After attacks, many Southerners fly different flag

The Charleston Post & Courier ^ | October 29, 2001 | ELLEN B. MEACHAM

[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.

[clamper1797]

So ... what's your point to me especially since I too fly both flags ???????

[Constitution Day]

clamper:

I just wanted you to see my response to Non-Sequitur. The thrust of that post was directed at him and a couple others.

You name was in the "To:" list *only* because you had posted on this thread.

No other point is intended to you, sir.

I read your posts #4 & #109 and I think we see eye to eye.

FRegards,
CD

[cactmh]

I've seen quite a few confederate flags here in North Florida...

[aomagrat]

As per your request...

[Colt .45]

Hey bud! The Swastika was a symbol of luck and power dating back to ancient times, the Nazis adopted it in 1932 and now it is synonymous with the Nazis and hate. So what happened to the other 1000 some odd years before those turds came down the pike?

Now for your assertion about the Confederate Battle Flag. It was the flag that many brave Southerners fought and died for. It IS integrated and IS a part of American history. Like it or not, that's the way it is!

If you knew anything at all about history, you would realize that the winners of wars always write their version of history and claim it to be fact. Such is the case with the slavery issue ... a little secret for you here, dude ... the Civil War was about States rights, and started because of economics ... it had nothing to do with slavery.

Slavery became a major issue to draw popular support for the Union in 1863 ( TWO YEARS AFTER THE WAR STARTED)due to the fact many Northerners, were becoming disenchanted with the war and its casualties, and starting to vocally dissent. The South had been winning major battles up until then. In essence the "slavery issue" was nothing more than a bandwagon issue. AND when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he only freed the slaves south of the Mason Dixon Line, but nothing was mentioned about the slaves being used in Baltimore, Maryland which was north of the Mason Dixon Line.

IN FACT you had more severe rioting against, and abuse of Blacks by Northerners, than you ever had in the South during the war. Not to mention the atrocities and rapes committed by Northern troops (under the command of General William Techumseh Sherman (USA)) on the Negro populace of the South during their March to the Sea in 1864.

New York experienced the worst race riots in 1863 wherein several blacks were killed by white NEW YORKERS!

There were also a couple of untis of Negro Soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the war, so now you tell me that the Southerners were racist. All the above information is true and recorded history.

In closing all I can tell you is that your ignorance of history is only exceeded by the ignorance in your posting.

[Non-Sequitur]

Hey, I’ll stack my knowledge of history against yours any day of the week, if your post is any indication. For example I know that the Emancipation Proclamation was written and released in 1862, not 1863. I know that the Mason-Dixon Line formed the northern border of Maryland, not the southern, so that Baltimore is actually south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I also know that the Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves in the south under confederate control, exempting whole sections of Virginia and Florida and Louisiana that had been restored to federal control. I also know that the race riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866 probably resulted in the deaths of more Blacks at the hands of white SOUTHERNERS than the New York race riots. Likewise I know about the Black Codes that the south enacted right after the war that returned Black Americans to a condition approaching slavery, even those who had been free prior to the war or who had fought for the south during the war. I also know that Lincoln never called out the troops to threaten to fire on women like Davis did during the Richmond bread riots. And finally I know that Sherman’s actions, while harsh, shortened the war by 6 months to a year. As he himself said, "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."

Gee, maybe I'm not so ignorant of history as you seem to think. So I guess that you're no judge of the ignorance of anyones postings.

[shuckmaster]

Thanks for providing us with a little dose of the truth.

Aw, Shucks!

[LowOiL]

Your post 113 was awesome. Thank you... You proved your point without a doubt.

[aomagrat]

For example I know that the Emancipation Proclamation was written and released in 1862, not 1863.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Emancipation Prolamation was issued on January 1, 1863.

Britannica.com

[Non-Sequitur]

Read the document:

"Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free..." etcetera and so forth and so on.

Don't take my word for it. Here is a link to the National Archives

[Non-Sequitur]

Now, are you going to tell me that I got the Mason-Dixon Line wrong as well?

[bluecollarman]

Thanks for the post #113!

[aomagrat]

I read it, and it says it was issued on 22 September 1862, to take effect on the first day of January 1863. You're right about that. As for the Mason-Dixon line, as far as I know it's still between Maryland and Pennsylvania, unless someone moved it.

[Constitution Day]

You're all quite welcome.

Deo Vindice.

[Non-Sequitur]

As for the Mason-Dixon line, as far as I know it's still between Maryland and Pennsylvania, unless someone moved it.

That's a relief! Colt.45 sounded so sure about it's location that he had me doubting my memory for a moment.

[aomagrat]

Nice seal also!

[Non-Sequitur]

[Constitution Day]

Where are your cohorts, Illbay & WhiskeyPapa?

[Non-Sequitur]

I'm handling the light work tonight. They only get involved when there is a serious debate with real competition but I'll bump 'em for you.

[Constitution Day]

LMAO! You are *such* a wit. >/sarcasm<

Your comments on my post?

BTW - you were right on the Emancipation Proclamation date.

Time for bed... be seein' ya.