Stars and Bars - Is it acceptable?

[PanzerJaeger]

I hope you enjoy this as much as my comments..

[Goofball]

I hope you enjoy this as much as my comments..

Hmmm. All I can see are two little white boxes with x's in the middle of them. Very exciting.

[PanzerJaeger]

Thats too bad for you..Nevermind then, my internet skills have subverted me yet again.

[Red Harvest]

Secession was done because the south, southern rights, the southern econemy, and the southern way of like, was threatened by a northern dictator.

LOL. Dictator...whew...that's a doozie...you are just saying that for entertainment value, right? Lincoln was elected. He had not actually done anything dictatorial and hadn't even taken office when the states seceeded. He was also somewhat moderate. His platform was to prevent the spread of slavery to new territories. That was what the South was fighting for, forcing slavery into the territories. You might actually want to read some history on this, it is quite interesting.

Here is what that paragon of the Southern cause, Robert E. Lee, had to say about secession (note the date):

Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for perpetual union so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution.

—Robert E. Lee, letter, 23 January 1861

He was right. The States Rights defense suggests that any time the federal govt passed a law the state opposed, that the state could just up and leave the union. There was a large flaw in the consititution, and it was unfortunate, but it is clear that it was intended that the states should continue to work together rather than seceeding everytime they failed to reach concensus on a matter.

[Red Harvest]

It was mentioned earlier, but the "Stars and Bars" are the actual confederate flag, and not one that most would recognized.



The Confederate battle flag or Southern Cross Flag often is incorrectly identified as the "Stars and Bars".



The change was made because in battle the Stars and Bars resembled the US flag too closely.

[Don Corleone]

But I have some advice for all of you proud "states' rights" supporters:

When you are walking around town, proudly sporting your matching Confederate flag patterned bandana and undershirt ensemble, do not whine and act surprised if people accuse you of being a racist. You should realize what sort of imagery you are provoking. Shut up and deal with it.

Woah, woah, woah. There are plenty of people *ahem*, moi, who believe in States Rights and localized vs. centralized control of government that DO NOT believe in the Confederacy or white superiority. Perhaps you might want to narrow the stroke of that broad brush there, chief.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

Steppe Merc:
that's just the thing, nobody really knows why the English flag is seen as racist.
There's no serious connection to anything except that the extreme elements of English nationalism identify with it but then again so does almost ayone with an English connection.

You can probably guess where I'm from(not England just because I'm defending their flag). We basically have three flags. For some reason the authorities take offence at one of them: I have no idea why, it's even more groundless than people thinking the English flag is racist.

[Don Corleone]

Is it a question of racism or over the top nationalism? My German neighbors here in the US were amazed that Americans fly the Stars & Stripes, because in Germany, flying the flag is apparently an unforgivable act of too-much-nationalism. At least for these folks it was.

[Xiahou]

When you are walking around town, proudly sporting your matching Confederate flag patterned bandana and undershirt ensemble, do not whine and act surprised if people accuse you of being a racist. You should realize what sort of imagery you are provoking. Shut up and deal with it.

If someone who isnt a racist has a Confederate flag displayed and is accused of being racist I think the last thing they should do is 'shut up and deal with it'- that's ridiculous. I'd encourage them to explain their view and do their part to take back their symbol from the bigots and racists. Problems are never solved by shutting up and just accepting something as is.

[GoreBag]

Is it a question of racism or over the top nationalism? My German neighbors here in the US were amazed that Americans fly the Stars & Stripes, because in Germany, flying the flag is apparently an unforgivable act of too-much-nationalism. At least for these folks it was.

That's more of a German thing. Nationalism is seriously toned down over there, since, you know, that whole Hitler thing.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

Don:
that's the big beef that the English seem to have with the argument: they are accused of racism just for wanting the symbols of their identity.

[Spetulhu]

Is it a question of racism or over the top nationalism? My German neighbors here in the US were amazed that Americans fly the Stars & Stripes, because in Germany, flying the flag is apparently an unforgivable act of too-much-nationalism. At least for these folks it was.

