The Confederate Flag

[Capt_Redneck]

How the heck did Timothy McVeigh get brought up? I don't understand how a sick and twisted traitor is related to this subject.

I don't get it either....*scratching my head in disbelief*

[1hellraiser]

What does David Koresh or Tim Mcveigh, have to do with the confederate flag. One was a religious extremest, and the other was a military extremest. Mcveigh wrapped himself in an American flag, and made himself out to be a martyr, and Koresh wrapped himself in the bible, thinking he was God. The problem, neither of them was wrapped to tight. What would a secession now prove. Nothing other than giving the people who are trying to harm us, even more of an opportunity to attack us. We cannot live seperate but equal, it would tear the country apart.

[Eddiemunster]

Both were extremestly screwed up in the head. If we try to seperate, there will be more of this garbage, I agree. Even if there wasn't, we still won't seperate again. The Civil War is over with, and we're all one country. If southernors still wish to fly the CSA flag for what it really stands for, then so be it.

[The_Dukes_Generl_Lee01]

yeah! I'm gonna fly it cause it means that you are a rebel YEEHAW!

[Eddiemunster]

I just remembered today that Timothy McVeigh's family (or at least I know of his father) lives nearby me! I remember my friend and I passing what is supposed to be the house where Timthy grew up in, and I guess his father still lives there in Pendelton, NY. Kinda freaky, huh?

[HotHillbilly]

I was sitting on the stage going over my lines today with my partner and I had my dukes purse sitting on the stage near me and this girl who's african american is like "why do you have the confederate flag on your purse?" and is asking if I'm some redneck hick and do I believe in slavery and all this stuff. I was like come on. It's on a flippin' car for God's sake. I've had that purse for at least two months now and she is the only one who has made a big deal out of it. At one point I was for sure she was going to punch my face in. Sometimes I think people take it too offensive, and I didn't mean anything of it anyways..

[iloveluke6]

That happend to me I had my dukes shirt on and I was at burger king and the girl in line behind me said "I dont like your shirt" and I said "I didnt buy it for you do like" then she rolled her eyes and called me racist.....I was so mad but I just walked away...

[Daisy_Duke_Girl]

OMG!! they take it sooooo personal, it's really annoying.....can't a person enjoy their memorbilla in peace....sheesh.....lol!!!

[just_me]

I agree with ya'all that several items or symbols have been given diffrent (negative) meanings than they were intendend to have.

I have to admit i didn't study the American history very well, I know the basics but there it ends, (so this thread has been kind of interesting).

The only thing I really knew the confedered flag from was DOH and DOH community's, so it had a very positive vibe to me of course

Maybe you can amagine I was kind of amazed the first time I saw some (head shaved, face pierced, not really friendly looking) people here in Holland wearing the confedered flag on there bomber jackets.

Seems that this group of people (skinheads, lonsdale-youth, neo-nazi' or however ya want to call them, anyway a group of people with really f*cked up ideas) has chosen the confederd flag again to wear now they ain't aloud to wear the Dutch flag on there jackets anymore. (there's some kind of law against that now.)

I think that's sad but it is reality.

Some things were not meant to be used as they are used nowadays.

Take the Swastika by examble, a symbol that has been used since the ancient days in a lot of different religions, untill Hitler came and adopted it for his weird ideology.

(please don't get me wrong here i'm not comparing the flag with the Swastika!!!)

It wasn't intended like that, but still if I saw somebody wearing it I would punch his lights out, given the chance.

Back to the flag again, it's sad it has such a negative vibe hanging over it, even if it wasn't intended like that, but it has, and I think even if ya don't mean bad, you should consider other people's feelings.

Lov,

JM

[Eddiemunster]

I do understand other people's feelings, but they should also consider our feelings as well. If you woke up with a snot on your face, would that make you not go somewhere that day? No. So, if you choose to wear a CSA flag on your shirt, then that's too bad for the people who don't like it.

[Beauregard Special]

I have a union and confederate flag over my bed and am not in any way ashamed of it.

[Eddiemunster]

If I had something with the CSA flag, I wouldn't be ashamed, either. I guess that would make us slave owners, right?

[HotHillbilly]

I don't know why people take it so offensive to have a confederate flag or anything that involves stuff like that. I still see people that have the rebel flag hanging up and people totally hiss at them and make a big deal out of it. Ecspecially at highschool, the kids here...good Lordy, if I wore a shirt that had the confederate flag on it, I"d probally more then likely be shot.

[Iloveschnieder]

Here is some information that I got from the history channel website about the Civil War. Sorry that this is a really long post/ history lesson. Unfortunatly I couldn't find anything about the Confederate battle flag on the site. It is a flag to ME about independece. The slave holders were a minority. Most of the confederates, like General Robert E. Lee weren't fighting for slavery, they were fighting for thier states rights.

