It's about slavery (not the economy), stupid.
That's what we should remind South Carolinians who smugly fly the Confederate flag high above their capitol and can't understand why the blacks are making such a fuss about it. Today's revisionist southerners are spinning a new story about the meaning of their flag. They now say their forefathers fought the Civil War to protect a way of life in the Old South that was a multicultural paradise where blacks and whites lived in harmony. Then in 1861 the Northern aggressors attacked and spoiled it all.
If this is so, why do blacks resent the flying of the Confederate flag? It must mean something much different to them. To help us get to the bottom of this puzzle let's see what their ancestors said when they seceded from the union and adopted the Stars and Bars as their emblem.
In Mississippi they wrote:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun….
In Texas they wrote:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the union itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable….
South Carolina statesmen of the day identified slavery as their overriding concern when they wrote the Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession in December 1860. States' rights and regional loyalty often cited today as the real meaning of the Confederate flag were invoked only as these doctrines protected slavery.
The South Carolina declaration also warned that Abraham Lincoln, recently elected President, "was a man whose opinions and purposes were hostile to slavery." The declaration predicted correctly that there "can be only one end if the South submits to the anti-slavery rule of the government in Washington-the emancipation of the slaves of the South."
One only has to look at the events leading to the outbreak of war in 1861. The driving forces were abolition of slavery by Northerners and the preservation of slavery by Southerners. The continuation of the union lay precariously in the balance. As Lincoln put it "this nation cannot endure half-slave and half-free."
Some of these events were:
· The Missouri Compromise in 1820 which allowed Missouri to be a slave state but set the northern boundary for slavery at the 36th parallel (the southern Missouri boundary) for any future expansion of slavery.
· The Compromise of 1850 which essentially nullified the Missouri Compromise, allowed California to enter the Union as a free state permitted all other territories to be either slave or free depending on the vote of the people-Popular Sovereignty.
· Dred Scott Decision which stated that the Federal government had no constitutional authority to determine whether a state could be free or slave and that Dred Scott had no standing in Federal court because he was not a citizen and a black even if free could never be a citizen.
· John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry. The raid was a failure in starting an uprising among slaves and John Brown was hanged. His death made him a hero to the cause of anti-slavery.
· The Republican Party was founded in the early 1850s. John C. Fremont barely lost the presidential election in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860. Its platform was largely based on opposition to the expansion of slavery in the territories. They bitterly opposed the Dred Scott Decision and favored the admission of Kansas as a free state.
· Fugitive Slave Law which demanded that runaway slaves had to be returned to their Southern masters.
· Cornerstone Speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephans in which he proclaimed that slavery was the "Cornerstone" of the South's economy and that the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" meant only white men and thus they were within their constitutional rights when they enslaved Negroes.
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freeing only slaves in the states in rebellion, it made it crystal clear that the rebels were fighting to put these slaves back in bondage should they win. Emancipation was not only the right thing to do it was also a shrewd political move. Thereafter, the South lost all hope of getting help from France and England because of their fierce anti-slavery positions.
There can be only one conclusion. The South fought the Civil War over slavery and the Confederate flag is their symbol.
However, a case could be made that the rebel flag also stands for segregation of the races since it was first hoisted on the capitol flagpole in 1962 at the height of the civil rights movement. It waves to all who see it as if to say: "there ain't gonna be no niggers voting, eating in our restaurants, drinking at our fountains, going to our schools in South Carolina.
Slavery and segregation, is it any wonder that African Americans are upset when they see this flag over their capitol?
