BellaOnline Forums Education History Confederate Flag - Heroic History or Painful Past?

There's a new story today on Yahoo news about huge confederate flags that are being flown across America's south to advertise the Tampa Confederate Veterans Memorial.

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How do you view the current flying of the confederate battle flag? single choice
	With Pride
	With Anger
	With Indifference
	With mixed emotions
	Something else entirely (Please post and tell us about it!!)
Votes accepted starting: 08/05/08 09:53 AM
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A lot of people have always been up in arms about the Stars and Bars. Some are offended by it and others are prideful of it. The Confederate Flag is a part of our history no matter how you slice it.

If things had gone the other way back in 1865, it would be our national flag probably today.

There is nothing wrong with the South being prideful of something like that, in my opinion.

I see nothing wrong with displaying the Confederate flag. Like Vance says, it is a part of our history. There are people today who hold that flag dear and close to their hearts and they have a right to be proud of it.

As a northerner, I feel extreme discomfort when I see the Confederate flag, because up here it is often displayed in a context of in-your-face negativity. Either racism or plain orneriness, neither of which seems to be anything to be proud of.
It seems to some of us to be a symbol of a distant and painful past that we would just as soon be done with.

I agree wih the other writers that state the Confederate flag s part of history. Unfortunately people have used it for negative conntations, thankfully that doesn't change the original flag and what it represents. The Confederacy chose to withdraw from the North because of states' rights, not because of slavery (although that was a platform that was one common language for both north & south, so that's the one platform that folk remember).

Frankly, if we "bury" the Confederacy and its flag, we also chose to pick which parts of histoy we remember and document. That's a travesty in my opinion (which is worth 2 cents, with inflation). If we choose to only remeember the "honorable" parts of history, history books could choose to ignore the Viet Nam war (or rather plice action!), Communism could disappear, yet it's there and it helped form history, for example look at the USSR and what has happened.

We can't hide from our history if we're honest with ourselves. We can respect the Confederate flag and what it meant to those who flew it and fought for what it represented. We can also respect the lessons that part of history taught us. If we don't allow the flag to be flown as part of the Confederate history, do we then ignore the Confederate veterans?

Guess I'm a little long-winded on the subject, but there it is. Oh --truly I'm not trying to "start anything" this is just my opinion.

I live in the south and have mixed feelings on this subject.

Yes, it is part of our history and so forth.
But our history has not always been right.

I can understand where some African-Americans consider it a slap in the face.
Sort of like how the Jews feel about the swastika.

On the other hand, we have moved on, and it is possible to to recognize the confederate flag without getting all bent out of shape.

I personally would not display one anywhere, but then I am not big on displaying the American flag either!
Guess I'm just not a flag person. Flags represent countries (or parts of countries) and they tend to have a divisive effect.

I would not aggressively object if my neighbor displayed a confederate flag, but it would raise my eyebrows. And of course it might make me think a little different about them.

The Confederate flag is a symbol of secession. It is a symbol of states and individuals that want to withdrawal from being a member of the United States of America. This was the intent of the confederate states to separate themselves from the union that was the United States of America. The confederate flag, the stars and bars, is a symbol of that desire to withdrawal from the United States of America. Therefore, in my opinion anyone flagging the Confederate flag is declaring their desire to remove themselves from being a citizen of the United States and thereby secede from it.

I am a decendant of Union soldiers from the south. So I guess I'm a good neutral voice here
in my view I think the confederat flag is as American as anything else. It represented a people with the fortitude to stand up for what they believed in. To me it isn't about anything else.. slavery, succession... that is not what it represents. Perhaps in another country the people would have laid down, submitted. But these were Americans and they don't lay down and submit.
The animosity between the states did not begin with the slavery conflict. It was there in the very beginning when Thomas jefferson fought to have the capitol put farther south in Virginia because he felt the south would not have equal representation if the capitol was farther north. Slavery wasn't an issue to began with. The animosity increased in the 1800's when the south sold cotton to England first before they sold it to the north because England was buying it at a higher price. Northern pirates sank cotton ships trying to force the cotton farmers to sell the cotton to them at a lower price. Then, as always happens before a war, a radical group became involved. There agenda was not for the welfare of the country, nor was it slavery... it was war. It was the radical group that raised the issue of slavery in order to justify a war.
As we can see in our own times.. it isn't the common man of a country that pushes for war, it is the radicals. The ones that bark the loudest.
The civil war was a rich mans war. 90% of the people in the south had no slaves, nor did they grow enough cotton to warrent fighting a war over cotton.. yet they were the ones who died in battle. Those who chose not to fight were killed or forced into the army by the south if they found them. Many joined the Union army. those who chose not to fight found themselves in the middle. If their homes weren't burned by the north, then the southern army would just as likely burn it because the person was a "traitor".
After the war these men's lands were taken and redistributed to rich business men from the north coming down to buy up all the cheap land the goverment was offering. Fighting for the north didn't save them from this land seizure. Not only were their land taken by the goverment, but afterwards the counties with a high number of "northern sympathizers" was punished by the states.
Winston county Alabama had only one vote to secede from the Union. Most of these men joined the Union army. After the war the governer of Alabama placed a national forest in that county so that " Winston county would never prosper". as he put it.
The men who died in that war were americans. Poor dirt farmers who were mainly just trying to protect their small tracts of land from an aggressive radical movement.
Sorry this got so long. it is very easy to see things in black and white, but if we look closer nothing ever is.Nor is anything ever one sided.
As with most wars, the blame lies not in the men who fought it, but the rich and powerful people who forced it upon them.
A lot of men died in that war, all of them.. north and south alike fought for their own personal reasons.
The confederate flag represents American lives lost. They are American veterans also. They fought in order to establish the country we now know and love.
if this war had not been fought how much farther behind would we be than we are now. The tension between the north and south was there from the beginning and only growing. This war would have happened eventually. Imagine where we would be if it had happened 100 years later.
Even today the south suffers. There is more poverty in the south, lower wages, poorer health care. The south is still trying to recover from the punishment the goverment exacted on them after the war.
So let them fly the flag. it's not about slavery it's about a group of people and who they are and what they have endured.

I don't mean to offend anyone or their views. I'm not commited to either side of the argument. I just felt maybe I could be someone who could explain why the flag has meaning to many.
Most people who respect that flag respect it out of the hardship and courage it represents... slavery and racial issues never enter their thoughts when they think of the flag. There are always going to be radicals and zealots who ruin what something stands for.. and as I mentioned above, they are the ones who bark the loudest and get noticed. They take something that is a beacon to some and defile it.

Is it true that F Scott Fitzgerald was descended from the author of the song 'The Star Spangled Banner?'

Can anyone shed any more light on that or on the history of the stars and stripes for those of us across the pond in England Europe and around the world?

The "Stars and Stripes" is the flag we use today -- 50 stars on a blue field, with 13 red and 13 white stripes is the one the Francis Scott Key wrote about during the war of 1812.

The "Stars and Bars" is the confederate flag -- Orange background with a blue X covered in stars -- and tends to be rather controversial here in the states.

And it does appear the F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist, is a descendant of F. Scott Key, poet/lawyer.