tillacum:
"There’s an article floating around about the Civil war and the flag we see today, was flown from slave ships, not from the southern states." Have not seen such an article, but it has been posted as "fact" now several times on these threads.
The real facts are somewhat different.
- During the Revolutionary War Congress banned the international slave trade.
- The 1787 Constitution allowed slavery, but also permitted Congress to outlaw the international slave trade after 1807, which Congress did.
- In the 1794 Slave Trade Act, Congress banned American ships from the slave trade and prohibited export by foreign ships.
Rhode Island owners of the Hope were the first prosecuted -- for delivering 230 slaves to Cuba in 1796.
- After 1807 both the US and British warships patrolled the Atlantic to capture illegal slave ships.
But there remained a huge demand for slaves, and rising prices, so slave-ships continued to be captured and their owners prosecuted.
- The last documented slave-ship, Wanderer, to arrive in the US landed in Georgia on November 28, 1858 with a cargo of 409 slaves.
Wanderer's owner was Charleston, South Carolina businessman William C. Corrie and his Savanah, Georgia partner, planter Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar.
"As the federal government investigated, news of the slave ship raised outrage in the North.
On the other hand, Southerners continued to press for re-establishment of importing slaves.
The federal government tried Lamar and his conspirators three times for piracy, but was unable to get a conviction."
After Wanderer other slave ships were captured on the high seas, and one, Clotilde (Captain: William Foster, owner: Mobile AL ship-builder Timothy Meaher), even reported as delivering perhaps 160 slaves to Mobile Bay, Alabama, in 1860, though not confirmed.
These illustrate: demand for slaves, and ownership of slave-ships, increasingly came from Southern slave-holders, that the US Federal Government first outlawed such transport, then captured and prosecuted violators when possible.
So the flags of those ships are irrelevant, since they were all outlaws.
So the flags of those ships are irrelevant, since they were all outlaws. And, in any event these flags would not have resembled the Confederate battle flag -- which didn't come into existence until 1861 (or 2).
I.e., it never flew over any slave ship.