Zach Foster: On the Confederate Flag, Part 1
A selection from "On the Confederate Flag" 2nd Edition, December 2010.
This is one in a series of articles being featured on the Political Spectrum as part of Secession Week.
On the Confederate Flag
By Zach Foster
The Confederate flag, the republic for which it stood, and the entire
war fought over its legitimacy have made up a hotbed of passionate
debate for well over a century, and probably will remain so for another
fifty years to come. The flag itself is but a symbol, though to many
the interpretation and meaning of this symbol varies greatly, with
almost as many opinions on it as there are American citizens! Many
identify this symbol with racism, oppression, and terrorism, while
others identify it as a piece of long-passed history, while a few others
identify it with a lost yet noble cause. Feelings and arguments
regarding the Confederate flag and the causes for which it has been used
are reaching a new fervor on the eve of the 150th anniversary of the
Secession.
Despite the varying feelings of love or hate for the Confederate cause,
all can agree that the flag unquestioningly symbolizes the darkest
period in American history, when the bonds of brotherhood were forsaken
as friends and relatives became armed enemies. By no means is this
written work an apology or a defense of the Confederate flag, nor is it
an accusation or condemnation—it is simply an attempt to provide an
accurate and well balanced explanation of the symbol and what it really
stood for. It is with much hope that this presentation of facts,
opinions, and arguments will bring more clarity to what the flag really
stood for, and perhaps more people after reading this will be able to
find a little more peace and closure in regards to a long-ago war that
somehow manages to still divide Americans.
Identifying the flag
The first step to understanding the Confederate flag is to be able to
identify it—there were four flags flown all across the Confederate
States of America. The
first and most easily recognized Confederate flag is the battle flag,
consisting of two navy blue bars crossing over each other to make an X
(Saint Andrew’s cross). The X has thirteen white stars in it, which
represent the thirteen states the Confederacy claimed (though it did not
completely occupy all of them). This starry X lies over a dark red
field. This is the flag that flew on every Civil War battlefield along
side of or in lieu of the Confederate national flag. However, the
version of the battle flag seen today is actually a miscue of the
original battle flag. In all but a few cases the legitimate battle flag
was a perfect square, not the rectangular flag most see today. The
miscue of which I speak is a case of mistaken identity between the
square battle flag and the rectangular Confederate Navy jack. Somewhere
down the line, a Civil War re-enactor or Confederate enthusiast may
have adopted the rectangular naval jack, since the broader shape makes
it wavier in the wind and more appealing to the eye, and replaced the
sky-blue X with the navy blue X of the square battle flag.
There were three Confederate national flags, as the Confederate
government changed the flag twice. The first National flag is the Stars
and Bars, whose name is mistakenly given to the battle flag. The Stars
and Bars was the Southern answer to the Union’s Stars
and Stripes. This flag had three bars, two red and one white, and in
the upper-left corner was the blue field with seven white stars,
representing the seven states that seceded from the Union
in late 1860 and early 1861. The Stars and Bars would be revised to
hold six additional stars, four for the final states that seceded at the
start of the Civil War, and two for states the Confederacy claimed but
didn’t necessarily hold: Kentucky and Missouri
(the Confederate-occupied areas of the two contested states were
represented by underground legislatures). When the Stars and Bars was
carried into battle at the war’s start, it was noted that it was too
easily mistaken for the Union flag in the heat of battle, so it was
supplemented or replaced by the battle flag while a new national flag
was designed.
The second national flag, Stainless Banner, was significantly different
from the Stars and Bars. In the upper-left corner was a miniature
representation of the battle flag, and the rest of the flag was white.
This new national flag was by no means mistakable for the Union’s, but was soon altered because to many it looked like a surrender flag, due to seventy-five percent of it being white.
After revision, the third national flag had the same features as its
predecessor, but added was a large vertical red bar on the far right, so
that it couldn’t be mistaken as a sign of surrender. This was the
Bloodstained Banner.
