Confederate Battle Flag

[NT91]

http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/flags/ms_flag.htm

Mississippi State Flag History.

Edited December 6, 2006 by NT91

[Coffee and TV]

Regardless of what it stands for, what it used to, or what you associate it with, Mississippi is no longer a part of the Confederacy.

[NT91]

Regardless of what it stands for, what it used to, or what you associate it with, Mississippi is no longer a part of the Confederacy.

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That's to bad too!

[El Paso Eagle]

Regardless of what it stands for, what it used to, or what you associate it with, Mississippi is no longer a part of the Confederacy.

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I know this will most likely get me blasted - but most "X"-Americans (put in Irish, African, German, etc.) where not born in those countries. The fact is that most references to our past have nothing to do with the present.

P.S. – I am not too naive to know that a lot of people probably fly the Confederate flag for racial reasons, but a lot of people keep it because they are told not to and are offended that others try and dictate what parts of their heritage they can and can not maintain.

[Coffee and TV]

P.S. – I am not too naive to know that a lot of people probably fly the Confederate flag for racial reasons, but a lot of people keep it because they are told not to and are offended that others try and dictate what parts of their heritage they can and can not maintain.

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just like a lot of those same people or their fathers wanted to keep the heritage of segregation in place as well.

[JayDub]

What do I think of?

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And somewhere...a banjo plays.

[Guest JohnDenver]

A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

....

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

I think it is convenient for the "heritage" crowd to always say the Civil War wasn't about slavery. The heritage crowd will say it is about taxes, labor, state's rights, etc etc. Yes, that is right.. no one can deny that. But under the surface of all of those reasons lays slavery. It isn't deniable.

In Texas' own words, they list the FIRST reason as the negro slaves belong to the white man. Then they go on to say that the Federal government hasn't protected Texas from Indians or Mexico ( ..again in their own words, because Texas supported slavery and the Federal Union didn't approve of that, so they didn't protect Texas out of spite). It all comes back to slavery.

So if those are the reason you want to proudly hold up that flag (from the VERY words of the people seceding), then have at it. That doesn't make me proud... as a Texan... as an American... as a human. It is in within your rights to wave the CSA battle flag, but whether or not that flag should represent my community's school, that is where I draw the line.

Private universities? Sure, they can use it... Oral Roberts can use any Christian flag they want. KKK University, they can use the CSA flag. I really don't care... In fact, I welcome them to use it. That way I can easily tell who I don't want to invite over to watch football with me.

*****************************************************************

On another note, damn, those old-timers knew how to write a mighty fine run-on sentence!

[NT91]

bump

[Guest JohnDenver]

bump

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Why?

[UNTflyer]

A.  States rights to slavery.

B.  Taxation of slave trade without representation..

C.  Union embargo on importation of slaves.

D.  Higher price controls on southern goods such as cotton picked by slaves.

E.  Lincoln's early blockade of southern ports importing slaves (prior to the war).

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There. All better. Oh, and you're right... the Civil War was about all those issue.... as they related to slavery.

[eulesseagle]

UNTflyer....it might do you well to read something else about the south than Harriet Beacher Stowes, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to get a real perspective of what the North was doing to the south and the southern response.

[Guest JohnDenver]

UNTflyer....it might do you well to read something else about the south than Harriet Beacher Stowes, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to get a real perspective of what the North was doing to the south and the southern response.

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It is sad that scoff at this book (which was the second best selling book during the nineteenth -- only second to the bible).

It is a book about the inhuman treatment of slaves and the the accurate portrayal of the lives of freed and still captive slaves in America pre-civil war and was the first book to be written from the perspective of the slave.

Instead you want to cry: "poor innocent southerners -- look at what those immoral dirty carpet bagging northerners did to them!" ...

I know you won't see that as backwards. I know.

If this is the shock and awe portion of the thread, mission accomplished.

Maybe you should actually read this book instead of rolling your eyes at it. It has a nice Christian theme... Tom is the Jesus like figure that sacrifices for the betterment of this slave pals.

[eulesseagle]

Uncle Tom's Cabin was a book of fiction depicting one woman's "perspective" of what she "thought" was going on. Stowe never ventured south of New York in her life.

