Is the Confederate Flag racist?

As someone who lived in Georgia, and watched the state flag change so many times because of the Confederate symbol within it ... I never saw it as racist and the blacks who lived in Georgia didn't see it as racist either. It seemed to be more of a historical reminder of what was to the whites and a historical reminder of what will never be again for blacks. There are so many different perspectives regarding the lives of blacks during times of slavery, they were not always treated poorly ... for many they became like family to their slave-owers, who continued to help them after the Civil War (by selling them a parcel of land to build a home and work ... of course the landowner was heavily taxed after the war and this helped to reduce his taxes), but why would a slave who was treated so poorly want to live next to his former owner?

Folks need to get over it. Since I'm unattached with no ancestry in the south I just never cared.

ETA: [MENTION=8603]Eventhorizon[/MENTION]'s statement about Rednecks flying the actual Confederate Flag outside their house. That's pretty much how I see the Confederate Flag: White trash with an open display of hatred.

Case in Point (and why they choose to interview this maniac is the same reason the media will interview the first toothless redneck they can find after a tornado blows through a trailer park) ...
[video=youtube;pQTWWzb9exM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQTWWzb9exM[/video]
 
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Ideologies Kill Truth 25 June, 2015

Posted by Supertradmum


Those who study in depth the Civil War understand that the key issue was not slavery, but states' rights. The Confederacy was made up of states which had joined the Union freely and believed it was constitutional to leave the Union freely.

The United States was split over the question of centralized power vs. the power of the states to determine laws. Slavery, always immoral, would have gone away with the fall of the old regime in the South of Irish and English landowners, who would have been pressured by laws being passed in England to abolish slavery. That Lincoln abolished slavery was a necessary action, but the problem was that at the same time, by not working with the states, he increased greatly power in Washington forever, setting precedences under which we suffer today.

Most of the people in the United States do not understand the "balance of power" issue which formed the Constitution, and which has been eroded by almost every president in the Twentieth Century.

The Executive branch was to be one of three, not one above all, except in rare cases.

The recent flush of hatred against the Confederate flag and anything Confederate ignores the other issues of identity for Southerners, who still fiercely cherish states' rights. This identity must not include slavery or prejudice, which sadly, it has. But, prejudice against any minority group (and soon the white populace will be the minority) is always gravely sinful, a great evil found in every area of America, not just the South.

I do not agree with the Confederate flag flying over a state capitol, but I do agree with a state's rights.

I agree that it is constitutional to secede. The United States must be seen as a group of people with shared values. But, this is changing rapidly.

Some people are calling for the destruction of memorials to fallen Confederate soldiers. This is absurd, as those men died just as valiantly as those in the north. Some people want Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson taken out of history books. This is not only silly, but hiding history from future generations.

These were men who decided against the Union. We honor Washington and Jefferson and they had slaves. Why the rush to get rid of Confederate history? America has been created by many different kinds of people and many different belief systems. Slavery is a black spot on our history, but we cannot deny this happened. And, who decides what truth gets passed on and which groups are pushed out of history? The good can be ignored and never studied just as much as the bad.
For example, will memorials to Catholics be the next target if ssm is approved?
Why not?
Will the Vatican flag be taken out of churches?

Caligula has to be one of the most horrible leaders of all times, but we do not expunge him from the history books. And so on.

History is made up of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Who is to decide which personages are dropped from a curriculum?

Over ten years ago, in my job as a curriculum consultant, I researched various history books used in high schools. In several American texts, Stonewall Jackson was not mentioned at all, and Robert E. Lee was given one small paragraph.

Margaret Sanger, the great baby killer, whose push for abortion has killed more people than in all the wars Americans have ever fought in, or more slaves tortured and killed by slave owners, was featured on two pages, side by side.

See the problem? Americans are losing touch with reality because of ideologies.

Slavery is a horrible, great evil, never to be tolerated, but to not study those on both sides of the debate is to allow a few people to decide what is our heritage and what is not. We cannot deny the past and we should be able to examine the military genius of some Confederate generals without agreeing with slavery.

Ideologies kill truth.

