept them for the sake that you make my point. NC and GA were part of the Union so it was a Union act. Committed under the flag of our Nation. We do not hate "Old Glory" or our early heritage it is ridiculous to do so. Yet, you would have me hate my history. Why can you not adopt Sherman's view of Slavery if you love him so much? His words.. "the people of Louisiana were hardly responsible for slavery, as they had inherited it" I submit to you I too inherited slavery as did most of the South and her fighting men.

" Neither side has clean hands where that is concerned."

Sorry, there were no sides then. This was a U.S. atrocity, but I still wave the American Flag. There were Indians fighting for the Confederacy though, but I am sure you know that.

[Mark17]

Regardless of the south's hopes and wishes, there was simply no desire, nor any real reason for armed intervention by Her Majesties government and the North knew it.

If that is true, maybe it was due to the fact that they had such a rough time in the 1770's and the War of 1812, and did not want any more of it.

[Mark17]

WP, thanks, but I do not read long posts. If you want to say something, just say it, and keep it short.

[bluecollarman]

"Regardless of the south's hopes and wishes, there was simply no desire, nor any real reason for armed intervention by Her Majesties government and the North knew it."

It was because they had enough cotton. They did not need the South, it was that simple.

[bluecollarman]

Good point! We must ban Sheets also! No more Sheets! Sheets must not be used or hung out to dry as they are a sign of racism.

[Colt .45]

"Hey, I’ll stack my knowledge of history against yours any day of the week, if your post is any indication. For example I know that the Emancipation Proclamation was written and released in 1862, not 1863"

Here boner, chew on this ...

'On Jan. 1, 1863, the formal and definite Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The President, by virtue of his powers as commander in chief, declared free all those slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal government as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.

Congress, in effect, had done as much in its confiscation acts of Aug., 1861, and July, 1862, but its legislation did not have the popular appeal of the Emancipation Proclamation-despite the great limitations of the proclamation, which did not affect slaves in those states that had remained loyal to the Union or in territory of the Confederacy that had been reconquered.'

This last statement refers to Maryland!

" I also know that the race riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866 probably resulted in the deaths of more Blacks at the hands of white SOUTHERNERS than the New York race riots."

These riots were the result of harsh Northern Reconstruction Laws that placed an oppressive boot on the neck of the South. Many of the freed blacks suddenly had all this time on their hands, no jobs, and needed to eat. They were flexing their new found rights in many criminal ways. The white populace of the South had every right to protect itself.

and if you want to talk some more oppression and racial stats , then explain to me how the U.S. policies that were in reference to the Native American Indians were soooooooo fair and humanitarian, non-bigoted and non-racist. So does the polite euphemism of "Manifest Destiny" mean that the United States Government was non-racist in its slaughter of the Indians?

Also lets talk about the racial bigotry shown towards the Japanese - Americans during WW2. Then they were shipped off to relocation camps, all done under the auspices of the U.S. Flag!

While we're at it, lets chat about how "kind" the New Yorker's were to the Irish, now there is racism! And they are the entry point to America, a foreigners first glimpse of America! The South never treated folks like that!

Let's also chat about the American war of oppression against the Philippinoes in the early 1900's, on our part it was nothing more than Blatant Imperialism! The subjugation of a country to our whim!

"And finally I know that Sherman’s actions, while harsh, shortened the war by 6 months to a year. As he himself said, "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."

There is NO excuse for rapine and atrocities that they committed! The Southern troops never conducted themselves in such an atrocious manner, even when they invaded the Northern States. If a commander today were to allow that type of conduct from his troops, I'll guarantee the his career would be short. As for Sherman's last statement you quoted, that implies bigotry towards the South.

Perhaps you need to re-think your position on things ... and study your history better! Or are all your postings on this issue going to be as your screen name implies - "a statement that does not follow logically from anything previously said." A fallacy resulting from simple conversion of a universal affirmative proposition or from the transposition of a condition and its consequent.

Sorry Charles ... YOU LOSE!

[Non-Sequitur]

You don't bother reading prior posts, do you? If you had you would see where I acually quoted from the Emancipation Proclamation in Reply 128, the part which reads,

"Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free..." Chew on that.