Some may be familiar with the Bonnie Blue Flag, which is a single large
white star centered over a dark blue background. This flag was a symbol
of Confederate patriotism. It had already served as the official flag
for the 1810 Florida Republic, and well as the Texas Republic flag. It was not new when the states seceded.
There were also Confederate state flags, as well as many variations of
the battle flag and national flags for individual Confederate military
units, but those need not be discussed. If any specific Confederate
military unit’s flag is being flown by a private citizen, that citizen
is most likely a professional re-enactor, a member of a historical
society, or a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
What is a Confederacy?
The Confederate government was a special type of government not entirely common in the world. The United States
was a country of several dozens of semi-autonomous states, each with
its own government, which were overseen by and answered to the Federal
government. This federal government was the highest level of government
in the nation.
The Confederate system of government was the opposite. A confederacy is
a loose coalition of state governments. In the Confederate States,
each state governed itself and answered to no higher form of
government. The national government instead answered to the states, and
its main purpose for existence was to unite its eleven states as one
country with eleven sub-governments, in order to keep the states
autonomous without becoming eleven independent countries.
Unlike the United States,
whose national flag flew higher than state flags, the Confederacy’s
state flags flew higher than their national flag. The idea that a state
ought to answer to no higher government authority was the long-term
political reason for Southern secession. Many argue that the South
seceded for the right to keep slavery. This is partially true, but the
slavery issue was an economic issue in the South, not a political one.
Slavery
Nonetheless, it should be noted that the Union may not
have dissolved had the representatives from the Northern and Southern
states taken a realistic look at the possibilities of ending slavery.
Many of the Northern politicians were heavily influenced by the
abolitionist special interest while most of the Southern politicians
were plantation owners who relied on the institution to provide a labor
force. One clamored for the immediate end to slavery while the other
wanted to keep it forever.
The Confederate Constitution and most of its state constitutions
mentioned the right to maintain slavery, but it must be understood that
since the seventeenth century much of the Southern economy was deeply
entrenched in slavery and the removal of the institution would have
required a phasing out lasting several decades. If slavery were to have
been abolished overnight, the plantation-agrarian industry would have
taken a massive hit rivaling the recent corporate bankruptcies which
required the bailout of hundreds of billions of dollars in order to keep
these big corporations from going completely under and causing the loss
of countless thousands of jobs, more so than were lost leading up to
the bailout.
A much more efficient way to end slavery would have been a phasing out
as mentioned above. Over a period of thirty or so years, it may have
worked to slowly limit the breeding of slaves, then to limit the sale
thereof, then to slowly start freeing slaves and rehiring them as
laborers. Hiring plantation workers based on the hourly wage system
would have been more economically efficient because:
-As hired laborers, clothing wouldn’t need to be provided, cutting an expense
-Food wouldn’t need to be provided (for free), cutting another expense
-Instead of providing free housing to the workers, workers and their
families could live in plantation housing with rent being a fixed
deduction from their wages, cutting yet another expense
-Workers absent without leave could be fired or monetarily penalized
rather than plantation owners having to organize law enforcement or a
posse to go searching for fugitive slaves, saving a great deal of public
and private funds, as well as eliminating the need to remove men from
the labor force to do searches
-Workers could spend money not used on living expenses on the local
economy, thus strengthening the local economy and the free market system
-Business owners, after saving all of the above expenses, could either
create jobs or invest in the economy, thus strengthening the local
economy and the free market system
The social and moral benefits of a peaceful end to slavery would have
far outweighed the economic benefits. First and foremost, all Southern
blacks would have been treated as equals by their white counterparts (at
least within their social class), rather than just a minority of them.
Furthermore, the white/black antagonism of the Reconstruction and Jim
Crow era could have been completely avoided and Southern whites and
blacks could have lived harmoniously in a fraternal way rather than the
paternalistic way of antebellum times.
