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.
That only proves that Germans are more intelligent than Southerners who fly the Star & Bars.
Awwww....Why did you have to go and say that??? I was going to be good and stay out of this and you had to go and say something really stupid and sooooo liberal/yankee like. Oh and by the way, I fly both flags. I am not ashamed of either!
American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God."
DEO VINDICE
That only proves that you're an idiot.
There are a lot of Germans here that fly the Confederate Flag, what would you call them? We call them neighbors and friends.
My word, I ah have nevah seen the "War of Northern Agression" abbreviated before...it seems somewhat disrespectful.
I too, fly both flags.
Atlanta ain't really in the south anymore. It hasn't been the same since Sherman burned it, and Ted Turner moved in. Then... after Lewis Grizzard died, it just finished going to hell. Nope, they don't speak for me there.
Excuse the intrusion. But it should and
must. Unless the dictates of the NG are
outlined specifically in the Constitution, then
that power, per the same Constitution, is
reserved to the state.
As a Southerner who accepts Lee’s surrender at Appomatox cannot tell the difference between a proud Stars & Bars waving Southerner and a Nazi Skinhead or a member of the KKK.
That Charles De Gaulle's sure was a quotable SOB.
I COULD NOT CARE LESS ABOUT THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG. Fly it, don't fly it, I don't care. It's offensive, FINE! It's my heratige, FINE! This is freakin' America for God's sake. This whole subject gives me tired head, so, I'm on to something else. Bye Y'all.
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