[PeaRidge]

You asked about the meaning of flags.

What flags were flying over the ships from Rhode Island that were trading guns and rum for slaves in 1806?

Which flag was in the chamber of the Supreme Court in 1857 when it declared Dred Scott still legally a slave?

Which flag flew over the U.S. Capitol as newly inaugurated President Abraham Lincoln endorsed the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution that ordered permanent legalization of slavery in 1861?

Which flag could be seen by the slaves locked up in the pens in Washington in July of 1861 as General Irwin McDowell marched union troops into Virginia.

[jmacusa]

I don’t ever recall saying slaves were not bound under the Stars And Stripes. But it was the Stars And Stripes under which their bondage ended.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "You asked about the meaning of flags.
What flags were flying over the ships from Rhode Island that were trading guns and rum for slaves in 1806?"

Sorry, FRiend, but your argument here is ludicrous.
In fact, by the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 most northerners had already begun to abolish slavery in their own states.
By 1804 all Northern states had begun abolition and by 1840 that process was essentially complete in the North.

But in 1787 constitutional recognition of slavery was the price imposed by Southern states as their pre-condition for joining the United States, and so Northerners accepted it, in the South and continued to accept right up through the election of 1860.

What Northerners did not accept was the continued expansion of slavery into western territories or, via the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, into their own states.
That's just what the election of 1860 was all about, and it drove Deep South Fire Eaters insanely berserk, first declaring their secessions and then war on the United States.

So the United States flag is the flag under which slavery was first abolished peacefully in the North and then after bloody war, also in the South.

The Confederate battle flag lead those forces opposed to abolition and Union.

Nevertheless, in the North we love our rebels and sometimes fly their flags side-by-side with our own.
Here, for example: