U.S.A. -- How much honor is in a flag?

In the aftermath of the recent tragic killings at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina there has been much attention given to a flag used by the Confederacy during the Civil War.  You know the flag -- a blue "X" containing thirteen white stars displayed on a field of red.

This flag is central to the story of what happened in that church.  It is in that role because of its history. 

Have you noticed that the reports on this flag identify it as a "battle flag" of the Confederacy?  That is correct; it was not the national flag of the Confederacy.  What does this mean?



At the time of the Civil War, the regiment was the most important part of an army's formation.  It was small enough to be manageable at a time when most orders were given either through visual means, or by in-person verbal or written communications.  Yet a regiment was large enough to deliver a meaningful amount of manpower and firepower into a battlefield that might be several acres in extent.

The regimental colors--its flag--provided an important part of the visual means of maintaining identity and coherence during a battle.  Black powder weapons discharge huge quantities of smoke.  Even with a wind blowing, much of that smoke would hang around close to the ground, obscuring soldiers' vision.  But if they could see their regimental flag--usually brightly colored, held on a staff as high as possible--they had some assurance that they were at least continuing to do something like what they had been told to do by their commanders.

Early in the war the regiments from the Confederate states deployed a large variety of regimental flag designs.  With no pre-war regimental identities, their soldiers were understandably often confused about which flag was their flag. Bravery among the soldiers was not in short supply, but literacy was, and sometimes the confusion extended to not recognizing which of many flags on the battlefield belonged to which side.

Confused soldiers might sometimes win the battle, but that's not something that the generals can depend on.

What to do? the Confederate brass must have wondered.  Standardization was an obvious answer.

Early in the war, the Army of Northern Virginia--charged with the protection of Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, and with continually threatening Washington, D.C.--had regiments using the blue "X" design as their regimental colors.  Derived from the national flag of the Confederacy--the flag properly called the Stars and Bars--it was easily recognizable and clearly identified with the Confederate States of America.

And so a battle flag from the Army of Northern Virginia became the standard battle flag for the regiments of the various armies of the Confederacy.

Sometimes called the War Between the States, the Civil War is more accurately called the War Started by States That Wanted to Enslave Black People.  The revisionist interpretation of the war as one fought at least partly in a noble attempt to maintain the constitutional principles of state's rights is nothing more than spin by fiction.  Any state's rights that were at issue were laws and practices in the Southern states that caused certain people to be slaves of others.

At war's end, regimental battle flags are expected to go the way of the regiment.  A regiment on the winning side will continue using its flag until it is superseded by the adoption of a new one, in which case the old one is retired, sometimes landing in a museum.  The losers, at best, find that their flags are simply a part of history.  A lucky few will find museum homes.

Unfortunately, the Confederate regimental battle flag was adopted by die-hard groups of white supremacists such as the Ku Klux Klan and served as their link to the Confederacy.  For a century, the Klan and its fellow-travelers spread terror to as much of the black population as they could reach.  This terrorism and its attendant spawn of prejudice were directly connected to the institution of slavery by the Confederate battle flag.

Without doubt, the Confederacy and its armies were populated by numerous honorable people.  But their cause was not honorable.  The battle flag is a flag of warfare -- warfare caused by the desire for the perpetuation of slavery and, later, for domination by other means; warfare that was fought first by armies, and then by gangs and thugs.  This flag was and is representative of those causes.

The Confederate battle flag should be consigned to its rightful place in history, which would be books, museums and the occasional truthful film and similar artwork.

It does not represent enough honor to be publicly displayed anywhere else with honor.