|
Emperor1956 -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/15/2006 8:39:00 PM)
|
Interesting thread to have started on 9/11 -- think about what our great grandchildren will be saying in...oh...2080 about the symbolism of all those ribbons and "These colors don't run" flags c.2000. Think any of them will be seen as symbols of hatred for Islam?
Anyway, I thought the basic answers (that it is today a symbol of white supremacy and hatred) were given by Puella and Level in about the 5th post on this thread. So, just to throw a few thoughts out:
The "stars and bars" today raise the spectre of slavery, racism and hatred. But really, that flag was during its use in the War a symbol of the American South, NOT of slavery -- at least not during the Civil War. (apologies to Archer, I'm going to refer to both symbols as "Confederate Flag"). The reason for this is simple -- few Southerners owned slaves, or had ANY connection with the institution of slavery. It was basically an aberration of the weathy controlling class.
When we talk about the "Slaveowning South" we rarely acknowledge that in fact slavery was practiced by very few. One of the great myths perpetuated in the standard "canon" of the Civil War is that slavery was deeply and completely present in the American South. It wasn't. Slaves were very present (indeed, in the rural South they were the predominant population) but slaveholders were a tiny, rich minority. The myth of the slaveowing South was perpetuated in the North during the War and in Reconstruction, and has erroneously been a part of the story ever since. Consider:
The US Population in 1860 was 31,100,000 (in this discussion I round a bit, these numbers are absolutely available for those who are interested. Ask Me for the links). I'll define the "South" as all states that allowed slavery save two (Nebraska and Kansas had legal slavery in 1860, they also had between the two of them 17 slaves. They don't count). The South had a general population of 12,240,000. The South was about 40% of the US by population at the start of the War.
There were 4,000,000 slaves in the USA in 1860 which totaled 13% of the ENTIRE US population, and just under 33% of the population of the South. There were ONLY 392,000 people who owned slaves, however, or just 3.2% of the Southern population. And that includes women and children in slaveowning families. Based on the large family size in families in 1860, fewer than 1% of Southern men owned slaves. It would not be wrong to argue that "slavery" was an aberration of Southern life.
But it wasn't just an aberration because few owned slaves, but those that owned them, owned LOTS of them. There is a major shift in the economics of slavery in the United States from the 5 or 10 slaves that George Washington and Tom Jefferson owned c. 1750 to the hundreds of slaves that a Louisiana sugar or Georgia cotton plantation needed to run c. 1850.
Walk through the deep South in 1860, say Georgia? 44% of the population was slaves. Virginia? 39%. Two states had over 1/2 their population comprised of slaves: Mississippi (55%) and South Carolina (57%).
The "fond memories" of Mammy, and house slaves being kind and gentle keepers of the poor rich white folk are myths, people. Slavery as practiced in the American South in 1860 was a brutal use of human capital for economic gain. Slaves were self-replicating property, no more and no less, and they were routinely tortured, deprived of basic human rights and murdered. This, by the way, is the heritage of the "old South" that the 90% of Southerners could have rejected as they had no real stake in the fight, but they didn't. This is also, I suggest, the false heritage those of you who claim "its just a symbol of the South" today. These flags have too much blood behind them now to make that claim.
So My point? I have two: First, when folks talk about the "South", understand that the "heritage" of slavery is a very small percentage of the history of the natives of the South. Indeed, the flag of the South once could have been the symbol of those who DID NOT own slaves.
But it isn't. It is a symbol of white supremacy and hatred. WHY? because (and this is point #2) those 1% of slaveowning men (and their families...make it 3% of the US population, and no more than 10% of the South) made the War about slavery.
Ken D. and carolsea and the others who want to say the War was about economics and states' rights, etc. -- No. The War was about the ability to maintain slavery as an economic force and expand it into the Western states (LaM got this part right). So yes, it was about economics and states' rights as those issues relate to maintaining the institution of slavery. The wealthy Southern white leadership -- almost to a man, slaveowners -- believed that by couching the political issue of slavery as "state's rights" or "property rights" they could get the wealthy Northern members of Congress to cast a blind eye to the practice...and for about 50 years before the outbreak of the War, it worked. (There was, by the way, a small but potent anti-slavery movement in the South. It was virtually silenced in all but Maryland and northern Virginia in the years before the War, but became a political force during Reconstruction.)
The War between the States was most surely about the practice and reach and continuation of slavery, and slavery was most surely about the economics of the South. (It also was about a horrific miscalculation of the Confederacy that they could win, or at least quickly fight the North to an uneasy draw. This was Southern hubris, coupled with false promises of support from England and a few European countries, and a terrible underestimation of the iron will of Abraham Lincoln to not allow this country to be fragmented. But that's a book, let alone more of this post.)
Is the Confederate Flag an evil symbol today? It most certainly is, because it has been coopted as such by racist white groups beginning within months of the end of the Civil War and continuing today. The meaning of the flag was radically corrupted almost as soon as the War ended.
And the American South was no fun loving, down home picnic either, and anyone who thinks so is simply ignorant. The South had 40% of the population ... it had (by the numbers) 70% of the underfed ("poverty" wasn't really a concept in 1860 - most Americans were impoverished). It had an infant mortality rate of more than 8 times the North, and a general mortality rate almost double (if you are at all incisive, or even reading along at this point, you will realize in no small part this was because it had ALL the slaves). It had a significantly higher crime rate than the North. Basically, Atlanta or Memphis c. 1860 was a lot like Baltimore's inner city c. 1965 -- except most people were white.
And as for the "proud Southern heritage"? In fact, most of those pick-up truck owners and truck drivers with the "Stars and Bars" on their bumper or the back window have no legitimate claim to the heritage of slaveholding -- their great gran'pappys were poor white sharecroppers, or more likely, Yankees who came to the South during Reconstruction or even later. The real Sons of the South -- the slaveholders -- would have kept them out of their schools, away from their churches, and impoverished on the edges of their land and treated them -- and their descendants -- as poor white trash. The liberation of those folks ironically came with the destruction of the southern Aristocracy and the rise of the common black and white middle class after the War.
E.
|
|
|
|