HISTORY.COM RESOURCES

ENCYCLOPEDIA: CIVIL WAR, AMERICAN,

military conflict (1861–65) between the United States of America (the Union) and 11 secessionist Southern states, organized as the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). In the South, the conflict is also known as the War Between the States.

Background.

The Civil War was the culmination of four decades of intense sectional conflict and reflected deep-seated economic, social, and political differences between the North and the South. The South, overwhelmingly agricultural, produced cash crops—cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane—for export to the North or to Europe, but it depended on the North for manufactures and for the financial and commercial services essential to trade. Underscoring sectional differences, the labor force in the South included nearly 4 million enslaved blacks. Although the slaveholding planter class formed a small minority of the population, it dominated Southern politics and society. Slaves were the largest single investment in the South, and the fear of slave unrest ensured the loyalty of nonslaveholders to the economic and social system.

The sectional controversy.

To maintain harmony between the Southern and Northern supporters in the Democratic and Whig parties, political leaders tried to avoid the slavery question. But with growing opposition in the North to the extension of slavery into the new territories, evasion of the issue became increasingly difficult. The MISSOURI COMPROMISE, (q.v.) of 1820 temporarily settled the issue by establishing the 36° 30´ parallel as the line separating free and slave territory in the Louisiana Purchase. Conflict resumed, however, when the U.S. boundaries were extended westward to the Pacific. The COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850, (q.v.) provided for the admission of California as a free state and the organization of two new territories—Utah and New Mexico—from the balance of the land acquired in the Mexican War. The principle of popular sovereignty would be applied there, permitting the territorial legislatures to decide the status of slavery when they applied for statehood.

The shifting balance.

Despite the Compromise of 1850, conflict persisted. The South had become a minority section, and its leaders viewed the actions of the U.S. Congress, over which they had lost control, with growing concern. The Northeast demanded for its industrial growth a protective tariff, federal subsidies for shipping and internal improvements, and a sound banking and currency system. The Northwest looked to Congress for free homesteads and federal aid for its roads and waterways. The South, however, regarded such measures as discriminatory, favoring Northern commercial interests, and it found the rise of antislavery agitation in the North intolerable. Many free states, for example, passed personal liberty laws in an effort to frustrate enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (see FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS,). The increasing frequency with which “free soilers,†politicians who argued that no more slave states should be admitted to the Union (see FREE-SOIL PARTY,), won elective office in the North also worried Southerners.

The issue of slavery expansion erupted again in 1854, when Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois pushed through Congress a bill establishing two new territories—Kansas and Nebraska—and applying to both the principle of popular sovereignty. The KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT (q.v.), by voiding the Missouri Compromise, produced a wave of protest in the North, including the organization of the Republican party. Opposing any further expansion of slavery, the new party became so strong in the North by 1856 that it nearly elected its candidate, John C. Frémont, to the presidency. Meanwhile, in the contest for control of Kansas, Democratic President James Buchanan asked Congress to admit Kansas to the Union as a slave state, a proposal that outraged Northerners. Adding to their anger, the U.S. Supreme Court, on March 7, 1857, ruled in the DRED SCOTT CASE, (q.v.) that the U.S. Constitution gave Congress no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. Two years later, on Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown, an uncompromising opponent of slavery, raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia), in an attempt to promote a general slave uprising. That raid, along with Northern condemnation of the Dred Scott decision, helped to convince Southerners of their growing insecurity within the Union.

The secession crisis.

In the presidential election of 1860, a split in Democratic party ranks resulted in the nomination by the Southern wing of John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky and the nomination by the Northern wing of Stephen Douglas. The newly formed CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY, (q.v.), reflecting the compromise sentiment still strong in the border states, nominated John Bell of Tennessee. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln on a platform that opposed the further expansion of slavery and endorsed a protective tariff, federal subsidies for internal improvements, and a homestead act. The Democratic split virtually assured Lincoln’s election, and this in turn convinced the South to make a bid for independence rather than face political encirclement. By March 1861, when Lincoln was inaugurated, seven states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—had adopted ordinances of secession, and the CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, (q.v.), with Jefferson Davis as president, had been formed.

In his inaugural address, Lincoln held that secession was illegal and stated that he intended to maintain federal possessions in the South. On April 12, 1861, when an attempt was made to resupply Fort Sumter, a federal installation in the harbor at Charleston, S.C., Southern artillery opened fire. Three days later, Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion. In response, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee also joined the Confederacy.

Resources of North and South.