Period.

(P.S. State's rights with the apostrophes indicates one state's rights--states' right indicates plural). copied. No opinions stated.

Interesting, though:
I agree that it is constitutional to secede. copied
 
Got a confederate flag on my Charger

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...with a "White Power!" bumper sticker. It's not racist because I like a bright smile.

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[MENTION=680]just me[/MENTION]

Know what else kills truth? Letting everyone believe that a battle flag is the Confederate national flag. Hmm, I wonder why anyone would do that?
 
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As someone who lived in Georgia, and watched the state flag change so many times because of the Confederate symbol within it ... I never saw it as racist and the blacks who lived in Georgia didn't see it as racist either. It seemed to be more of a historical reminder of what was to the whites and a historical reminder of what will never be again for blacks. There are so many different perspectives regarding the lives of blacks during times of slavery, they were not always treated poorly ... for many they became like family to their slave-owers, who continued to help them after the Civil War (by selling them a parcel of land to build a home and work ... of course the landowner was heavily taxed after the war and this helped to reduce his taxes), but why would a slave who was treated so poorly want to live next to his former owner?

Folks need to get over it. Since I'm unattached with no ancestry in the south I just never cared.

ETA: [MENTION=8603]Eventhorizon[/MENTION]'s statement about Rednecks flying the actual Confederate Flag outside their house. That's pretty much how I see the Confederate Flag: White trash with an open display of hatred.

Case in Point (and why they choose to interview this maniac is the same reason the media will interview the first toothless redneck they can find after a tornado blows through a trailer park) ...
[video=youtube;pQTWWzb9exM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQTWWzb9exM[/video]

I feel like the issues are getting grossly confused here. To me, the conflict is not about what the confederate flag meant, but what it means, and whether or not it would be seemly to give the flag a rest, especially in places like state capitals (what people choose to fly outside their home or on their truck or in private, is their business as far as I am concerned). Yet somehow this discussion digresses into whether or not all aspects of slavery were bad. Ex: "There are so many different perspectives regarding the lives of blacks during times of slavery, they were not always treated poorly." I don't think whether or not all slaves were always treated badly is the issue here. I think it's fair to say that all slavery was/is bad. But that's actually still not the issue re the flag debate.
 
I feel like the issues are getting grossly confused here. To me, the conflict is not about what the confederate flag meant, but what it means, and whether or not it would be seemly to give the flag a rest, especially in places like state capitals (what people choose to fly outside their home or on their truck or in private, is their business as far as I am concerned). Yet somehow this discussion digresses into whether or not all aspects of slavery were bad. Ex: "There are so many different perspectives regarding the lives of blacks during times of slavery, they were not always treated poorly." I don't think whether or not all slaves were always treated badly is the issue here. I think it's fair to say that all slavery was/is bad. But that's actually still not the issue re the flag debate.

The thing that irritates me is the people insisting that it has legitimate meaning, but they never explain what that meaning is or enumerate its merits in any way. All they seem to do time and time again is explain that they don't think it is racist, how they're actually good people who worked hard and that slaves weren't always treated poorly, and that many may have been treated well (which is actually not surprising because what sensible person abuses their property in the first place?)

It makes about as much sense as me saying the flag should be taken down and justifying it by trying to prove how much of a good and hard working person I am. What does being good have to do with it? I don't kick my dog - does that make my argument more right?
 
[MENTION=13730]PintoBean[/MENTION]

And actually well treated slaves makes a lot of sense so it is kind of irrelevant. If you're buying someone to serve you and work, it'd make complete sense to ensure that they're well enough for the investment to pay off. I mean you don't buy a tractor for farming and beat it to death now do you? Nope. You put that tractor in the barn and take care of it and give it oil and maintain the engine because if it breaks, you're doing everything by hand which is obviously not what you paid money for.

Saying that slaves were treated well is an irrelevant red herring which ignores the fact that humans should not be property in the first place.
 
sprinkles, it shows the ignorance of people. Why would someone remove our history from our history books many years ago and not expect people to misunderstand? This generation has been brainwashed. Such is life. It has now become, "What we can force upon others, and what we can forcibly take away from them."

