In the aftermath of the shooting deaths of nine people in a South Carolina church, protests continue against the Confederate flag, the “Stars and Bars”. Although many people will continue to fly it, I think its days as an official state symbol are numbered. To many people in the North and South it stands as a symbol of slavery and racial prejudice. To others, primarily in the South, it is a symbol of regional pride and an attempt to liberate people who felt they were under the control of an oppressive government that did not represent their interests. Personally, I do not think it matters. As long as it is a painful reminder of past and present injustices, it should never be flown out of regard for those it offends. An analogy would be the Swastika. It is an ancient religious symbol used by Hindus and Buddhists. It is a symbol of the God Vishnu and the Sun God Surya. It means good fortune and well being. But its use by the Nazis has given it an entirely different meaning. If I were a Hindu, I would never display it out of respect for those it deeply offends. When symbols represent sources of extreme suffering, it is unconscionable to callously display them.

Although my reasons are emotional, I thought I would conduct my own research to examine the logic of the southern point of view. The South felt states had as much right to leave the Union as to join it. To them, states retained sovereignty. The Confederate Constitution emphasized this. The Confederacy was established as a confederation of states rather than a union. Regarding slavery, it forbade the passing of any ex post facto laws prohibiting the practice. That meant the Confederate Congress could not make it illegal in the future for a current slave owner to own his slaves. The US Constitution had no such clause, of course. The Confederate Constitution did forbid the importation of slaves from foreign nations with the exception of states within the Confederacy (remember they viewed their states as being sovereign nations) and slave holding northern states such as Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri. The US Constitution did not bar the importation of slaves from foreign countries until 1808 after which the importer could be fined not in excess of ten dollars. For census purposes, both constitutions counted slaves as three fifths of a person.

Many European countries abolished slavery in the 1700s and most of Latin America followed suit in the early 1800s. France abolished it in all its colonies in 1794. The House of Commons in England voted to end slavery in 1805, but it did not become law until the House of Lords accepted the ban in 1834. The US did not prohibit slavery until January 31, 1865. I do not think the countries that abolished it before we did had more humane governments. It was an economic issue. Slave rebellions in Caribbean colonies such as Haiti, Jamaica, and Barbados were costly to put down. They impacted the sugar trade making it much less profitable. Furthermore, the Industrial Revolution was changing the face of the European economy, particularly England. Machines and industrial labor were replacing sugar as the backbone of the new economies.

Another factor that should be considered is the myth that the North fought the Civil War to free the slaves. This is not true. In a letter to the journalist, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln said, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union,“

Lincoln waited until after the Battle of Antietam to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, so it wouldn’t seem like a measure of desperation. The Proclamation only freed slaves in the Confederacy., but if a seceding state returned to the Union it could keep its slaves. The Proclamation was designed to cripple the South economically by encouraging southern slaves to leave the plantations. It did not free any slaves held in northern states. Furthermore, when the Proclamation was announced whole units of soldiers deserted from the Union Army. Riots erupted in New York City when the Proclamation and a tougher draft law were enacted. Black men and women were beaten, lynched and hundreds driven from the city.

Although there was a strong prohibition movement; for reasons mentioned above, I do not think the North as a whole was ready to abolish slavery in the 1860s and, in my opinion, the only reason the 13^th Amendment was enacted as early as 1865 was payback to the South for secession.

The United States was founded by white, male land owners who supported the Revolution for their own economic interests. Prior to the Revolution, one of the major contentions between the colonies and England had been the issue of land ownership west of the Appalachian Mountains. King George wanted to give it to the Native Americans for supporting England in the French and Indian War. George Washington, on the other hand, wanted it given to the large land owners, most of whom lived in Virginia. He proposed that settlers who had previously moved into that area could remain under a type of rental agreement in which they would have rights similar to English serfs or villeins. Another issue, that appeared in the list of grievances against King George, prior to the Revolution, was England’s refusal to allow the colonies to profit from the slave trade as England had banned that industry in 1807. Jefferson’s original language in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence was “Life, Liberty, and the Protection of Property”. This wording was changed to “Life , Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” in the final draft and the grievance relating to the slave trade was eliminated for fear of alienating northern colonies that had outlawed the practice of slavery.

After the Constitution was adopted following the war, voting, which was left up to the states, was largely restricted to white, male, landowners. The southern states held most of the power during our early history. Four of our first six Presidents were from Virginia. Jefferson strongly opposed Alexander Hamilton’s idea of a central bank and felt banking and commerce were threats to the country’s economy. He thought true value came from the land and working it. In Virginia that required slavery. Both he and Washington owned slaves. Washington fretted over the high cost of maintaining his slaves as they aged and became less productive. He would not release them; however, as they were an important asset in determining the value of his estate. He was not as wealthy as some of his land owning contemporaries in Virginia. But isn’t this exactly why the South clung to the institution of slavery in the period leading up to the Civil War? Its economy depended upon it. It is the reason why the Southern Colonies seceded from the Union and fought the Civil War.

