Do people who associate the Confederate flag with slavery know that there were also slaves in the North?

Answer 1

You can see by the answers they do not know the truth and do not care to learn it. Thanks for trying. “and they [Yankees] are marked ... with such a perversity of character, as to constitute, from that circumstance, the natural division of our parties” Thomas Jefferson

In the 1770s, the South had every reason to continue the relationship with England, one of its best customers. It was the manufacturing North that was getting the short end of that stick. Southerners joined the Revolutionary War out of patriotism, idealism, and enlightened political philosophy such as motivated Jefferson, not patriotism, philosophy, and economic betterment which inspired the North.
In 1860, the shoe was on the other foot. Southern agrarians were at heel to the nation's bankers and industrialists. That just got worse with the election of the Republican Lincoln, bringing back into power the party favoring the wealthy supply side, as it still does.
Then as now central to that, party's interest was keeping down the cost of manufacture. Today labor is the big cost, so today they move the plants offshore and leave US workers to their fate. Back before the US labor movement existed the big cost was raw materials, and the GOP was just as unprincipled toward its Southern suppliers as it is today toward labor.
Thanks to modern graveyard science and surviving records, researchers know that in 1760, 100 years before the War Between the States, Charleston, South Carolina, had the largest population of slaves and we say proudly the second largest slave population was in New York City.
One of the main quarrels was about taxes paid on goods brought into this country from foreign countries. This tax was called a tariff. Southerners felt these tariffs were unfair and aimed toward them because they imported a wider variety of goods than most Northern people. Taxes were also placed on many Southern goods that were shipped to foreign countries, an expense that was not always applied to Northern goods of equal value. An awkward economic structure allowed states and private transportation companies to do this, which also affected Southern banks that found themselves paying higher interest rates on loans made with banks in the North. As industry in the North expanded, it looked towards southern markets, rich with cash from the lucrative agricultural business, to buy the North's manufactured goods. The situation grew worse after several "panics", including one in 1857 that affected more Northern banks than Southern. Southern financiers found themselves burdened with high payments just to save Northern banks that had suffered financial losses through poor investment. However, it was often cheaper for the South to purchase the goods abroad. In order to "protect" the northern industries Jackson slapped a tariff on many of the imported goods that could be manufactured in the North. When South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification in November 1832, refusing to collect the tariff and threatening to withdraw from the Union, Jackson ordered federal troops to Charleston. A secession crisis was averted when Congress revised the Tariff of Abominations in February 1833. The Panic of 1837 and the ensuing depression began to gnaw like a hungry animal on the flesh of the American system. The disparity between northern and southern economies was exacerbated. Before and after the depression the economy of the South prospered. Southern cotton sold abroad totaled 57% of all American exports before the war. The Panic of 1857 devastated the North and left the South virtually untouched. The clash of a wealthy, agricultural South and a poorer, industrial North was intensified by abolitionists who were not above using class struggle to further their cause.
In the years before the Civil War the political power in the Federal government, centered in Washington, D.C., was changing. Northern and mid-western states were becoming more and more powerful as the populations increased. Southern states lost political power because the population did not increase as rapidly. As one portion of the nation grew larger than another, people began to talk of the nation as sections. This was called sectionalism. Just as the original thirteen colonies fought for their independence almost 100 years earlier, the Southern states felt a growing need for freedom from the central Federal authority in Washington. Southerners believed that state laws carried more weight than Federal laws, and they should abide by the state regulations first. This issue was called State's Rights and became a very warm topic in congress.

These are facts not emotions or unsupported claims, now what was the War over?


God Bless You and The Southern People.