The war was to stop the states from seceding.

Just for the records, I cannot count my black friends on two hands. That means I have more than ten black friends, should you think that is cryptic.
 
I don't see how this is even a debate. We're literally talking about the flag of a bunch of traitors who started a war because they wanted to keep slavery. They betrayed the United States and got hundreds of thousands of people killed as a result. The government that the confederate flag represented was clearly racist, and they even said so.

"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition" - Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens

The argument that it is history doesn't hold considering that the flag was apparently adopted during the Civil Rights era in 1962. It was an attempt of the racist government of the time to intimidate black people. So not only is it racist as a historical fact, but the fact that they chose to fly it a full 100 years after the war because black people were demanding equal rights shows how the decision to put it up is racist.
 
The war was to stop the states from seceding.

I'm clearly not racist.

I don't fly the flag.


 
Since we choose to speak of slavery as a central point as to whether the cf is a show of support of it lets acknowledge that everyone including black people in the US has very little issue with it. For black people its not what is but what was. Because lets be serious. Slavery is rampant in the US today just as it is in other countries though perhaps to a lesser extent. So if anyone here really and truly has a huge issue with slavery, why isnt anyone doing anything about it. Why is it the focus is being put on what happened in the past but not what is happening NOW?
 
The war was to stop the states from seceding.

I'm clearly not racist.

I don't fly the flag.



My only point is this. Of the people whom I have ever seen openly displaying the flag in public, their intent has always been clear. I doubt they know anything about what the civil war was about other then people used to be able to own slaves and now they cant.

Beyond that though seriously. ..why fly the flag for something that happened so far back? Can people really remain butt hurt for that long?
 
I feel like the issues are getting grossly confused here. To me, the conflict is not about what the confederate flag meant, but what it means, and whether or not it would be seemly to give the flag a rest, especially in places like state capitals (what people choose to fly outside their home or on their truck or in private, is their business as far as I am concerned). Yet somehow this discussion digresses into whether or not all aspects of slavery were bad. Ex: "There are so many different perspectives regarding the lives of blacks during times of slavery, they were not always treated poorly." I don't think whether or not all slaves were always treated badly is the issue here. I think it's fair to say that all slavery was/is bad. But that's actually still not the issue re the flag debate.

I understand your sentiment. It was tied into the flag debacle because the state flag of Georgia has always included the confederate symbol within it. The issue of having a state change it's flag is no recent matter to these southerners.

[video=youtube;oMNJ7S5aC9g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMNJ7S5aC9g[/video]

Slavery was bad, sure. You cannot put yourself into the mindset of the people who lived back then, none of us can ... which is why I see it a mute point to begin with. Whether your ancestry had slave owners or whether your ancestry had slaves, it doesn't matter anymore. There are far worse things going on in this country than to throw a fit over a flag. The symbol of the flag is subjective all the way around.

I wonder how people would feel if this became Arizona's state flag:
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[MENTION=4423]Sriracha[/MENTION] thank you for your words of understanding.

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sprinkles, it shows the ignorance of people. Why would someone remove our history from our history books many years ago and not expect people to misunderstand? This generation has been brainwashed. Such is life. It has now become, "What we can force upon others, and what we can forcibly take away from them."

The war was to stop the states from seceding.

Just for the records, I cannot count my black friends on two hands. That means I have more than ten black friends, should you think that is cryptic.

LOL I didn't think I'd actually be right when I said that you'd bring up black friends. Don't you realize that this is and always has been an incredibly closet racist statement? Nobody cares what color your friends are.

Also, I'm not for removing anything. That flag doesn't bother me. What bothers me is people and right now the people who are for removing the flag happen to be winning simply because you consistently fail to produce a compelling argument as to why we SHOULDN'T take that flag down. The fact that we're not taking other flags down doesn't count either.

TBH the only thing I want to take down right now is people.
 