If life was so harsh and inhumane in the south then why were slaves able to procreate from 697,000 (from the census of 1790) to over 4,000,000 in 1861?? Slave ownership dropped from 25% to 10% during this same period.

Whites were not the only ones who owned slaves during this period. This included free blacks and american indians who were notoriously harsher on slaves than whites.

One last point.....the american south was the "only" place in the americas (south america, latin america, mexico and north america) where slaves were able to procreate. The other countries the slaves were dying faster than what the countries could bring them in.

you can find some of these startling facts in Dinesh D'Souza's book, "The End of Racism."

Edited December 19, 2006 by eulesseagle

[Coach]

Since you put it like that, I guess slavery wasn't such a bad thing after all.

[Guest JohnDenver]

Since you put it like that, I guess slavery wasn't such a bad thing after all.

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Has anyone ever seen EE and David Duke in the same room? I didn't think so...

I didn't know that being owned, beaten and only being worth 2/3rds of a white person means your testes and ovaries stopped working. Of course the slave owners wanted the slave offspring, they would grow their work force without having to illegally import more workers. And the last I checked, even the lowest of low third world countries, that have little medical care, spreading AIDS, wars and massive hunger -- STILL manage to out reproduce the "developed" countries. This isn't surprising... I have never heard that excuse.

I have listened to the Holocaust denials. I have never really paid attention to the slavery denials.. Maybe I should.

[Guest JohnDenver]

Stowe never ventured south of New York in her life.

Stowe was raised in Ohio, which is directly next to a slave state... and had many freed slaves.

Try looking into "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" in which the facts for the book are documented: A Key to UTC

Slavery was one big myth invented by the black man to get government welfare.

[eulesseagle]

JD....

I never said that slavery never existed, it did.

I am just trying to get you to understand that there is a different side to the major misconceptions of what happened. Besides "just" about anyone who has looked into the subject will explain to you that Stowes book (UTC) has many misconceptions based upon her percieved ideas of what she thought was going on.

Another fact.....U.S. Grant freed his slaves days before he was sworn in as President in 1869.

Another fact.....Most southern slave owners built schools, churches and hospitals for their slaves.

Another fact.....Most southern slave owners gave parcels of land to their slaves for them to raise livestock and grains to sell.

Another fact.....Most slaves worked shorter hours and had better diets than the Irish and Italian workers in the Northeast during this same time period.

Another fact.....More blacks fought for the south than did for the north during the Civil War. If you take the time and look at these documents in the library of Congress most southern blacks were "mustered" into southern regiments as "whites" because of various state laws and mostly into artilery regiments. Where as in the north the blacks were "mustered" into front line infantry who usually went in first because of the racial prejudice of yankee staff officers to have the blacks used as "cannon fodder" prior to sending in their "elite" white troops.

If you read nothing else in 2007 please read, The End of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza. He has written several in depth and documented texts on various subjects with no bias. He just presents the facts.

Do I think slavery is wrong today? yes.

Do I think it was wrong prior to the Civil War? IMHO, it was a necessary implement to sustain an aggrarian culture based upon their major cash crop, cotton. You have to remember that the south was aggrarian and the north was industrial.

Anyway, read the book.

[Guest JohnDenver]

If you read nothing else in 2007 please read

I read plenty of books...

I would like sources to back your "facts."

Also, just because someone is fed better and works "less" hours, doesn't matter when you are breed like a cash cow and worked like a (wait for it, wait for it) SLAVE.

It isn't a fact that more blacks fought for the south than the north. They formed their own regiments to protect their lands from invaders, but that is a far cry from actually fighting for a cause. Information traveled slower back then, so when something happened in the North (say, the freeing of slaves), the blacks in the south didn't know this immediately. Therefore, there were instances of protecting their goods, their families, their churches from the unknown. This number of organized blacks that JOINED the confederate army and fought on the front line was less than 3000. There were over 19,000 in the union army. Not to mention the shear numbers of blacks were in the south... there is more of a pool to trick, force (or for some wierd reason) black slave owners who COULD fight for the battles going on around their areas. This isn't rocket science -- nor surprising.