So, why do Washington and Jefferson get a free pass on the slavery issue? Why are not demonstrators trying to shut down Mount Vernon and Monticello? And what if England had defeated the colonies in the Revolutionary War and retained possession of them? Wouldn’t slaves have been freed in 1834 when Parliament voted to end the practice? Instead they had to wait for over three more decades for emancipation and the right to second class citizenship,which many feel has persisted up to this day. Black soldiers returning from Europe after WWII, reported they found more respect there then in the US. On the other hand, it is possible England might not have ended slavery in 1834 if it still owned the colonies. The English economy had largely switched from sugar to cotton manufacture the source of which came from the Southern States, which relied on slave production. Nevertheless, the Betsy Ross Flag did not represent a democracy, which encompassed all of its inhabitants. If People of Color and Native Americans felt that that flag represented a racist nation, who could have disputed them. We certainly can agree that racist and undemocratic laws existed during the period of our early history when the Stars and Stripes was flown, but this is not what it represented. We believe iy symbolized the government of a people who fought a war to get out from under the yolk of a centralized government that did not represent their interests. But isn’t that the Southern point of view on the Stars and Bars?

Today, we recognize that our country evolved into its current belief in equality for all regardless of race; ethnicity; religion; gender; and, more recently, orientation. We like to look at where we are, not where we have been. Some Southerners view the Stars and Bars as a symbol of Southern pride. Not everyone holding it at a Nascar race is a Klu Klux Klan sympathizer. Others, of course, view the flag quite differently. Why this dichotomy of opinion? I believe it lies not in the history of the Confederacy, which I think people would accept as part of our development as a country, but in the use that has been made of it since then.

With the exception of a few years, the Republican Party dominated the government from the Civil War until the Depression. The Great Depression from 1929 until the late ’30s brought a coalition of working class families of all races together in the Democratic Party. President Franklin Roosevelt was able to maintain this coalition by ignoring the various Jim Crow and segregationist laws that persisted at the state and federal level. His wife, Eleanor did more to bring the Democratic Party into the fight for civil rights then anyone else. (I hope her countenance will soon adorn the twenty). She arranged for Marian Anderson to sing at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after being denied permission to sing to an integrated audience by the Daughter’s of the American Revolution in their Constitution Hall. Ms Roosevelt was prominently involved in many Civil Rights activities at a time when that was not popular. She flew with the Tuskegee Airmen and worked with early civil rights leaders such as A Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin for a planned march on Washington in 1941 that forced Roosevelt to end discrimination in the defense industry. However, real integration did not begin until Harry Truman assumed the Presidency upon the death of Roosevelt. By integrating the armed forces, he alienated much of the South. During the 1948 Democratic Convention, Strom Thurmond, Congressman from South Carolina led a walkout over the party’s support of integration. He formed the Dixiecrat Party, but lost to Truman in the 1948 Presidential race. The Confederate Flag was his party’s symbol. This fact might have assumed the role of an historic footnote, except the flag has been continually used in the South’s fight against integration ever since. These are events, I did not have to research, but to which I bore witness while growing up.

After the Supreme Court decision in its 1954 Brown vs the Board of Education ruling that school segregation was illegal, Orville Faubus, governor of Arkansas, called out the national guard to prevent Little Rock High School from being integrated. President Eisenhower nationalized the guard and sent them home. I remember Faubus then handing out ax handles from a hardware store to residents to fight federal marshals. Again the Confederate Flag became the symbol of resistance. The flag has been used many times by opponents of integration. In 1962, George Wallace ran for governor of Alabama on a segregationist platform winning by a landslide. He tried to prevent the integration of Alabama University. One of the worst examples was Ross Barnett, governor of Mississippi from 1960 – 64. He arrested, imprisoned, and brutalized freedom riders from the North who were trying to register Southern African American voters. He used the national guard, which prevented James Meredith from integrating the University of Mississippi until President Kennedy sent in the paratroops. During the trial of the man accused of killing civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Barnett interrupted the proceedings to shake hands with the man on trial. There are many other examples where the flag has been the showpiece of individuals and groups that would deny rights, or torture and kill people of color. It has been a favorite symbol of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists groups.

For these reasons, I think the Confederate Stars and Bars Flag should never be flown in any official capacity or on any government building. It has become a symbol of hateful and criminal acts against a whole race of people. From the killing of Emmitt Till in Mississippi in 1955 and the bombing of a Baptist Church in Alabama in 1963 to the recent murder of nine people in an AME church in South Carolina, hate groups and individuals have operated under this banner, imprinting bitter and vivid memories in millions of people alive today. This is why it is hurtful for so many people to look at, not because it was the standard carried into battle in the 1860’s by some sixteen year old kid from Tennessee.