Since we choose to speak of slavery as a central point as to whether the cf is a show of support of it lets acknowledge that everyone including black people in the US has very little issue with it. For black people its not what is but what was. Because lets be serious. Slavery is rampant in the US today just as it is in other countries though perhaps to a lesser extent. So if anyone here really and truly has a huge issue with slavery, why isnt anyone doing anything about it. Why is it the focus is being put on what happened in the past but not what is happening NOW?

Are we allowed to focus on one issue at a time or not?
 
The war was to stop the states from seceding.

I'm clearly not racist.

I don't fly the flag.



Yes, they wanted to secede so they could keep their slaves.
It was primarily for that reason.
Brainwashed…keep calling the kettle black (no pun intended).
Defend this as your “heritage”.

What This Cruel War Was Over

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.



This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.”

If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right.
But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.

Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.”

The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy.
This claim is not the result of revisionism.

It does not require reading between the lines.
It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history.

These words must never be forgotten.
Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked.

It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.


This examination should begin in South Carolina, the site of our present and past catastrophe.
South Carolina was the first state to secede, two months after the election of Abraham Lincoln.

It was in South Carolina that the Civil War began, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter.

The state’s casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:

...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.


In citing slavery, South Carolina was less an outlier than a leader, setting the tone for other states, including Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin…


Louisiana:

As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of an*nexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.


Alabama:

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republi*can party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new princi*ples, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.


Texas:

...in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states....


None of this was new. In 1858, the eventual president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis threatened secession should a Republican be elected to the presidency:

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of revolution.


It is difficult for modern Americans to understand such militant commitment to the bondage of others.
But at $3.5 billion, the four million enslaved African Americans in the South represented the country’s greatest financial asset.

And the dollar amount does not hint at the force of enslavement as a social institution.
By the onset of the Civil War, Southern slaveholders believed that African slavery was one of the great organizing institutions in world history, superior to the “free society” of the North.


From an 1856 issue of Alabama’s Muscogee Herald:

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.


The last sentence refers to the conflict over slavery between free-soilers and slave-holders.
The conflict was not merely about the right to hold another human in bondage, but how that right created the foundation for white equality.

Jefferson Davis again:

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.


Black slavery as the basis of white equality was a frequent theme for slaveholders.
In his famous “Cotton Is King” speech, James Henry Hammond compared the alleged wage slavery of the North with black slavery—and white equality—in the South:

The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South.

We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation.


On the eve of secession, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown concurred:

Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense of the term his equal. He feels and knows this. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men. He black no masters boots, and bows the knee to no one save God alone. He receives higher wages for his labor than does the laborer of any other portion of the world, and he raises up his children with the knowledge, that they belong to no inferior cast, but that the highest members of the society in which he lives, will, if their conduct is good, respect and treat them as equals.


Thus in the minds of these Southern nationalists, the destruction of slavery would not merely mean the loss of property but the destruction of white equality, and thus of the peculiar Southern way of life:

If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-*slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate—all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.


Slaveholders were not modest about the perceived virtues of their way of life. In the years leading up to the Civil War, calls for expansion into the tropics reached a fever pitch, and slaveholders marveled at the possibility of spreading a new empire into central America:

Looking into the possibilities of the future, regarding the magnificent country of tropical America, which lies in the path of our destiny on this continent, we may see an empire as powerful and gorgeous as ever was pictured in our dreams of history. What is that empire? It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of Southern civilization; including within its limits the isthmuses of America and the regenerated West Indies; having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the age in the strength of its geographical position; and, in short, combining elements of strength, prosperity, and glory, such as never before in the modern ages have been placed within the reach of a single government. What a splendid vision of empire!

How sublime in its associations! How noble and inspiriting the idea, that upon the strange theatre of tropical America, once, if we may believe the dimmer facts of history, crowned with magnificent empires and flashing cities and great temples, now covered with mute ruins, and trampled over by half-savages, the destiny of Southern civilization is to be consummated in a glory brighter even than that of old, the glory of an empire, controlling the commerce of the world, impregnable in its position, and representing in its internal structure the most harmonious of all the systems of modern civilization.


Edward Pollard, the journalist who wrote that book, titled it Black Diamonds Gathered In The Darkey Homes Of The South.
Perhaps even this is too subtle.