I don't care about Grant's slaves -- that doesn't sway my opinion on the validity or causes of breeding humans for trafficking and forced labor.

Of course a slave owner would build someplace for their human property to get medical treatment. They need to protect their investment and keep them procreating. I would like SOURCES for this fact about "MOST" slave owners building hospitals, churches and schools.

By the end of slavery, the owners started giving in more to the slaves to try to keep them from revolting... that doesn't make it right that they started to do something for them.

There was a different type of civil war going on in the north.. it dealt with wage, labor and land ownership. Of course life wasn't happy up there. Man, no one but the very rich were happy in the old world.

EE: You REALLY want me to believe that a man who wrote a book titled: "The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 " isn't BIASED on social issues!!?!? Just facts!? I'll pass.

In a scrupulous and balanced study, D'Souza shows that racism is a distinctively Western phenomenon, arising at about the time of the first European encounters with non-Western peoples, and he chronicles the political, cultural, and intellectual history of racism as well as the twentieth-century liberal crusade against it.

Wow, I will tell my Korean coworkers who hate the Japenese coworkers that racism is a western thing. I will tell my Indian coworkers that can't stand the Pakistani coworkers that racism is a western thing. I will tell the Northern Africans in France that are hated in their urban ghettos that racism is only a western thing.

Only the facts.

You should read, if you haven't already "A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present" by Howard Zinn. It is one of the must reads for all Americans. It has statistics from all kinds of plantations, doesn't work on generalizations. It is almost overload.

[eulesseagle]

JD....

I already gave you Dinesh D'Souza's "The End of Racism" and the Library of Congress for my facts. I explained to you that southern blacks were mustered in as "whites" not blacks into many of the southern regiments which makes your figures "wrong."

Your other point of slavery, according to D'Souza is out of context. He also sites slavery all over the world and documents all instances.

Besides, the emancipation proclumation only affected southern states in hopes, by lincoln, it would produce a slave revolt in the south to disrupt the south. It never freed slaves in the north.

If you picked up this book he has over 150 pages of documented references.

Your personal view of slavery comes from UTC and contemporary texts of the victors who have the flexibility to rewrite history in their own biases.

Personally, I think we will have to agree to disagree.

Edited December 20, 2006 by eulesseagle

[The Fake Lonnie Finch]

Here's my problem with the Confederate Flag...

It was a flag of rebellion against the United States. To me, it's as offensive as the Mexicans rioting in the streets earlier this year waving the flags of Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and the former Soviet Union. Mississippi is part of the United States. Their side lost the civil war. Ditch the flag. It's really that simple.

Now, before any of you knee-jerk on me, know the following:

-I am white.

-I was born and raised in Texas, a state that joined the Confederacy, and lost with them.

-I vote straight ticket Republican every time out, without exception. As long as Democrats continue their unrelenting pursuit of slaughtering the unborn, pushing gay marriage, and appointing judges that legislate from the bench, I will be a Republican.

It's been almost 140 years since the Civil War ended. The only people who insist on propping up the Confederate Flag are morons who cloak themselves in the lame "tradition and heritage" crap. The Confederate Flag should no more be flown over any statehouse than should the flags of Great Britian, France, Spain, Mexico, or any other country we kicked out of here or bought out.

This is America. Fly the American flag. If you were a confederate state and have some part of the rebellion flag in your current flag, sack up and change it.

[FirefightnRick]

Whenever this subject comes up people will give a strange look when you tell them that the Texas Conferederate battle flag is currently flying on every government flag pole in the great state of Texas.

http://www.confederateflags.org/states/FOTCtexas.htm

At the beginning of the secession movement in earnest in early 1861, Texas was the only southern state to have an official state flag. This was merely due to the fact that Texas was first created as an independent republic in March of 1836 and the "Lone Star Flag" as it became known was the final adopted flag of the Republic of Texas. It began service in January 1839 and this national flag naturally became the state flag with the annexation and admission of Texas into the Union in 1845.

The Act of the Texas Congress adopting the flag on 25 January 1839, also adopted national arms and a national great seal. The pertinent sections of that act read as follows:

Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act, the national arms of the Republic of Texas be, and the same is hereby declared to be a white star of five points, on an azure ground, encircled by an olive and live oak branches.

