How the North Distorts Civil War History

Hugh Howard – Washington Post

With astonishing speed — and a surprising new consensus — the status of the Confederate battle flag has been altered. While a reconsideration of that symbol’s original meaning is long overdue, there is a countervailing risk that the righteous satisfaction in some quarters at lowering the flag may blind us to another large misunderstanding of the past.

As important as this corrective may be, we will do our historical memory a disservice if we fail to recall how citizens of the Union regarded Abraham Lincoln’s War, slavery and even African Americans. To a surprising extent, the way the North remembers the Civil War is also deeply flawed and misleading.

Maria Calef, of Columbia, S.C., waves a sign as she celebrates in front of the South Carolina statehouse, Thursday, July 9, 2015. (AP)

By Removing the Confederate Battle Flag, We Hide the Ugly Truth

Richard Cohen – Washington Post

Georgia seceded from the Union in January 1861, and spelled out the reasons with a statement that is more than 3,300 words long, including 35 references to “slave” and “slavery.” Slavery is the reason Georgia left to join the Confederate States of America — and the Georgians of that era made no bones about it. The statement is refreshingly — and astonishingly — free of euphemisms such as “states’ rights.” It is devoted to the purported right of white people to own black people. It retains the power to shock.

I read the document because of what Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said about the Confederate battle flag. “When you’re putting a flag on someone’s grave, to me, I think it’s a little different than being racist,” he said. He added that “the majority of people that actually died in the Civil War on the Confederate side didn’t own slaves. These were people that were fighting for their states, and you know, I don’t think they even had any thoughts about slavery.”

Maybe so. But I don’t think the average German soldier in World War II gave much thought to Jews. Yet he was fighting for a regime determined to kill every last Jew anywhere in the world. What the average soldier thought or felt is immaterial. It is what he was willing to do that mattered.

Furling that Banner: The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Flag in South Carolina, 1961-2000

Charles Joyner – The State

Southerners should be the last Americans to expect indefinite continuity of their history and its symbols. History lives in time; and time continues to unfold, regardless of our efforts to set it in stone or to freeze it in memory. The causes and consequences of the Civil War are blurred now into mythology, into signs and symbols. Historical memory of such transformations as slavery and secession, disunion and defeat, emancipation and reconstruction, reunion and reaction, and the passing of such structures as one-crop agriculture, one-horse farms, and one-party politics, would seem to afford us scant basis for assuming the eternal duration of our social arrangements or their symbols.

The flag was held by some to be a sacred symbol of Southern heritage, and they sought to keep it flying atop the dome of the South Carolina State House. The flag was held by others to be a shameful symbol of slavery and racism, and they sought to have it removed. Sacralization of the flag helped some to deal with the immensity and horror of the Civil War. But the flag was a constant reminder to others of the immensity and horror of slavery.

Bree Newsome of Charlotte, N.C., climbs a flagpole to remove the Confederate battle flag at a Confederate monument in front of the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday, June, 27, 2015. (AP)

In Defense of the Confederate Battle Flag

Frank Leatherwood – The Anniston Star

I express my deep sorrow for the senseless murder of the good Christian folks in Charleston, S.C. I spent a week in that state last year, and all those folks were nice to me. This is especially true of the black residents of Charleston. I may have even spoken to one of the victims and not known it. I can tell you that those folks treated me like I was a neighbor.

We at the Sons of Confederate Veterans detest the heinous crime committed on those innocent and God-fearing Christian folks in that city, or in any other city or country.

Our Confederate flag did not murder those folks; his firearm did not murder them. This was a horrific act perpetrated by a single maniac … I ask that all of citizens and elected officials refrain from being a part of the genocide of Southerners by removing our flags, symbols and monuments.

The History Behind the Confederate Flag Controversey

Owens Brown – The Exponent Telegram

Do white people who claim the Confederate flag as part of their heritage really know what they are claiming?

First and foremost, the Confederate flag is a symbol of treason. It evokes an equivalent response in black Americans as a flag with the symbol of the Nazi swastika does in Jewish people. The two flags are first cousins, and both represent oppression in the Antebellum South and in Nazi Germany.

There seems to be a deliberate and systematic attempt to downplay the history of slavery in America. The truth is that the United States government was complicit in keeping millions of human beings in illegal bondage for 90 years and allowing Jim Crow laws to exist for an additional 100 years.