In fact, you don't read much history of the era at all, apparently, because if you did you would know that the era known as reconstruction lasted from 1867 to 1876 and was brought about in part because of the Black Codes and race riots which plagued the south.

As for Sherman, all I can do is quote the great man again. "War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave-in until we are whipped - or they are." As it turned out, you were whipped.

Are you at least clear on the actual location of the Mason-Dixon Line and the difference between north and south?

[Palmetto]

As for Sherman, all I can do is quote the great man again.

As I've said before about you concerning this subject, I will now repeat:

You make me sick.

Anyone who participates in these debates who lacks the discernment to clearly recognize that Sherman was a demon who deserved to be brought before a war crimes trial and quartered has already tipped their bias and cannot be considered a good faith partner in debate.

In short, your impressive knowledge of history is worthless so long as it is broadcast through your prejudiced bullhorn.

[forbes4prez]

yes i know about heritage and symbolism and all that stuff... but i'm indifferent about flying the confederate flag because of one reason: THE SOUTH LOST. japan lost, and they can't fly the land of the rising sun flag anymore. germany lost, and they can't fly the swastika anymore. the confederate states lost, and they don't exist as a country or a sovereign nation thereafter. why do southerners get to keep the stars and bars? there should only be one flag, the flag of the conquerer, the stars and stripes.

[Non-Sequitur]

Lee left I.O.U.'s for supplies and he burned nothing.

Here is a link to the website for the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. It details the occupation of the town by southern forces under several of Lee's subordinate commanders, the demand for food and provisions without mention of payment, the seach of private homes by confederate soldiers when the demanded provisions were not forthcoming. This is only one such instance. Gettysburgh itself came about when Harry Heth went there to loot a shoe factory, unaware that Ewell's troops had stripped it clean a few days earlier. You claim that there was no foraging by confederate troops is clearly false.

This was Early's decision alone as a revenge for atrocities by the Union in the Shenandoah Valley.

Actually, Sheridan's campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, which caused the widespread distruction you seem to be referring to, took place in the fall of 1864 while Chambersburg was burned in the early summer. But in any cans I suppose that means that if Sherman said that his burning of Atlanta was in response for the destruction of Chambersburg then that would be OK with you?

I submit to you I too inherited slavery as did most of the South and her fighting men.

Sherman did say that Louisiana inherited slavery and I can't disagree with that. Slavery existed in Louisiana and other parts of the country - north and south - long before any of the men who fought in the Civil War were ever born. I don't doubt that. But the men of the south went to war in large part to defend that institution of slavery and that is where your troubles came from.

As for your flag and your 'heritage' I don't hate it, I don't hate anyone who supports it. Treasure it all you want. But I have a flag and a heritage, too, and don't be surprised if I defend it.

[Non-Sequitur]

You post like that and call me biased? Look in the mirror.

[eaglebeak]

That's not a "Yankee" flag, it's the American flag!

[Constitution Day]

"japan lost, and they can't fly the land of the rising sun flag anymore."

Really?

September 9, 2001 - Honolulu, Hawaii:
Crew members of the Japanese submarine rescue vessel JDS Chihaya stood at attention as (Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko) Tanaka departed.
The foreign minister urged divers to work hard for the recovery of (Ehime Maru) victims' remains.

[Palmetto]

If someone were to come in this forum and speak of Hitler as "a great man," it would be fairly fruitless to begin debating the Holocaust with him, would it not?

If we cannot agree that purposely committing atrocities against innocent women and children is wrong (and disqualifies one from "greatness" status on its face), then we have no basis upon which to debate Southern heritage.

I have no doubt that Sherman is occupying a space very near Hitler's in Hades now as I type.

[aomagrat]

. japan lost, and they can't fly the land of the rising sun flag anymore

The rising sun flag is their naval ensign, and still flies over all warships of the Japanese Navy.

[aomagrat]

Beat me by a couple of minutes!

[Non-Sequitur]

I would agree that if we cannot rationally debate Sherman without you tossing in the ridiculous Hitler anology then there is nothing further for us to discuss. You may speculate on Sherman's current whereabouts all you want but wherever he is he has a lot of southern leaders to keep him company.