You'd be thought of as a weird person here too. Nothing prohibits you from raising the flag every day, but you will look odd. Even the Army, that most patriotic institution, only flies the flag on days marked in the calendar. The flag is only raised on national holidays and for certain other celebrations/occasions. Birthdays are acceptable, and you're expected to fly the flag low if there's been a death in the family. 8:00 to sunset or 21:00 at the latest.

As for the Confederate battle flag, I've seen it on walls and in the rear window of cars here. It's mostly rockabilly fans that want it. No idea if they're racists or just think it's part of the show along with funny haircuts and American cars.

[English assassin]

The funny thing is until recently if an English person wanted a flag he would probably have chosen the union flag. Even at football matches you see a few union flags, though its mostly St George. (Contrast Scotland where it would certainly always have been a Saltaire in any context)

With devolution in Wales and Scotland there has been an entirely predicatable increase in interest in English national identity, and you see the St Georges cross a bit more. I'm all in favour of a bit of healthy self respect, so long as it doesn't start getting silly, which it might.

The White Ensign, now THAT'S a flag to be proud of...

(PS, Fair enough Neon God, you got me on the context point)

[InsaneApache]

Saltaire

A model village in Yorkshire, renowned for having no pubs. (Sir Titus Salt was a temperence man)

http://www.saltaire.yorks.com/

Saltire

The Scottish flag incorperated into the Union flag, along with the cross of St. George and St. David

http://www.scotlandsource.com/about/ctva2b.htm

Sorry about being a pedant

[Steppe Merc]

If someone who isnt a racist has a Confederate flag displayed and is accused of being racist I think the last thing they should do is 'shut up and deal with it'- that's ridiculous. I'd encourage them to explain their view and do their part to take back their symbol from the bigots and racists. Problems are never solved by shutting up and just accepting something as is.

Exactly. They should explain their views. If they want to use a symbol to reclaim it's meaning, they have to tell others why.

It was mentioned earlier, but the "Stars and Bars" are the actual confederate flag, and not one that most would recognized.



The Confederate battle flag or Southern Cross Flag often is incorrectly identified as the "Stars and Bars".



The change was made because in battle the Stars and Bars resembled the US flag too closely.

Now I feel like an idiot.... but thanks for explaining the difference.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

InsaneApache:
St Patrick's cross is the other cross in the Union Flag, not St. David's.

Putting St. David's cross in the Union flag would, well, look really odd:
http://www.fotw.net/flags/gb-w-std.html

[Red Harvest]

Now I feel like an idiot.... but thanks for explaining the difference.

Nothing idiotic about it. I've been a Civil War nut since I was a boy and it still confuses me at times. It's confused enough that I still went back and checked the basic facts before I posted. It is too embarrassing to post a "correction" that is in itself erroneous.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

LOL. Dictator...whew...that's a doozie...you are just saying that for entertainment value, right? Lincoln was elected.

Hitler was elected. The only differences between Hitler and Lincoln IMHO is Hitler killed more people, had a funky mustache, was overly rascist, and was Austrian, had a better uniform than Lincoln, made the German army one of the most elite armies ever, had good generals under him, lost the war, and commited suicide.

[Don Corleone]

It's even more confusing, because they unofficially adopted a 3rd flag, the Bonnie Blue Star at different points. It's Carolina blue or royal blue with a single star on it. It was never an official flag of the CSA, but many of the Confederate state assemblies flew it as the flag of the CSA.

[Proletariat]

Hitler was elected. The only differences between Hitler and Lincoln IMHO is Hitler killed more people, had a funky mustache, was overly rascist, and was Austrian, had a better uniform than Lincoln, made the German army one of the most elite armies ever, had good generals under him, lost the war, and commited suicide.

Also, the Sun the is basically the same thing as the Moon. Only differences being temperature difference, astronomical body category, billions of miles of space in between them, and we landed on one of them.

