Sprints Thinks Tennessee Fans Will Regret Bryce Brown for a Long Time // 08.12.10

The confederate flag IS NOT a symbol for slavery. It was not used as propaganda to promote slavery. The confederate flag does not belong on spring break t-shirts and beach towels, and yes ignorant trash may have given it a bad name to the ill-informed. I don’t think having it on Mississippi’s State flag is an effort to try and “claim it back” since it has been there since 1894. Everything is going to offend someone, and you can’t sterilize our history.

I simply bring it up to note that opponents of the flag in Georgia and South Carolina consistently pointed to the civil rights-era pedigree of the use of the battle flag in those states. Obviously, that argument does not apply in Mississippi.

While I certainly understand and respect the view that hate groups “have effectively co-opted the symbol,” I’ve never understood why we have allowed marginal groups of bigots to taint honorable symbols, or why we have applied that principle so inconsistently. When the United Brethren and the Methodist Church combined in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church, they adopted as their symbol the Cross with two red flames coming out of it. By that point, obviously, the burning Cross had become (and yet remains) the most visible and visceral symbol of groups like the Klan . . . yet sensible people still managed not to confuse Methodists with Klansmen. (This is a great relief to me, since I am a Methodist.)

Likewise, the Klan has appropriated the American flag for its own wrongheaded purposes, as well, yet no one believes white supremacists have co-opted the American flag. There seems to be no good reason for singling out the Confederate battle flag for special disdain just because hate groups have misappropriated it along with other symbols which, somehow, seem to have escaped that taint.

Can’t we all just agree that hate groups don’t know what they’re talking about and treat all the symbols they’ve tried wrongly to claim as their own as though such groups never got their grubby hands on them? As an American, a Christian, and a Southerner, I don’t believe we should allow such groups to besmirch the honorable and admirable heritage of my country, my faith, or my region.

I really do. But defending the conferedate flag? Really?

This justifies as much ridicule as possible.

It only applied to the South because Lincoln issued it as an Executive Order within his powers as Commander In chief. The southern states were in rebellion and he could issue a “war order” regarding them. It didn’t apply to the North because it would have exceeded his powers and would have had to go through Congress.

After the war in which the North acheived “total victory”, the terms to come back into the Union were pretty simple: pass the 12th, 13th, and 14th Amendments and have a percentage of your population swear loyalty to the Union. Since the North could impose pretty much any terms it wished, we can clearly see their war aims: free the slaves, make black men citizens, and preserve the Union (a Union in which the states could not end round the Bill of Rights).

Let’s put it like this: we argue about states rights to this day, we do not argue about slavery. The Civil War settled the issue. If the Civil War was about another issue, why do the North not impose those terms?

Southern leaders did not just wake up one day and decide that the states should have more rights, and so they should secede. The issue was the states’ rights to set their own policies about slavery. And if “there are very easily obtainable quotes from other noted dignitaries of the CSA who openly state that The War of Northern Aggression … was based on other issues,” please obtain them. I would place only one term on the request: They have to be from before the end of the Civil War. Many Southern leaders later backtracked on their reasons for the war afterward, for a variety of political and legacy reasons.

There were actually fewer Northerners “dupted into thinking they were fighting for the freedom of the slaves” than you might think. In fact, many disagreed with fighting to free he slaves; the war was in their minds one about union. The Emancipation Proclamation was more of a diplomatic war aim than anything else; it was an effective way to keep England and Frace out of the war, because the populations of those countries would not have supported a war that appeared to be about slavery.

Finally, there were several philosophical differences between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. There was no representation for the colonies in Parliament; there were fewer political and civil rights for Americans than for Englishmen; and the legal status of the colonies was decided by England, not by the colonies, which was not the case in the South. (We can get into the constitutional arguments about secession, if you like, but I’m trying to keep this simple.)

the issue of slavery isn’t why the Northern Navy blockaded the South in the lead up to the war. It is not the reason that South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter. That was about taxation of agriculture and the Southern States refusal to have heavy export taxes imposed on their goods.

Actually, no. The Northern blockade was response to secession, and the South firing on Ft. Sumter was a response to a Union attempt to resupply it.

The tariffs and duties arguments were of a part with arguments over slavery; the slave-based economy favored freer trade with European nations, while the industrial economy of the North favored protectionism. But those schisms had been present for years and could have been resolved without war. The South did not see issues like protectionism as a basis for secession; it did see slavery as that important.

The main issue for the North was not slavery; it was union. But slavery was a main, if not the main, issue for the South. And it was very much an issue related (in Southerners’ mind) to the economic well-being of the region.