Quote:In light of recent events, the confederate flag has come under massive scrutiny. Stories such as these have came out:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/us/...?referrer=

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/c...-carolina/


And it seems everyone has an opinion on it. Even from the most unlikely sources:

http://m.nbcsports.com/content/failed-re...ered-honor


Is it something that should be remembered or has it run its course and its time to be put away for good? What does the confederate flag mean to you?

 

Racism, slavery, treason, and anti-American ideals are the things I associate with the confederate flags.

 

Of their own volition, the confederates made their views on slavery and race known.

 

This from Alexander Stephens (vice president of the Confederacy) in his "Cornerstone of the Confederacy" speech:

 

Quote: 

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution [the Confederate one] has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

(emphasis added)

 

Despite what many think, it wasn't about States' rights.

 

Here is South Carolina's declaration of Secession, in relevant part:

 

Quote: 

<p style="margin:0;">We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

<p style="margin:0;">

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

<p style="margin:0;">

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows:

<p style="margin:0;">

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

<p style="margin:0;">

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

(emphasis added)

South Carolina specifically calls out these states for exercising States' Rights in not enforcing provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act and other Slavery related laws.

 

This from Mississippi...

 

Quote: 

<p style="margin:0;">In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

<p style="margin:0;"> 

<p style="margin:0;">Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

<p style="margin:0;"> 

(emphasis added)

 

So we know the principles for which the Confederacy was founded from the Confederates' own words.

 

What about the flag itself?

 

We know the "Stars and Bars" was not the official flag of the Confederacy.  Nevertheless, we know it was adopted by part of the Confederate army in battle.  The Confederacy never repudiated its use by the army who advanced the Confederacy's aims in battle.  Its designer, William Thompson, is quoted thusly:

 

Quote: 

As a people we are fighting to maintain the heavenly ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause...Such a flag would be a suitable emblem of our young confederacy, and sustained by the brave hearts and strong arms of the south, it would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN’S FLAG.

 

(emphasis supplied)

 

The Confederacy was defeated and dissolved without ever renouncing the abhorrent principles articulated above.

 

Other than using Jedi mind tricks known as flat out denial, and meaningless platitudes like "Heritage, not hate," no defenders of the stars and bars and other confederate icons have managed to show a divorcing of the Confederacy or the flags the Confederacy adopted of its own volition from the repugnant and anti American principles upon which it was founded.

 

There was a reason that flag resurfaced in the midst of the Civil Rights era, in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education and similar legislation that ended "Separate but Equal" Jim Crow de jure segregation.  The same bigoted intransigence that resulted in the Civil was and Jim Crow led to the Duval County School board naming a high school after Nathan B. Forrest, a Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan, in addition to raising that flag, in defiance of the mandates from Washington.  The same unmitigated racism connected with the flag is the same reason the Ku Klux Klan-of all groups-is rallying to support the Confederate flag in South Carolina later this week.

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