That flag represented the idea of racial superiority from the beginning.

That flag is the result of a group of states fighting to secede from the union in order to continue prosper under the institution of slavery.

Your ancestors bled under that flag, because they fell victim to propaganda by the powerful elite who did not want to see a profitable way of life end. The vast majority of enlisted southern soldiers were poor and did not own slaves. They were fear mongered into supporting a slavery, because of a fear of free black men and women being equal to them.

The following quote is from John Townsend, cotton plantation owner.

quote:
“It will be to the non-slaveholder, equally with the largest slaveholder, the obliteration of caste and the deprivation of important privileges,” he cautioned. “The color of the white man is now, in the South, a title of nobility in his relations as to the negro,” he reminded his readers. “In the Southern slaveholding States, where menial and degrading offices are turned over to be per formed exclusively by the Negro slave, the status and color of the black race becomes the badge of inferiority, and the poorest non-slaveholder may rejoice with the richest of his brethren of the white race, in the distinction of his color. He may be poor, it is true; but there is no point upon which he is so justly proud and sensitive as his privilege of caste; and there is nothing which he would resent with more fierce indignation than the attempt of the Abolitionist to emancipate the slaves and elevate the Negroes to an equality with himself and his family.”

This post was edited on 9/16/14 at 9:33 am

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Posted by Ace Midnight

Between sanity and madness

Member since Dec 2006

89677 posts

Posted on 9/16/14 at 9:55 am to BIGDAB

quote:
That flag represented the idea of racial superiority from the beginning.

The Stars and Bars I can agree, to a certain degree. I still take issue with the CSA solely existing (and fighting) to preserve slavery - more like "extend" or "soft landing" - as most knew slavery could not persist indefinitely.

But, the battle flag is different.

quote:
Your ancestors bled under that flag, because they fell victim to propaganda by the powerful elite who did not want to see a profitable way of life end.

Certainly valid from a certain perspective.

quote:
The vast majority of enlisted southern soldiers were poor and did not own slaves.

Also true. In fact, they had more in common with slaves than they did white northerners, certainly. Our greatest national tragedy is that we did not accept some modest "soft landing" emancipation, whereby the government offered some compensation, and freed slaves worked for a time, with ever increasing protections and emancipation over a decade or so - certainly would have been better than what happened. The resentment following Reconstruction, and residual discrimination persisted, legally, for the better part of 8 decades, and we still face after images of it today.

quote:
The following quote is from John Townsend, cotton plantation owner.

He did not speak for all southerners. If he speaks for all southerners, then Virginians like Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson speak for all of them by describing slavery as a moral depravity - and Lee thought it was worse for whites than blacks (of course, he was only acquianted with slavery, the institution, in the gentrified, Virginia tradition - he had no idea of the horrors on cotton plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama).

In any event, we are getting fairly far afield. The symbol itself should not be oppressive to blacks - per se - after all, blacks served in that army.

One of the ultimate ironies of race relations (painted increasingly as solely white, southern oppression of blacks) - was the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg - in 1913. Because hotels were segregated (in Pennsylvania - you know, one of the yankee "liberator" states?) in the area, there was no provision made for housing the black veterans of the ANV. There had been provision made for the white yanks, black yanks and rebels. The white veterans of the ANV pooled their money to pay for (legally required to be) separate accomodations of their black veterans attending the reunion.

This post was edited on 9/16/14 at 9:56 am

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