While the horrors of slavery are often blamed on the South, let it be
known that slavery was legal in a number of Northern states, and the
vast majority of ships specially built for slave shipping were built and
launched from Northern shipyards. Furthermore, tariffs on all imported
items, slaves included, were paid to and collected by the federal
government. Let it be understood that no one’s hands are clean in
regard to the institution of slavery, neither North nor South.
Continued in part 2
First image used courtesy of b36thillinois.org. Second image used
courtesy of Wikipedia. Images are used via fair use and are the property
of their respective owners, not the article author.
Zach Foster: On the Confederate Flag, Part 2
This is one in a series of articles being featured on the Political Spectrum as part of Secession Week.
Click to view On the Confederate Flag, Part 1
From “On the Confederate Flag” 2nd Edition, December 2010
By Zach Foster
Political Correctness and the Myth of the White Confederacy
Though a great majority of the soldiers in the Confederate armed forces
were Caucasian, by no means should the ethnic minorities who called
themselves Southerners be omitted from mention. Historical records and
unit rosters show that between 50,000 and 80,000 African-American men
fought in gray uniforms. Ironically enough, the first African-American
military unit in American history was the First Louisiana Native Guards,
formed in 1861 and disbanded in 1862 when Louisiana was re-conquered by
the Union (the first United States Colored Troops weren’t formed until
January of 1863). Only ten to twenty percent of the black Native
Guardsmen switched sides. The overwhelming majority of them remained
Confederate patriots. Throughout the course of the war over 10,000
Native Americans and 5,000 Hispanics fought in gray. The latter
statistic only includes those who did not pose as white men.
Though slavery existed throughout America—it was simply a fact of
life—it would be ludicrous to say that every single black man or Native
American or Hispanic was a slave, forced by a white master to fight in
his stead. Despite its many shortcomings in social advancement, there
was much diversity among the Confederate states, though the Anglo-Celtic
culture was dominant. In 1861 two Mexican states offered to secede
from Mexico and join the
Confederacy. Though the offer was tempting, Jefferson Davis turned
their governors down, since he couldn’t afford to lose the much-needed
Gulf ports operated by the French, who ruled colonial Mexico
at the time. Some Mexican citizens looking for opportunities to
advance themselves financially or socially went north to fight as
Confederate Army or Texas Militia soldiers. No small portion of the
Hispanic rebel soldiers were Cubans from Florida. To this day no one knows how many black rebel soldiers were Dominican.
Many
would wonder why so many Hispanics would fight for the Confederacy if
they were often treated as second class citizens? First and foremost,
war has historically offered young men the opportunity for adventure
and, if they could make heroes of themselves, social advancement. The
second and especially powerful reason that many Hispanics were eager to
join the rebel army is because they simply had no love for the United States. Many of the Cuban and Spanish ethnic groups of Florida were never happy about being sold into the United States
by the motherland and then greeted as citizens by a military occupation
in 1821, only to be caught up fifteen years later in the chaos of the
Second Seminole War. In regards to the ethnic Mexicans in Texas and New Mexico, this was a crop of men whose fathers most likely fought and died to keep those areas in Mexico in the Mexican-American War between 1846 and 1848 and they never forgave the United States for the conquest of northern Mexico
only thirteen years before. This reasoning explains how many ethnic
minorities enlisted—military service during a time of war offered them
adventure and opportunities to climb ladders that wouldn’t have come
otherwise, fueled by grudges against the United States.
Of the estimated one million-man-strong Confederate armed forces, nearly
a tenth of the personnel were documented non-whites. This doesn’t
include the thousands of fair-skinned soldiers who passed for white.
Though they were a minority in the military, at least one third of the
Confederate civilian population was African American—slaves mostly—yet
the overwhelming, almost complete majority of Confederate voters were
white. The requirement for voting was to be a male land owner. By
these standards, over ninety percent of white men did not even qualify
to vote. A fact often overlooked is that Southern America
was a class society. The bottom class consisted of slaves. Above the
slaves were the impoverished free people—this class accounted for most
Southern whites and nearly all free-people of color (this was the
politically correct term of the time) who labored to earn their living.