Sec. 2. Be it further enacted, That the national great seal of this Republic shall, from and after the passage of this act, bear the arms of this nation as declared by the first section of this act, and the letters "Republic of Texas."

Sec. 3. Be it further enacted, That from and after the passage of this act, the national flag of Texas shall consist of a blue perpendicular stripe of the width of one third the whole length of the flag, with a white star of five points in the centre thereof, and two horizontal stripes of equal breadth, the upper stripe white, the lower red, of the length of two thirds of the whole length of the flag; anything in the act to which this is an amendment to the contrary notwithstanding.

With the secession of Texas in 1861 from a union it had so joyfully entered in 1845, it is a bit surprising that the Lone Star state flag was not taken up by many of the forming state units who instead exhibited a wide variety of independent flag designs. One likely theory is that since the admission of Texas to the Union in 1845, the state flag had taken a subordinate position in the hearts of Texans to the flag of the United States. After sixteen years under the Stars and Stripes and then its quick admission into the Confederacy with a new and exciting national flag, the Stars and Bars, the Texas flag did not have the exposure to the Texans of that period as it had less than one generation before. It might also be noted that, as a result of the great immigration into Texas in the period between 1845 and 1861, a large percentage of the 1861 population were not in Texas at the end of the Republic in 1845. A contemporary War Between the States photograph shows a Stars and Bars flag flying from the Capitol building in Austin without an accompanying state flag and it is highly likely the Stars and Stripes flew there before it. Again, the use of the state flag by government authorities in any meaningful quantities during this early period is unlikely.

However, the Lone Star Flag was not forgotten. The 1st Texas Infantry Regiment, part of what became Hood's Texas Brigade, the most recognized of Texan Confederate units, carried a large Lone Star state flag into battle in Virginia. Lost under the most glorious circumstances possible, the near annihilation of the regiment at Sharpsburg (Antietam) in 1862, it was replaced with a black-bordered Lone Star flag that saw more glory at Gettysburg. This type of publicity certainly helped the state flag earn a share of renewed interest in its home state.

Additionally, a few other units would carry the Lone Star flag into battle although the flag would be far from common. The 5th Texas Infantry, also of Hood's Texas Brigade, would carry a single star flag into battle in the summer and fall of 1862 but recent evidence suggests that perhaps this flag was a first national flag with a single star. However, during the war and even afterwards the flag was thought to be a Lone Star state flag. A few other units also carried Texas State flags but it appears that the use of state flag was not common, although it clearly was not forgotten.

There is strong evidence to suggest that from the Lone Star flag's inception in 1839 the star was intended to have been pointed towards the top edge with two points towards the bottom edge as can be seen on the flag today. Accompanying the original 1839 act adopting the flag is a contemporary drawing, with the endorsement of President Mirabeau Lamar, showing the star in this position. However, if surviving examples are considered, the exception was apparently the rule with flags made in Texas in the in the period 1839 through 1865. The Lone Star, much more often than not, was tilted to varying degrees with no particular "tilt" the norm. This practice carried over into Confederate national flags made in Texas, where often there was a larger central star surrounded by smaller stars. In these flags the "tilt" in the central star was also a most common feature. One possible explanation could be that as flags were not mass produced in that period and each flag bore the knowledge of the individual maker. With vastness of the state coupled with a scattered population taken into consideration, very little in the way of standardization was achievable, and the need for standardization was certainly not necessary.

With the end of the War Between the States, the Lone Star Flag, covered in glory in the first quarter of a century of its existence, would no longer be an inconspicuous state flag. Its legend would continuer to grow as big as the state it represented. It is probably the only state flag today that can be commonly recognized internationally. Its simple and classic design has reached the status of near immortality.

As to the "Rebel" flag discussions I'm with JD on this. Educated people know where it stems from but few who still use it today don't have a clue and use it for other messages. Whenever I get the chance to meet someone who has it on the back of their vehicle or whatever I'll make an effort to come right out and ask.....Hey, are you from Virginia?.

Rick

Edited December 20, 2006 by FirefightnRick