Answer 2

Gah.
Most of those who associate the Confederate flag are not even aware that this was a battle flag, only.
Here in Georgia, the flag has been a tremendous issue ... Governor Roy "Call me 'Roy'" Barnes changed the old flag (the state seal and the St. Andrew's Cross/Confederate Battle Flag) for a blue one that looked a lot like a placemat from Denny's or Howard Johnson's with little versions of all the seven or eight flags of the past across the bottom. Dum-de-dum-dum.
Roy's unpopular action probably contributed to his being a one-term governor, and may have turned Georgia from the staunchest of Democratic states into a GOP stonghold.
Then came Governor Sonny "Punkinhead" Purdue, who was supported into office by the "flaggers" (those who made the flag thing a main platform plank). Among his first acts in office was to ditch the Barnes/Placemat flag with one that looked a lot like the old flag, but didn't have the cross of St. Andrews (the "Confederate" cross).
Here's the thing, though. The flag Sonny came up with is, in fact, a close representation of the ACTUAL Confederate Flag, with two horizontal red bars above and below a white bar, with the state seal in a blue field to the left.
Imagine, Sonny replaces the iconic and controversial Cross of St. Andrew, that historically was only carried by a few Southern regiments (but was used extensively in the movies), with the REAL Flag of the Confederacy, and the NAACP and other activists are HAPPY!!!!! And the racists and flaggers - who now have the real Confederate Flag flying over the state capitol dome - are MAD!!!
Go figger.
What a coup. No wonder Sonny got a second term, even though he's so crooked they'll have to screw him into the ground when he dies. Them's the breaks, and PT Barnum was doubly right, at least in Georgia.
Yeah, there were slaves in the North - this is news? There were slaves in England, and Europe, and South America, and North America ... slaves pretty much everywhere, if you check your history books. There are STILL slaves in Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand and some of the Arab states, and parts of Africa. Slavery never went away - it is still with us. It is or has been an institution throughout the world.
Ignorance is bliss. If some citizens of America choose not to care that slavery continues in the world, and would rather whine about one peripheral conflict in the war on slavery 150 years ago that wasn't even about slavery to begin with (started over a Constitutional debate between factions supporting state's rights and those supporting federal power - guess who won?), well, if they choose to be ignorant and apathetic over the plight of slaves in the world today ... more power to them.
It's just sad, really.

Answer 3

Slavery became associated with the Confederate flag when the KKK started using it in their rallies.

True, it's a miss-labeled flag associated with slavery but associated with it, it is. It's very unfortunate for sure as the South was made out to be the bad guys in the civil war when it was not about slavery, but state's rights. A huge disparity in how the North was treated as compared to the South (primarily economic) ultimately caused the Civil War. Slavery just got caught up in the mix.

If you read historical data on the Civil War, you'll find yourself siding with the South much more than siding with the North. Most people just don't know the facts.

Answer 4

For the most part, no. These folks are products of the current educational system, which is using textbooks written mostly in the North. As the old saying goes, "The winner gets to write the history books," and that is very true in this instance.

When you point out to people that slavery existed in the North as well as the South, they'll say, "Oh, but the North got rid of it first!" But this is incorrect; the historical truth is that slavery died out on its own in the North as the Northern states became industrialized and the need for slave labor evaporated. Slavery wasn't outlawed in the entire United States until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December, 1865.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Answer 5

So, what is your point? Yes, I associate the Confederate flag with slavery, because it was used by the slave states during the Rebellion. Yes, I knew that there were also slaves in the North, since many slaves from the South escaped to the North. Did you know there were many people in the South who supported the Union?

Answer 6

NOW NOW!! Let's not muddy the situation with Facts. There are people who need something to be mad at and they don't need a factual reason to do it. So, Let's ignore the northern Slaves, The fact that the underground railroad was a minority of people, That most northerns turned in members of the rairoadand run-away slaves, Most southerns especially the soldiers didn't own slaves and never had. And Please don't ever point out that there were WHITE slaves too. I won't even mention that the Stars and Bars were not even the official flag of the Confederacy. To many Facts. Just Be Mad at a piece of cloth.

Answer 7

There has been slavery in almost every country on earth.

But the slavery talk is what justified the bloodiest war in American history. In other places, the slavery was put down more peacefully and gradually.

Also, the confederate flag didn't last long enough to really come to symbolize much else (except rebellion).

Answer 8

Bruce Catton in his centenary trilogy of the Civil War asserts that there were more slave-holders in the North than in the South although the slaves themselves were working southern plantations. Is this just exploitation of the system, or was the abolitionist movement hypocritical?

Answer 9

IMHO this is matter of opinion most people know there was slaves on both sides but the south wanted to continue it where as more in the north wanted to end it hence the underground railroad

Answer 10

The accomplice flag got here about in the course of the conflict so it ought to not were flown on the slave ships. the yankee flag grow to be displayed because they were who the south offered their slaves from.

Answer 11

The whole confederate flag = slavery bit is just liberal guilt driven political correctness.