IraqiWalker, on 29 June 2015 - 03:45 AM, said:
The flag wasn't tainted by the KKK. It was tainted at inception. The {Godwin's Law} flag stood for the sovereignty of Germany, and the Third Reich too. Doesn't mean we should let it fly again. There are many iteration of what might have been the confederate flag, but this particular one was not the flag of the confederacy, it was the battle flag of general Lee. He adopted it in 1863, I wanna say, or late 62 for the Northern Virginia Army.
Also, remember that the reason the South fought for it's independence was to keep slaves. Because their economy would have taken a hit if slavery was abolished. It was a secessionist conflict to boot. The same people who are shouting to defend that flag in South Carolina right now, and yelling "USA, USA" repeatedly, are defending a flag flown by those that waged war against the USA.
Also, the Westboro baptist church & bible example doesn't really work here. My argument wasn't that the KKK tainted the flag. It was that the flag was tainted from inception. If I was going with the KKK taint, then yes, that could work. However, I only stated that the KKK helped spread it around more.
The Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia represented the Confederacy's defense of their nation, while the reversed Swastika flown by the Hitlerite regime represented his specific ideology of racial scapegoating and violent war -
that comparison doesn't work.
My problem is that to disavow the Battle Flag, you have to claim that it directly represented slavery to everyone who flew or flies it. And that's just not correct. While slavery was indeed a major issue of contention, it was emphatically
not the sole cause of the war. Economic sectionalism, political disenfranchisement, and a large cultural gap played a much bigger part overall - slavery was just the flashpoint issue; the one that was easiest to fixate upon because of its hideous nature and the moral outrage it could produce (see nearly every post by Marack Drock
.) So the common conception of the war as being "about slavery" is understandable as historical shorthand, but factually incorrect in detail. Slavery
was, however, the way that the war was publicized, for a number of reasons beyond moral outrage - to get into that, you have to look at the concept of "King Cotton," and at the Emancipation proclamation.
One of the reasons that the South thought it could take on the North despite a massive disparity in population and industrial might was that they believed the powers of Europe - notably Great Britain - would
have to intervene because their own economies depended on Southern cotton, while a Confederate embargo would cripple Northern textile industries. Some of the major cotton traders in the South took it upon themselves to refuse to ship any cotton, in an attempt to force the issue. These policies backfired, as the South had badly misread the international situation. British manufacturers had large stockpiles of cotton, and the short-term effect of Confederate embargo was to boost the prices of those goods; additionally, the Union Navy would have been free to attack British shipping had Britain gone to war, while British Navy ships would be tied up convoying cotton out of the South.
But the final nail on the coffin of European intervention was Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. As you may know, the Proclamation did not (as is sometimes the popular misconception) "free the slaves." The Emancipation Proclamation freed only the slaves in those States, or
parts of States, currently in rebellion. It deliberately exempted the Union slave states, and even those parts of the Confederacy under Union control. Its purpose was twofold: first, to encourage slave rebellion in the South, using slave revolts and the fear of revolts as a weapon against the Confederacy - and second, to cement the idea that to support the South meant support of Slavery. Britain had a very strong abolitionist movement at the time of the War Between the States, and the Proclamation galvanized anti-slavery sentiment abroad
The focus on Slavery was a basic and understandable propaganda tactic before, during, and after the war. The South had legitimate grievances within the Union, but why focus on subjects the South could argue with when you could hammer home the injustice of slavery? Sure, the South wouldn't agree with you - but you're not arguing for them, you're arguing for your own people and for observers of the conflict. The success of the tactic stands vindicated by the responses of historical observers today.
Edited by Void Angel, 29 June 2015 - 01:59 PM.