In 1858, Mississippi Senator Albert Gallatin Brown was clearer:

I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well—if not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican Stats; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.
And a footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in acquiring those other states. It will render them less valuable to the other powers of the earth, and thereby diminish competition with us. Yes, I want these countries for the spread of slavery. I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth, and rebellious and wicked as the Yankees have been, I would even extend it to them.
I would not force it upon them, as I would not force religion upon them, but I would preach it to them, as I would preach the gospel. They are a stiff-necked and rebellious race, and I have little hope that they will receive the blessing, and I would therefore prepare for its spread to other more favored lands.


Thus in 1861, when the Civil War began, the Union did not face a peaceful Southern society wanting to be left alone.
It faced an an aggressive power, a Genosha, an entire society based on the bondage of a third of its residents, with dreams of expanding its fields of the bondage further South.

It faced the dream of a vast American empire of slavery.
In January of 1861, three months before the Civil War commenced, Florida secessionists articulated the position directly:

At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of the Government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige or right growing out of property in slaves.
Gentlemen, the State of Florida is now a member of the Union under the power of the Government, so to go into the hands of this party.
As we stand our doom is decreed.


Not yet.
As the Late Unpleasantness stretched from the predicted months into years, the very reason for the Confederacy’s existence came to threaten its diplomatic efforts.

Fighting for slavery presented problems abroad, and so Confederate diplomats came up with the notion of emphasizing “states rights” over “slavery”—the first manifestation of what would later become a plank in the foundation of Lost Cause mythology.


The first people to question that mythology were themselves Confederates, distraught to find their motives downplayed or treated as embarassments.
A Richmond-based newspaper offered the following:

‘The people of the South,’ says a contemporary, ‘are not fighting for slavery but for independence.’ Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy — a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland. . . Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.


Even after the war, as the Lost Cause rose, many veterans remained clear about why they had rallied to the Confederate flag.
“I’ve never heard of any other cause than slavery,” wrote Confederate commander John S. Mosby.

The progeny of the Confederacy repeatedly invoked slavery as the war’s cause.
Here, for example, is Mississippi Senator John Sharp Williams in 1904:

Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man’s civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; “in the land which the Lord his God had given him;” founded upon the white man’s code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man’s tra*ditions and ideals.


The Confederate Veteran—the official publication of the United Confederate Veterans—in 1906:

The kindliest relation that ever existed between the two races in this country, or that ever will, was the ante-bellum relation of master and slave—a relation of confidence and responsibility on the part of the master and of dependence and fidelity on the part of the slave.


The Confederate Veteran again in 1911:

The African, com*ing from a barbarous state and from a tropical climate, could not meet the demands for skilled labor in the factories of the Northern States; neither could he endure the severe cold of the Northern winter. For these reasons it was both mer*ciful and “business” to sell him to the Southern planter, where the climate was more favorable and skilled labor not so important.

In the South the climate, civilization, and other influences ameliorated the African’s condition, and that of almost the entire race of slaves, which numbered into the millions before their emancipation. It should be noted that their evangelization was the most fruitful missionary work of any modern Christian endeavor. The thoughtful and considerate negro of to-day realizes his indebtedness to the in*stitution of African slavery for advantages which he would not have received had he remained in his semi-barbarism wait*ing in his native jungles for the delayed missionary.


And in 1917, the Confederate Veteran singled out one man for particular praise:

Great and trying times always produce great leaders, and one was at hand—Nathan Bedford Forrest. His plan, the only course left open. The organization of a secret govern*ment. A terrible government; a government that would govern in spite of black majorities and Federal bayonets. This secret government was organized in every community in the South, and this government is known in history as the Klu Klux Clan...

Here in all ages to come the Southern romancer and poet can find the inspiration for fiction and song. No nobler or grander spirits ever assembled on this earth than gathered in these clans. No human hearts were ever moved with nobler impulses or higher aims and purposes….Order was restored, property safe; because the negro feared the Klu Klux Clan more than he feared the devil. Even the Federal bayonets could not give him confidence in the black government which had been established for him, and the negro voluntarily surrendered to the Klu Klux Clan, and the very moment he did, the “Invisible Army” vanished in a night. Its purpose had been fulfilled.

