Actually Walt, I've got the First National Flag flying and every time someone asks about it, it gives me an opportunity to get them off the Koolaid they've been forced to drink from government propaganda centers (otherwise known as public schools). When presented with factual evidence instead of flowery prose from socialists like Sandburg and McPhernut, it at least makes them think. Don't worry though. The lie of lincoln has been so embedded in people it will take decades to get rid of it.
That disunion flag was already thrown down in defeat and disgrace. Fly a new one, if you dare.
Walt
Consider what a contemporary said then:
Consider this text from the SC secession ordinance:
"We the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the 23rd day of May, in the year of our lord, 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of the State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States, is hereby dissolved."
In reply:
"Conscious that this document bore upon its face the plain contradiction of their pretended authority, and its own palpable nullity both in techincal form and essential principle, the convention undertook to give it strength and plausibility by an elaborate Declaration of Causes, adopted a few days later (December 24th)-- a sort of half-parody of Jefferson's masterpiece. It could of course, quote no direct warrant from the Constitution for secession, but sought to deduce one, by implication, from the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Xth amendment. It reasserts the absurd paradox of State supremacy-persistantly miscaled "State Rights" --which reverses the natural order of governmental existance ; considers a State superior to the Union; makes a part greater than the whole; turns the pyramid of authority upon its apex; plants the tree of liberty with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air. The fallacy has been has been a hundred times analysed, exposed, and refuted; but the cheap dogmatism of demagougues and the automatic machinery of faction perpetually conjures it up anew to astonish the sucklings and terrify the dotards of politiics. The notable point in the Declaration of Causes is, that its complaint over grievances past and present is against certain states, and for these remedy was of course logically barred by its own theory of state supremacy.
On the other hand, all its allegations against the Union are concerning dangers to come, before which admission the moral justification of disunion falls to the ground. In rejecting the rememdy of future elections for future wrongs, the conspiracy discarded the entire theory of republican government.
One might have thought that this might have exhausted their counterfeit philosophy--but not yet. Greatly as they groaned at unfriendly state laws--serisly as they pretended to fear damage or spoilation under future federal statutes, the burden of their anger rose at the sentient and belief of the North. "All hope of remedy," says the manifesto, "is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief." This is language one might expect from the Pope of Rome; but that an American convention should denounce the liberty of opinion, is not merely to recede from Jefferson, to Louis XIV; it is flying from the town-meeting to the Inquisition."
"With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some f the members were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution.
"The secession of South Carolina," said one of the chief actors, "is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." This with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only aganist right, but that it was without cause."
--John G. Nicolay, 1881
What was that erroneous religious belief? The idea that all men are created equal.
You're in the SCV, right? Are you one of the ones who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance?
All this CSA worship comes down to white supremacy. That is why you hate Lincoln -- because he favored equal rights for all men, everywhere.
Walt