Neither the North nor the South was prepared in 1861 to wage a war. With a population of 22 million, the North had a greater military potential. The South had a population of 9 million, but of that number, nearly 4 million were enslaved blacks whose loyalty to the Confederate cause was always in doubt. Although they initially relied on volunteers, necessity eventually forced both sides to resort to a military draft to raise an army. Before the war ended, the South had enlisted about 900,000 white males, and the Union had enrolled about 2 million men (including 186,000 blacks), nearly half of them toward the end of the war.

In addition, the North possessed clear material advantages—in money and credit, factories, food production, mineral resources, and transport—that proved decisive. The South’s ability to fight was hampered by chronic shortages of food, clothing, medicine, and heavy artillery, as well as by war weariness and the unpredictability of its black labor force.

Even with its superior manpower and resources, however, the North did not achieve the quick victory it had expected. To raise, train, and equip a massive fighting force from inexperienced volunteers and to find efficient military leadership proved a formidable and time-consuming task. The South, with its stronger military tradition, had more men experienced in the use of arms and produced an able corps of officers, including Robert E. Lee. Only through trial and error did Lincoln find comparable military leaders, such as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman ......

The End of Slavery.

At the outset of the war, Lincoln and Congress made it clear that their sole objective was to maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union. Conscious of the need to retain the loyalty of the border slave states, the president exercised caution in dealing with the slavery issue, but he could not avoid it. Not only were slaves fleeing to the Union lines and claiming their freedom, but slave labor was of critical value to the Confederate war effort. Moreover, freed slaves could be enlisted in the Union army; by the end of the war some 186,000 black men, most of them recruited or conscripted in the slave states, had served on the Union side.

On Aug. 6, 1861, Congress passed the Confiscation Bill, which ordered the seizure of all property, including slaves, used “in aid of the rebellion.†Nevertheless, the legal status of such slaves was left uncertain, and federal policy vacillated during the first 18 months of the war.

The preliminary proclamation of emancipation, issued by Lincoln in September 1862, stipulated that on Jan. 1, 1863, in those states or portions of states that were still engaged in rebellion, the slaves would be “forever free.†Despite the reprieve granted the South, Lincoln thought it unlikely that the Confederate states would choose to return to the Union. Nevertheless, partly to appease a skeptical Northern public, Lincoln had made it clear that preserving the Union, not abolishing slavery, remained his principal objective. When he later issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln defended it on the grounds of military necessity; emancipation would, he declared, weaken the productive forces of the Confederacy and thus hasten the end of the war. Tennessee and the loyal border slave states were excluded from the proclamation, as were designated portions of Louisiana, Virginia, and West Virginia. (The 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the U.S., was ratified in December 1865.)

When much of Tennessee, Louisiana, and North Carolina had fallen to Union armies, Lincoln appointed military governors to bring those states back into the Union. On Dec. 8, 1863, the president issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. Except for high military and civil officers of the Confederacy or its states, all Southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and swore to obey the wartime legislation and proclamations regarding slavery would be granted amnesty. As soon as 10 percent of a state’s 1860 electorate had complied with these provisions, that state could write a new constitution, elect new state officers, and send members to Congress. This plan became the basis of presidential RECONSTRUCTION, (q.v.), bringing Lincoln into sharp conflict with Republicans in Congress who demanded protection for the freed slaves and a more thorough reconstruction.

[G.D.]

what is kinda funny is that i have a uncle that use to fly the stars and bars on his boat!!!!

what makes this funny is that we are a hispanic family!!!!!!!!!!

but back 2 the topic i dont think nothing about the flag except that it is part of OUR history! just my 2 cents

[Qualapec the She-Wolf]

My art teacher said that certain images are not allowd in art. She mentioned the Nazi symbol, and just after that mentioned the confederate flag.

Don't get me wrong she's a good person, just a little closed minded.

Although it's kind of dumb because she said that if a Confederate flag was in your art then you were promoting slavery. Which is stupid because that isn't what the Civil War was really about. Yeah, that's what they tell you in kindergarden but that isn't how it is. It was about the South wanting to break away from the North due to various reasons including slavery, but the North wasn't doing it to liberate people, they were doing it to put the South in their place.

Remember, it's the winners of war that write the history.

~She-Wolf

[deesgirl]

the south will rise again good or bad its always there just like the dukes and the general lee

[dukes65]

There is a movie about what america would be like if the south won the war. It is called CSA Confederate States of America. It is out on DVD. If any of you have watched it or will watch it. Please reply i have seen it . You all be the judge of it. FYI it was directed by a black director and produced by Spike Lee. Go figure.

[deesgirl]

if ican find it i will check it out

[daisydukeXenosstrait]

I luv the confederate flag !! its my avatar:D:)