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Confederate Flags are honorable and legitimate symbols of our American history. We recognize that to some people Flags of the South represent nothing more than icons of hatred. To those people we extend a friendly hand of sympathy and understanding. Their ignorance is nothing more than the result of maleducation (the prefix mal meaning defective) and misinformation and is a direct indictment of those institutions entrusted with the serious task of education, higher education and news dissemination. Many historic symbols have been misused by various groups. Whether the Christian Cross or the Saint Andrew’s Cross of Dixie, the symbol is not at fault. These symbols have a deeper meaning that transcends their use by ignorant folk. Understand that the Flags of the Confederacy were legitimate banners of a Nation and culture that struggled for liberty, the sanctity of local government and the sovereignty of State government as intended by our Founders in 1776, and guaranteed by our Constitution in 1787, and Bill of Rights in 1791. Exactly what was it that was done by the Southern people that was illegal? What atrocity or unconstitutional act was committed by these citizens that can possibly justify such stiff animosity against them and their symbols? Our Declaration of Independence states, " When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation….That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Article X of the Bill of Rights states, " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." That seems to me to be fairly unambiguous language. The framers of our founding documents were excellent wordsmiths. They understood the meaning of what they were committing to parchment and posterity. They also understood that the voluntary nature of the union would be the best check against sectional tyranny. The citizens of the States of New York, Rhode Island and Virginia must have held a similar view as each of those States original Constitutions reserved the specific right to secede from the voluntary union. Perhaps New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley (1811-1872) summed it up best when he asked, "If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession of 3 million Colonists in 1776, then why did it not justify the secession of 5 million Southerners from the Union in 1861?" Too often the accusing finger is pointed and the dreaded S word is thrown down as a gauntlet. But that too is simply an indication of maleducation and ignorance. Slavery was not illegal in the United States until December 18, 1866. Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect January 1, 1863, almost two years after hostilities began, did not free a single slave in the United States. If the Yankee Army was about making men free, why did its Commanding General, U.S. Grant, not free his slaves until December, 1866, and if the Confederacy was about preserving slavery why would General Robert E. Lee not own slaves and be so against the institution? When in the Course of Human Events by Charles Adams is an excellent text that dispels much of the slavery myth. In his Preface he begins: "Many Northern historians and writers who are considered leading authorities on the Civil War have failed, in my opinion, to report the truth as they should have done. It is not that they have deliberately set out to mislead us; rather, they seem to behave like men and women in love. Polybius pointed out the folly of this partisan zeal, and in their persistent devotion to the memory of Lincoln and the Grand Army of the Republic, Northern historians maintain that Lincoln and the North acted with wisdom, virtue, and lofty ideals in instituting and prosecuting the war to end slavery and preserve the Union; but if, as Charles Dickens maintained, the Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control over the Southern States – then it just may be that any wisdom, virtue, and lofty ideals were with the South, not the North." When those Africans, who were placed upon slave ships by their own kind, disembarked in Yankee ports which flag did they gaze upon? The Constitution of the Confederate States of America forbade the importation of slaves, so it couldn’t have been a Confederate Flag. A Confederate Flag never flew above a slave ship. A Confederate Flag never flew above a prison housing innocent citizens. A Confederate Flag was never the authority under which troops raped, pillaged, murdered, and destroyed the property of non-combatant civilians. No, the flag that can be identified with all of these atrocities and more is the Grand Old Flag of the Yankee Union. Which is not the Union as intended by our Founders. My friends, what we are dealing with here is another in a long list of Yankee myths filled with historical fiction. Like the boy accused of a horrible wrong who places blame upon his brother to save his own hide the apologetic writers of Yankee Historical Fiction have made the myth their own and dare not be accused of being the one to blurt out the truth. Career opportunities and academic advancements are not the best for those who venture from the party line. The sad truth is that Yankee industrialists, bankers, and merchants saw their gravy train about to be derailed. The United States had the highest import tariffs of any industrial nation. In total, the South generated approximately 75% of the Federal revenue while Yankee New England received approximately 75% of the Federal spending. Just the thought of a duty free Southern competitor was enough to send them into fits as they had already become accustomed to free money from Washington. No matter what the citizens wanted, no matter that this was a nation of law, no matter that it would cost the lives of 600,000 men and boys, no matter that it would destroy the lives of millions of people. The competition must be stopped at any cost and Mr. Lincoln was just the man for the job. So it was that at every opportunity a convenient fable was manufactured to justify the next escalation of that terrible war. Again quoting from Human Events on the view held by most European journalists comes this rebuke from the British Quarterly Review in 1862, "Fate has indeed taken a malignant pleasure in flouting the admirers of the United States….Every theory to which they paid a special homage…has been successfully repudiated by their favourite statesmen. They were Apostles of Free Trade: America has established a tariff, compared to which our heaviest protection-tariff has been flimsy…she has become a land of passports, of conscriptions, of press censorship and post-office espionage, of bastilles and lettres de cachet…there was little difference between the Government of Mr. Lincoln and the Government of Napoleon III. There was a form of a legislative assembly, where scarcely any dared to oppose, for fear of a charge of treason." And from another British journalist, Karl Marx, "The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty" The Confederate Battle Flag (Naval Jack) is recognized the world over as an international symbol against tyranny. It has been present in every war where Southern GI’s were engaged since 1865. It was present as the Berlin Wall fell and there are stories of it being sighted all over Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed. Only in the United States of America are presumably free people looked down upon or punished for embracing that beautiful bloody Southern Cross. So tell me, what is it that you find so abhorrent about Confederate Flags? Is it the Flag or is it you? To recognize that banner is for you to recognize the truth. You may not have the courage it takes to do that. Back To www.confederateshop.com
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