The next class consisted of merchant shopkeepers, or non-wealthy people
who were lucky to own some land. The top class consisted of the
planters, who owned much land and many slaves.
A minority of non-white plantation owners existed, but few were former
slaves. Most had inherited their possessions and status as wealthy
descendants of black Frenchmen (Creoles) and Spaniards who had achieved
noble status before the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, or
the descendents of wealthy Hispanics who achieved nobility before the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. Any Native Americans who held a
high status were most likely born into the elite within their tribes,
or were descendants of a union between a Native American and US citizen.
Native Americans are a fascinating ethnic group to study in the context
of this time period. The vast majority of Native Americans who
participated in the Civil War fought for the Confederacy, as well as
many nonaligned tribal nations that fought independently against the United States.
The most notable union whose vast majority fought for the Confederacy
was that of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw,
Creek, and Seminole). The traditional Cherokee High Chief, John Ross,
sided with the Union in the opening months of the
conflict, disassociating himself and trying to disassociate the Cherokee
nations with renegade Chief Stand Watie. Oddly enough, the American
Civil War broke out in time to engulf a civil war between the Cherokee.
Before 1862 came along, Stand Watie was the leader of the majority of
Cherokee. Watie was made a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army,
leading his people to fight the Union Army and Union tribal warriors in
the West. Watie also drafted every able bodied Cherokee male between
the ages of seventeen and fifty into Confederate military service.
Watie’s forces were among the last to surrender in June of 1865. All
Native American Confederates fought especially hard, knowing after well
over a century of Ango-Indian wars that they had everything to lose.
Native Americans were the group whose grievances against the United States
most likely far outweighed all others’. This was especially true for
the Seminoles, who by 1858 (three years before the Civil War) had lost
their third war against the U.S.
There were many other tribes that were caught up in the war, or capitalized on it. The Sioux nation in Minnesota
came together in a major uprising that tied up Army units for five
months, resulting in the deaths of 100 tribal warriors, 100 soldiers,
and hundreds of civilian Natives and settlers. Out in the West, there
were dozens of tribes that loosely and independently aligned themselves
with one side, North or South, firing on their and their ally’s common
enemy during chance encounters (especially in the Arizona and New Mexico
territories). There were also tribes (like the Apaches, for example)
who fired indiscriminately at any Anglo soldiers they encountered.
Throughout the war years and the antebellum years, thousands of slaves
were owned by Native Americans.
Many poor Southerners did aspire to own land and slaves, including black
and Hispanic citizens, since to own land and slaves was a sign of
wealth and social status. Slaves especially were a good commodity to
own, since the ownership of slaves was more prestigious than the
ownership of land. Any man who owned a slave was well respected, and
the various blacks and Hispanics who owned both land and slaves were
treated as equals to their white counterparts. Slavery is an immoral
institution regardless of what race claims ownership over what other
people; but this is just the way life was back then, and the acquisition
of human property was tolerated as a sign of prosperity.
It just happened that the majority of slaves were in the South because
the need for them to work the land far outweighed the need for their
labor in the industrial north. Despite the large abolitionist sentiment
in the North, it is often overlooked that many wealthy people owned
slaves in the North, and most kept their slaves until the surrender of
Confederate forces in 1865. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed
only the slaves in occupied rebel territory, but not those in the
states still loyal to the Union. Northern slaves were
freed in 1865, while Southern slaves were freed as Southern territories
fell to the Northern Army. Again, slavery was wrong, but it was simply
an everyday fact of American life.
Continued in Part 3
The first image is considered to be in the public domain, courtesy of Flickr.com. The
second image is used courtesy of Rebelstore.com. The men in the photo
are soldiers from the 3rd Texas Cavalry, CSA. They are from left to
right: Refugio Benavides, Atanacio Vidaurri, Cristobal Benavides and
John Z. Leyendecker. Images are used via fair use and are the property
of their respective owners, not the article author.
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