why do people make such a big deal about confederate flags?

Question

it's not a matter of condoning slavery, it's just recognisin the hypocritical mercenary ends of Lincoln, and commemorating the tragic dead in a war which tore a country apart, and sent countless young men to their graves. I think it's about the confederate side of the story was told. you don't need to be in favour of slavery to hate Yankee triumphalism.

a symbol of oppression? you could say the same about the british flag, with its imperial connotations

Answer 1

The confederate flag is a symbols of defiance! even to this day some Americans salute it and use it to signify their disillusionment with with Big federal government and law and order.

Whatever your views about what it stands for - you have to admit! - it does raise an heart beat when seen fluttering in the wind.

Answer 2

The Confederate Flag or Battle Standard of the South, does not represent 'slavery'. Many southeners were entirely opposed to slavery, including General Robert E Lee.

The South was not fighting a Civil War in order to keep slavery. It was fighting that war to keep it's rural and country way of life. The North was forcing the South to industrialise.

I have no problem with the Confederate Flag, because here in England at the time of the American Civil war, Americans should know that the British government and people of the day, actually supported the South. We here in UK had already made slavery illegal from c1807.

The South supplied the cotton which was woven in the cloth in the Lancashire cotton mills. The North blockaded Southern Ports, thus causing the supply of cotton to England to dry up. It caused considerable missery and deprivation in the cotton towns of England back in the 1860s.

From a purely cynical point of view, most people in UK at the time believed that the North simply wanted to push a form of capitalism which they South did not like or accept. It had very little to do with the freeing of slaves.

Indeed, the Royal Navy were at the time working flat out stopping slave ships off the West African coast ever reaching America. Where was the United States Navy in all of this? It was back in port in Boston Harbor or wherever doing nothing. Why? Because politicians in the North were in receipt of slave money.

Poor white folks in the South had never supported slavery and saw it as a means by which they were denied employment.

The British flag, the Union Flag or Jack, has a long and bloody history. It is the flag which marched around the American Colonies and terrorised a freedom loving people. It is the flag of a nation who lost it's way and who were defeated in the Revolution because they could not see that "liberty, freedom and democacy" was the way forward in the age of the enlightenment.

In Ireland, the British flag is still called "The Butcher's Apron" in some quarters and with good reason. The Irish people were systematically starved and beated by the bearers of that ugly flag - that symbol of neo-nazism.
Edit: More Americans died in the Civil War than in all the wars they ever fought in since.

Answer 3

Is "triumphalism" a word?
Some people who "make a big deal" about the flying of the Confederate flag have the same right to do so as those who "make a big deal" about displaying, with pride, the Nazi Swastika. To give them the benefit of the doubt, highly questionable, is to assume they do not know the history these two symbols represent. THAT'S what's reprehensible, not some stupid piece of cloth - ask a Holocaust survivor - you won't find a living former slave.
Are you aware that the South started the War? So sorry Lincoln fought to preserve the Union.
Are you aware that the Ku Klux Klan still uses the Confederate flag as its own? Problem there, I think.
Lincoln was devasted by the War - by ALL the dead - not just GAR deaths. To him, and most others, they were ALL Americans. They were ALL grieved. Some folks just appear to like living in the past. It's been over 160 years for crying out loud.

Answer 4

Because people who hate think it has something
to do with slavery and race. Wrong it never
flew over a slave ship. That was the Union Jack
or the American flag. As begin Racist look at
pictures when the Klan was big in early 1900s
till the 1920s It was the US flag that the Klan
carried in Marches The rebel flag has only
recently been part of some white power groups
If you are going hate flag that is really a racist flag
hate the US flag. I dont

Answer 5

You should try flying the flag of St George in England and see what happens!!!
For some reason people get really uptight about flags and previous misuse meanings, it would be like flying the National Socialist Flag to some.
I would just tell them to 'mind their own buisness' and get on with it if I was you and have pride in your beliefs, those who can not see past the popular presses forced interpritation of a symbol are just blinkered and uneducatated.
I also agree with your stand on the Confederacy, as an Englishman, I am not interested in the popular versions of the victor, but like to look at the whole story, considering what the confederates had, what they did and what happened to them (eg Sherman raid) they deserve more recognition.
Good luck

Answer 6

I think that regardless of how anyone feels about Lincoln or yankee triumphalism, the confederate flag is a symbol of the dissolution of the Union, meaning the United States. While it is better to live in a country without slavery, the Civil War was a time of such bloodshed that it seems unfit to be celebrated. The confederate flag, born of the desire to separate from one's own country and divide the nation in two in support of slavery, is a symbol for those ideals and represents to the nation and the world a return to those confederate ideals. We don't have yankees and johnny reb's anymore. We have Americans. That's recognition enough for me that all of those people died; one country, for everyone.

Answer 7

To many in the South it is a symbol of National identity and heritage, but to the vast majority it is a symbol of revolution, slavery (despite the fact that two Union states still used slaves) and the death of thousands of people. It could also be seen with the same derision as the Nazi Swastika.
For many in the South, the split from the Union was more to do with self determination, rather than slavery and that needs to be remembered.

Answer 8

i think its like with the swastika which was demonised by the Nazis. people other than those to whom it has been a sacred symbol of peace and good fortune for 1'000s of years see it as a symbol of oppression . all most people know about the American Civil War is the slavery excuse. unfortunately though, a majority of those who openly display either the swastika or the Confederate flag do so as a racist gesture.

Answer 9

The confederate flag in the US has been usurped in the same way as the union flag in the UK.

That means innocent patriots have had their flag removed from their ownership by ignorant racist peasants who use the flag to pretend that they are the nationalists.

It is theft...and it is normal patriotic Americans and British who are left feeling guilty about their own national symbols.

Answer 10

If you are going to refer to the ‘Confederate Flag’ it is important to define to which one you are referring.

There are multiple versions of the ‘national’ flag of the confederacy. However, most people are referring to the Confederate Battle flag which an entirely different thing. Any of the versions of the national flag of the Confederacy are historic items. They represented a sovereign nation which was invaded and conquered. In that context it is no different than any other national flag from the past or currently in use. For example, the national flag of the Republic of Texas.

The battle flag is just that, a flag carried into battle. This would be more closely a lined to a Regimental or Battalion flag than a national flag.

Those who insist on connecting any of these flags to issues such as slavery do not understand what these flags represented and are imprinting their own historic spin to make a political point rather than to represent actual history.

As with all symbols people display them for a multitude of reasons, for most, the Confederate flags are displayed to represent a non-federal perspective of our country, that is, a more constitutionally correct perspective.