To me the Confederate Battle Flag mainly represents the area in the U.S. commonly referred to as the "South". That area has a very distinct culture within the U.S. Being a bit history buff I will also associate it with the C.S.A.
Obviously alot of racist groups use it as "their" flag, but it's much the way that Mussolini's Fascist Italy liked to conjure up images of the Roman Empire or Nazi Germany evoking "Germanic" traditions. They are descendants of these things true, but their connection is not as close as they claim.
creager91 said:
Racism, thats all the flag represents to me. Not trying to offend anyone here but the South seceded because of racism. I'm not saying you should be ashamed to be from those states or live in them, but to sport the flag? To me thats racism. You're flying the flag of the soldiers who fought and died so they could keep "ownership" of another human being. I know many Southerners try to say the Civil war was not really about racism and I don't know what your education has taught you, but slavery was the driving force behind the South Confederacy.
The Civil War wasn't driven by racism. It was driven by the argument on how powerful the individual state governments had in relation to the Federal government. There's a reason why it was the
Confederate States of America as opposed to the
Federal states of America. The Southern states wanted more independence from the Federal government and had for some time. There had been several resolutions saying that an individual state had the right to overturn a federal decision within it's borders. These were ultamitly used by the Southern states to "give" themselves the right to secede from the Union. Lincoln dissputed these claims and thus the Civil War took place. In fact it was Lincoln's strenghting of the Federal government that helped to create the U.S.A. we know today. Before then the title U.S.A. made sense because it was more of union of seperate states (not to be confused with their common American usage today) is the sense of "The State of Britin" or "The State of Russia". Originally the U.S. was supposed to be a confederacy (Hence the Articles of Confederation). The slow centralization of the government wasn't universally supported and eventually came to the front when the Southern States felt they'd had enough.
While slavery was part of the reason why the Civil War happened it was not the whole part. If you were to ask the average Southern during that time why the Southern states had seceded they probably would have answered in a similar manner: "Because the Northern States were trying to oppress them". The average Southern didn't have slaves, only the most wealthy could even afford to own them (the slave trade had ended much earlier and keeping a person alive and work-worthy out of your own pocket is expensive). Why would a poor farmer want to support something that had no impact on his life? Hell, there were even several Northern states that still had slavery at the time (Maryland and Missouri are two). The only reason why the war is so closely linked to the issue of slavery is due to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which only banned slavery
in southern states. The Emancipation Proclamation wasn't some moral law being brought about, it was a clever piece of political maneuvering that helped to dissuade the C.S.A.'s potential allies (Britain and France) from joining due to the fact that by that time both had banned slavery within their motherland. I don't know what your education taught
you, but the reason why slavery is so closely linked to Confederacy is the same reason why the Holocaust is linked with Nazi Germany; at the time the war wasn't being fought to oppose it. It's only later that these practices were used to make the victors seem all the more righteous.
