Posted on 10/29/2001 11:26:49 AM PST by 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.
1. So what? Since PeaRidge clings to his claim that the south accounted for almost all the demand for imports to begin with then what good would a free trade zone have done her? Where would these goods be bound for if there was no demand for them in the North in 1860 to begin with? Wouldn't all the south be doing is subsidizing the lifestyle of her wealthiest individuals at the expense of her poorer ones?
2. If the south did establish a free trade zone then what would prevent the North from slapping a tariff on goods imported from the confederacy? Tariffs are designed to protect domestic industry. Why would the North be any less inclined to use them against the south as they were to use them on imports from Europe? Had the south tried to funnel goods to the North there were only a few ways to get them there. Putting customs posts across the Mississippi and along the few rail lines that ran North and south, and collecting duties would have been a piece of cake.
So what would your vaunted 'free trade zone' confederacy have done for you?
It was a massive project paid for by the city of Charleston.
The Confederate Constitution stipulated free trade.
You saw the data. It is from the US Commerce Department. It is either true or not true. Which is it?
1. What was the ratio of Southern population to the North?
2. Using this ratio, and the federal spending in 1860, and what would have been a Confederate budget in the same proportion.
3. Now, take the value of Southern exports, assume a one to one ratio of import value, multiply by the tariff established in 1860, and you have your answer.
OK, tariffs are off the table. Where was the money coming from?
LOL. When that day comes, the American South will resemble today's South Africa. Enjoy, y'all!
I'm an ardent Unionist, but you are more irritating than I can be about this, and I have irritated some folks on this forum about the South, the Civil War, ad infinitum.
For you, but for them most of all, let me say that Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest Americans ever to have lived, showing a nobility, gravity, strength of character, and countenance unmatched by few Americans since the Revolution, and certainly unmatched by any American in my lifetime.
'On the eve of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, through Secretary Francis Blair, offered him command of the Union Army. There was little doubt as to Lee's sentiments. He was utterly opposed to secession and considered slavery evil. His views on the United States were equally clear - "no north, no south, no east, no west," he wrote, "but the broad Union in all its might and strength past and present."
Blair's offer forced Lee to choose between his strong conviction to see the country united in perpetuity and his responsibility to family, friends and his native Virginia. A heart-wrenching decision had to be made. After a long night at Arlington, searching for an answer to Blair's offer, he finally came downstairs to Mary. "Well Mary," he said calmly, "the question is settled. Here is my letter of resignation." He could not, he told her, lift his hand against his own people. He had "endeavored to do what he thought was right," and replied to Blair that "...though opposed to secession and a deprecating war, I could take no part in the invasion of the Southern States." He resigned his commission and left his much beloved Arlington to "go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native state."'
Why don't you go through a personal nightmare like that, or even imagine one, before you go on about the South?
Great guns, man, you've got me whistling "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Goodness me...
Since the majority of tariff revenue was gone, in 1861 the Federal government began deficit spending just before the war started. This was being financed by the banks in the northeast and mid-west.
I have already told you, I wasn't addressing your question. I was addressing your final assertion. Rightly or wrongly, the North did fear economic challenge from the South for the reasons I cited. Quit setting up straw men.
More Red Herrings, Non?
The market was your own backyard. Low tariff goods would now compete with Northern manufactured goods, effectively competing with business owners who would have war instead of competition.
Your opinion in 2001.
Fact of 1861
"All aspects of commerce will collapse, from iron and steel to woolens, clothing, and garment manufacturing; every shopkeeper will close his doors, as all kinds of goods from Britain and France will flood Northern markets. The whole country will be given up to an immense system of smuggling."
This was common talk of Spring of 1861. It shows that it was common knowledge that Northern products were artifically inflated and priced higher than imports. It shows that Southern consumers prefered European products. It shows that high tariffs were supporting the entire North. It shows that the "highly successful Northern manufacturing" network was being subsidized by the government laws, and the government being subsidized by taxes on slave labor products. Any moral superiority there?
Let's think about that. (Which you might have been well-advised to do before posting.)
Who would pay this tariff? Northerners not Southerners. What would be its effect? Southern goods (cotton goods in particular) would have been scarcer and more costly in the North. Southern sales lost as a result could probably be made up in Europe where the purchasing power of revenue from sales would have increased greatly due to Southerners no longer having to pay the exhorbitant tariff on goods purchased and imported from Europe. If the South sold more in Europe and and less in the North they would also buy more in Europe and less in the North. The North was far more dependent on markets in the South than the South was on markets in the North.
All in all, I don't think "slapping a tariff" on goods imported from the South would have been a very smart move for the North.
Here is why. The North was trying to establish itself as an industrial power. As such it was in competition with Europe, not the South, whose economy was primarily agricultural, not industrial. Far from needing to protect itself from Southern competion, the North was dependent upon the South for agricultural goods (particularly cotton and tobacco) and as a market for its industrial products.
A tariff on Southern imports would have hurt the North more than it helped it.
Don't forget the Ohio, the Wabash, the Missouri, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the Allegheny, the Illinois, and hundreds of other tributaries.
That about covers water, but what about 2200 miles of borders? And that only covers trade routes with the North. What about the 1000 mile border with the West? Piece of cake Non?
Toss in the Great Lakes, too, while you are at it because one thing that they have in common with the rivers you mentioned was that they lay entirely within the United States. You propose to smuggle the good to the US through the US? Neat trick.
That about covers water, but what about 2200 miles of borders?
Sure, what are you going to do? Hide them in a semi and take them down a back road? Come on, Pea! Goods in the volume we are talking about either moved by water or rail or they didn't move at all. Paved roads didn't exist outside of cities. So that means we are back to the Mississippi and the few rail lines that connected North with South. That is the only way that 99% of the imports could have moved. Watching them would have been a piece of cake.
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