Bedford Forrest should always be held in reverence by every son and daughter of the South as long as memory holds dear the noble deeds and service of men for the good of others on, this earth. What mind is base enough to think of what might have happened but for Bedford Forrest and his “Invisible” but victorious army.


In praising the Klan’s terrorism, Confederate veterans and their descendants displayed a remarkable consistency.
White domination was the point.

Slavery failed.
Domination prevailed nonetheless.

This was the basic argument of Florida Democratic Senator Duncan Fletcher.
The Cause Was Not Entirely Lost,” he argued in a 1931 speech before the United Daughters of the Confederacy:

The South fought to preserve race integrity. Did we lose that? We fought to maintain free white dominion. Did we lose that? The States are in control of the people. Local self-government, democratic government, obtains. That was not lost. The rights of the sovereign States, under the Constitution, are recognized. We did not lose that. I submit that what is called “The Lost Cause” was not so much “lost” as is sometimes supposed.


Indeed it was not. For a century after the Civil War, White Supremacy ruled the South.
Toward the end of that century, as activists began to effectively challenge white supremacy, its upholders reached for a familiar symbol.

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Invocations of the flag were supported by invocations of the Confederacy itself.
But by then, neo-Confederates had begun walking back their overt defenses of slavery.

United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine claimed that...

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Raphael Semmes and the 600,000 soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy did not fight for a “Lost Cause.” They fought to repel invasion, and in defense of their Constitutional liberties bequeathed them by their forefathers…
The glorious blood-red Confederate Battle Flag that streamed ahead of the Confederate soldiers in more than 2000 battles is not a conquered banner. It is an emblem of Freedom.


It was no longer politic to spell out the exact nature of that freedom.
But one gets a sense of it, given that article quickly pivots into an attack on desegregation:

Since the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, reversed what had been the Supreme Law of the land for 75 years and declared unconstitutional the laws of 17 states under which segregated school systems were established, the thinking people have been aroused from their lethargy in respect to State’s Rights.


In this we see the progression of what became known as the “Heritage Not Hate” argument. Bold defenses of slavery became passé.
It just happened that those who praised the flag, also tended to praise the instruments of white supremacy popular in that day.


And then there were times when the mask slipped.
“Quit looking at the symbols,” South Carolina State Representative John Graham Altman said during a debate over the flag’s fate in 1997.
“Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies.”

Nikki Haley deserves credit for calling for the removal of the Confederate flag.
She deserves criticism for couching that removal as matter of manners.

At the present moment the effort to remove the flag is being cast as matter of politesse, a matter over which reasonable people may disagree.
The flag is a “painful symbol” concedes David French.

Its removal might “offer relief to those genuinely hurt,” writes Ian Tuttle.
“To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred,”tweeted Mitt Romney.

The flag has been “misappropriated by hate groups,”claims South Carolina senator Tom Davis.
This mythology of manners is adopted in lieu of the mythology of the Lost Cause.

But it still has the great drawback of being rooted in a lie.
The Confederate flag should not come down because it is offensive to African Americans.

The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans.
The embarrassment is not limited to the flag, itself.

The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance.
A century and a half after Lincoln was killed, after 750,000 of our ancestors died, Americans still aren’t quite sure why.


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/
 
Not about race and slaves…you are so full of it.
 
LOL I didn't think I'd actually be right when I said that you'd bring up black friends. Don't you realize that this is and always has been an incredibly closet racist statement? Nobody cares what color your friends are.

Also, I'm not for removing anything. That flag doesn't bother me. What bothers me is people and right now the people who are for removing the flag happen to be winning simply because you consistently fail to produce a compelling argument as to why we SHOULDN'T take that flag down. The fact that we're not taking other flags down doesn't count either.

TBH the only thing I want to take down right now is people.

It is NOT a closet racist statement. You don't know the people on this forum, and you cannot chastise them for simply trying to explain themselves so you will understand where they are coming from. /INFJfail
 
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