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| Yes | 26% | 72 votes | Total: 275 votes | |
| No | 74% | 203 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesImagine if you will that you and your family are considered sub-human without any rights. You are forced laborers who work without pay, confined to live in deplorable conditions and to exist off scraps. You or your family members can be taken away at anytime and your life is "owned" by your Master. Any dissent is met with brutal force. You are not entitled to your own opinions or voice. You are not allowed an education and it is against the law for you to learn to read and write. You work as slave laborer in the hot cotton fields of the South. You are the backbone of the Southern economy yet do not reap any benefit. You are not entitled to anything your master does not allow you are a slave.
Many will argue that the Civil War was a war fought over a myriad of issues. Some try to downplay the issue slavery played in igniting the war. War is always a complex issue but to say the main contributing factor was not slavery is disingenuous. The South was completely dependent on slave labor and was convinced it was essential to their economic well being. The government prohibiting slavery in the territories was viewed as a precursor to it being abolished in the South. Slavery was outlawed in the territories because white people wanted to be able to move there and earn a fair wage; obviously they could not compete against slave labor. The abolitionist movement was not highly regarded, even in the North and historians generally agree that the Civil War did not start because the North wanted to stop slavery in the South. The South saw the election of Abraham Lincoln coupled with the abolition of slavery in the territories as major threats to the continuation of slavery thus sparking the Civil War (1861-1865).
The "Confederate flag", or as we commonly know it the "rebel flag", was not actually the flag of the Confederacy. It was a battle flag used by the Confederacy in the Civil War and was actually called the "Southern Cross" (also known as the St. Andrew's cross). The battle flag was created so that the Confederacy troops could be more readily recognizable on the battlefield.
In the 20th century Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina have flown or still fly some version of the Southern Cross flag.
The Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi skinhead groups (along with countless other racist groups) use the Southern Cross battle flag as a banner of white supremacy and hate. You will often hear Southerners, who support the use of the Southern Cross battle flag, say that this flag stands for the South's rebellion and interest in being able to keep government out of what should be State determined issues. They say it reminds them of a more genteel, hospitable, unique southern way of living. I guess they fail to remember or want to acknowledge that their genteel, hospitable lifestyle did not include non-whites. They prefer to deny in total that this flag was raised in battle to fight for the right to own slaves.
The Southern Cross battle flag is racist and stands for the South's fight to keep slavery alive. If you wouldn't support the use of the swastika Nazi flag, you shouldn't support the continued use of the Southern Cross battle flag. To deny the tie to slavery is an insult to any thinking person's intelligence.
Learn more about this author, Sam Hernandez.
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No
As a Southerner myself, I am both tickled and a bit irritated every time I hear parents or teachers telling kids the Civil War was fought over slavery. These days people are up in arms over the displaying of a Confederate flag as if it were intended for some racial purpose. This is plainly convoluted and ill-informed. The rest of the country seems to view the South as full of inbred yokels that speak in a slow drawl, embittered over the loss of a war a full century and a half gone. But I can assure you that, whatever else, no Southerner who still harbors any sense of pride in his country is anything but glad at the defeat.
You see, the war itself was over freedom, but not the freedom of black slaves from oppressive, white owners. It was about the Southern states desire to succeed from the United States entirely. They wanted freedom from a government whose interests were not with them, but with the more industrialized North. Few may realize, but at the onset of the Civil War slaves were still owned in many Northern States.
The reasons this desire for succession escalated into all out war are many. First of all, though the North prospered in industry, it relied largely on Southern plantations for raw materials. If those materials were suddenly to become property of another country entirely, prices on imports' would rise and the US government would have significantly fewer tax payers to draw on to pay for the added expense. Further, the succession would have created a new possible threat to the United States. No one ever feared Canadian attack, and Mexico's border was small enough to bottleneck any advance. But a new country sharing a border that stretched across the entire southern United States was a far bolder threat.
Though slavery was indeed one of the initial concerns of the war to come, it was not a major one. It wasn't until part of the way in that the Union decided it needed a rallying point, something for the troops to get behind. They made this issue the American issue, the issue of freedom. Only then did Abraham Lincoln actually abolish slavery, making the North a haven for escaped slaves. And even then there were many times a slave crossed the border to freedom only to be sent back, either to his or her old master or by being forcefully drafted into the Union military.
As for the flag itself, what is now recognized as the Confederate Flag' was not the actual flag of the Confederacy. The actually Confederate flag bore a close resemblance to the American flag at the time, with fewer stars of course. The Rebel Flag, as the one we see today is sometimes called, was actually General Robert E. Lee's battle flag.
Few may realize this, but at the beginning of the war letters were sent out on both sides requesting top military personnel to join sides. Lee was given the choice to lead in the North as well as the South. In letters sent from Lee to his family and friends, he was actually torn over the decision. He did not approve of slavery, he said, but the South was his home and he would fight for her.
As a Georgia native, I watched closely as they debated the State Flag, which bore the so called Confederate flag upon it. I thought it ridiculous when the state was forced to modify the flag because people were misinformed over its symbolic meaning. Ignorance wins again, I thought.
You see, when a Southerner displays the flag, they aren't promoting racism or hate. The flag isn't about the color of people's skin. For us it stands for rebellion. We, as Americans, are taught that we live in a free country because our forefathers had the courage to fight for that freedom. In the very words of the Constitution of these United States, we are encouraged to be rebellious if our government does not uphold the rights of its people. Rebellion is instilled in us as a moral virtue, and when a Southerner flies this flag he is celebrating that rebellious nature.
Any perceived racism attached to it is the product of people with hate in their hearts, both white and black, and suppressing a symbol does not eradicate hate. We must instead be sensible an enlighten those who would hate on either side, for it is enlightenment, not suppression, that reaches to the core of humanity and dispels all prejudice.
Learn more about this author, Nathaniel Whitley.
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