Confederate Flag

[honeywolf7]

The only reason I can think of Caitycaity is that there were 3 different national flags for the Confederacy and it might get confusing.

 

[JAP]

Caity: on the DB it appeared as a legit question, however, the way it is worded here looks to be directed at Beauty. Thank you for responding in a civil way.

I doubt anyone would recognize the stars and bars as that is not the Confederate Flag that is reflected history. Historically the only flag we have been shown in paintings, pictures and history books is the battle flag.

I guess we can learn something new everyday from a BB!

Jen

 

[caitycaity]

i worded the statement on the db in the exact same way. i am sorry if anyone took it as a slam on anyone. that is certainly not how it was intended. it was/is a legitimate question.

hw, i can see how it might get confusing.

jap, you are right that that is what we see in paintings and stuff, and they re probably accurate (i mean it was the battle flag after all). i guess i just find it interesting that steas would fly the battle flag as opposed to one of the official flags. i guess it is all what people identify with. i'll admit i am a "yankee" (although i hate that term), so i haven't learned a lot about this until now.

 

[Robinrs]

Wow, I guess we can debate history, culture and the "facts" till we are blue in the face.

Innuendo and connotation have taken over for truth and denotation, no matter how much rhetoric you use to justify it.

Whatever the meaning, the PERCEPTION is what comes across.

I think that should always be taken into account.

We are what we reflect to others.

Now as for the blacks that remained in the South, they are a COMPLETELY different lot than those who ran away then came back. Where you are brought up and how you are brought up makes you who you are, no matter how hard you fight it.

As an African American, I cannot stand on both sides of this issue, as a Northerner now living in the South I stand on one side. It is not as much, IMHO, a cultural symbol as much as it is socio-economical from my experience. I know what I feel and perceive when I see it and there is NO amount of rhetoric, historical reference or information that can change that for me.

And for some, I KNOW it was meant to be that way.

 

[minniepumpernickel]

Excellent posts mamajoan and Robin!
Now, I've got to go check this out on the debate board!

 

[suzannen]

I wholeheartedly agree with robinrs that it's the "perception" that really counts here. I grew up in the South, the first 25 years of my life in North Carolina. My relatives have been here since the 1700s and some died in what my teachers called "the War Between the States." (I never heard it called the Civil War until I was much older!) I would never fly or display the Confederate Flag. It does not represent "pride" to so, so many people in this country, but represents hurtful images, ideas and most of all hate and ignorance. After moving to the North and marrying a Jewish Yankee, I better understand the pain some of these symbols can inadvertently (or worse purposefully) inflict, and I, myself, would not want to be a part of that.

 

[Grog]

Few example remain because Sherman's troops burned everything to the ground

The following was taken from the book "Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horwitz.

- Sherman talked a good game, pledging to "Make Georgia howl," but the reality of his march rarely matched his words (at least in Georgia; he was harsher on the Carolinas). One Georgia geographer had painstakingly mapped the March route and found that many homes alleged to have been burned were still in fact standing. "The actual destruction of private dwellings," he concluded, "was rare indeed".
Nor was Sherman's March, which caused few civilian deaths, notably cruel by historical standards. As compared tp the laying waste to Europe during the Thirty Years' War, the routine massacres of Native Americans - or the murder and mayhem caused by Confederate guerillas such as William Quantrill- Sherman's treatment of Georgia civilians was almost genteel.

- Sherman had lived in the South for twelve years before the war and shared many of it's attitudes. All this helped to explain an odd circumstance; Sherman was much less reviled by Southerners a century ago than today. Georgians received Sherman courteously during a return vist to the state just fifteen years after his March. When he died in 1891, Shermans pallbearers included his wartime foe Joseph Johnston. Eighteen years later, a reporter for Harpers' magazine retraced Shermans route and noted "a surprising absence of bitterness" among inhabitants along the route-