After attacks, many Southerners fly different flag

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.

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."

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.'"

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.

Sir, your rantings on the White Southerner keeping the poor black man down are understandable, and quite common. However, you seem to believe that white Southerners are the only ones to blame for this-a mistake. Now you'll probably call me a nut or, better yet, a racist bigot fundamentalist, but I lay much blame on the strained racial relations in the South on the hands of our late conqueror, the US Army and their masters in Washington and New England. It was their policy to use blacks in whatever means possible to subdue the South, begining by using slavery to instigate war with the South, and justify it to themselves.

Now, to be sure, the vast majority of Southerners looked on blacks with a less than wonderful view in regard to their intellect, and I would not suggest that racism was begun by the North-certainly not, as it has always been human nature to look down upon groups of people as a whole with no regard to individual merits, and such was the case for the pre-war black man. However, it is important to note that before the war, it was not at all an entire stigmata to associate with blacks-in fact, it might be common practise say, in the pine woods of Mississippi, for a black fiddler to play some reels along with white fellows on Friday night, and engage in acts of recreation at other times (it seems from Northerners views of the Celtinized South before the war, good work habits were not of particular esteem). Certainly no blacks found themselves at the end of an unjustified ripe as would become practise during and after Reconstruction, and hostility towards blacks was rather rare before the war. Instead, there existed a feeling that blacks were slightly subserviant to whites, but in a childlike manner-it was in general view that the black man best existed as a subordinate to whites. Now, you and I wold rightly say that that is not right-black men have the same mental capacity as anyone else. But this was the view in much of the South, and the North as well before the escape our inquiry. In fact, it was believed by many abolitionists after the war that blacks would need their tender care and some even went as far as to try to train them and instruct them educationaly. They soon found this to taxing though and generally gave up-the plight of the Negro was of no consequence any more now that they had been used for what was believed to be a noble purpose. It is something like our abandonment of the Afgahns once they had defeated the Soviets-the aftermath would be rather similar as you shall see.

Let us examine then ways in which animosity was stirred up betwix the white and blac men of the South during and after the war, and how it was resolved, or rather, left unresloved after the close of hostilities.

I will list several causes but will limit myself from going into them as it would likely bore you..

One, and particularly important to soldiers of the army, was the wide use of black soldiers. This was, as could been seen after the war, little more than a ruse to infiriate Southerners. As previously stated, they often had dim views of the black man's capacity in some roles, and the use of black soldiers was not only compounded upon by this, but the idea that these men would soon return to life in the South no doubt led to some bad ideas during the war, but the fact that former enemies now resided in large numbers around you was particularly bad after the war. And as soon as hostilities with the South were over, the black soldier was largely no more-very few black soldiers could be found in the post war army, and were not infrequently excluded or at least degraded upon application of military duty. They were but human pawns.

Then there is the complex issue of the violent end to slavery. This is most likely the greatest factor in bad racial relations, and it haunts us to this day. In most other Western cultures, slavery endend gradualy, and without ill effect. There are not groups of Irishmen still mad or disadvantged because they were once part of the slave class-slavery slowly disapeared in Ireland, not overnight in a violent conflict. And not only was slavery ended, but in theory, Southerners views of the black man were supposed to improve. They didn't-would you if you were forced at gun point to? Could you? Probably not-I doubt I could. And to make matters worse, Northerners quickly began explioting black voters to the expense of the South, bribing and coercing them by the droves to vote for schemes that were designed to rob states, counties, and individuals of what money and wealth they had remaining. The Reconstruction probably instilled more hatred in Southern hearts than did the war, and it was all intended by the North-a show em' not to mess with us type attitude.

In the end, both the white and black Sotherner was impacted horribly, and it continues to this day. You say how you wish blacks could control the South. Please do not misunderstand me, but I shudder at the thought, at least today. The poor black man has been so thouroughly used by the Federal government and corrupt politicians, that, coupled with a sad breakdown of black families (coming to the white man's culture as well), that all to often their communities and especially counties and cities dominated by African-American demographics have become swaths of poverty and crime-I'm sure you're aware that the term "going black" is not used in a positive sense. It is not because blacks are of some kind of inferior stock or some such nonsense (I believe that some of the most brilliant minds in our history were and are those of black men), but it is the result of a steady culmination of events brought down by a variety of factors, beginging with the Civil War and orchestrated by a falsely benevolent Federal governement who is good to the black man when it suits their purposes, whether it be getting elected, breaking the South, or trying out a new socialist program.

Thar, I'm done if you've gotten this far. I would appreciate any thoughts you have on my little piece, and certainly hope you don't brand me a "racists". Oh, and I would truely encourage you to purchase a book on Patrick Cleburne.

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