...But other than that.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Also, the Sun the is basically the same thing as the Moon. Only differences being temperature difference, astronomical body category, billions of miles of space in between them, and we landed on one of them.
You get the point....GAH!
It's even more confusing, because they unofficially adopted a 3rd flag, the Bonnie Blue Star at different points. It's Carolina blue or royal blue with a single star on it. It was never an official flag of the CSA, but many of the Confederate state assemblies flew it as the flag of the CSA.
Make that 5 flags.
1st Official CSA Flag
2nd Official CSA Flag
3rd Official CSA Flag
Bonnie Blue
CSA Battle Flag
All 5 of em together.

And that's not to mention state flags, divisional flags, regimental flags, etc.

[Red Harvest]

Kaiser,

Where exactly did Lincoln keep his death camps? I'm sure that emancipation was a despicable act, those poor freed slaves... Lincoln did not seek to destroy the South. He did plan to end her attempts to extend slavery into the territories, something they found unacceptable. In the end Lincoln was merely what the South made him, *AFTER* they seceeded. And in the end he favored a mild approach to reconstruction.

The irony of your historically laughable claim of "dictatorship" is that by forcing Lincoln to war, the South gave him war powers. Any true wartime president has substantial dictatorial power. If he became a dictator, it was not his own doing, but the South's...yet he still had to face a true re-election--something that real dictators do not face.

The South suffered from mass delusion and swaggering sense of moral righteousness and military superiority that led its states to war against their own countrymen. Interestingly, many of the early CSA leaders also opposed secession, although they stood by their states in the end.

You seriously need to study some definitions and some history, because you are waaaaaaayyyyyy out of calibration when you start into the tyranny and dictator crap.

[Red Harvest]

Kaiser,

You really ought to try reading some history and looking up a few definitions.

The irony is that Lincoln wasn't actually given some dictatorial power by the South until they made war on the Union. Yet he still had to go through a real election during the war.

Many southern leaders opposed secession, but they stood by their states. Secession is a good example of popular mass hysteria. The South could not come to grips with slavery. They had an evangelical need to extend it to the territories and to the North. The result was a terrible war that ended slavery, and reduced "states rights." As Jefferson Davis said, the epitaph for the CSA would be "died of a theory."

It is an interesing lesson that one of the worst evils of our country (slavery) was justified by the concept of states rights. Historically there has been and still is a trend toward using "states rights" to reduce the rights of minority or unpopular segments of those very states' populations.

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Where exactly did Lincoln keep his death camps?

* Alton Prison
* Camp Chase
* Camp Douglas
* Camp Randall
* Elmira
* Fort Delaware
* Fort Jefferson
* Fort McHenry
* Old Capitol Prison
* Point Lookout
* Rock Island
Union POW/Death Camps.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Where exactly did Lincoln keep his death camps?

Oh please where would you like to start? Its really funny how you guys who get on Bush about Gitmo defend Linclon.

Eyewitnesses Bring War's Cruelty to Light
By Bill Ward, Salisbury Post
June 2004

Usually in discussions of the Civil War and prisoners of that war, the first images to surface are those of the infamous Camp Sumter, Ga., better known as Andersonville. Historians also might recall Confederate prisons at Florence, S.C., or Salisbury. It must be hard for students to understand that Andersonville was not the only prison camp and that the Union Army maintained several prisoner-of-war camps, as well.

Until recent years, history has not been open to the brutal deprivation suffered by Confederate prisoners in Yankee camps. It's a story begging to be told about the 11 Civil War POW camps spread across the far reaches of the North. Places like Point Lookout, Md.; Johnson's Island, northern Ohio; Camp Douglas, Chicago; and Elmira, N.Y., whose nightmarish conditions earned it the name "Hellmira."

In "So Far From Dixie: Confederates in Yankee Prisons," Phillip Burnham paints a macabre scene of a mixture of events from the Civil War, or more accurately, The War Between the States. He stirs together a mess of humanity in the boiling cauldrons of Southern battlefields and Northern prison camps. His sources of eyewitness information remain alive through documents left by five men who experienced firsthand the horrors of being Northern POWs.

Oddly enough, one of those five prisoners was a Union soldier, Frank Wilkeson. A Union Army volunteer, only 16 years old at the time, Wilkeson saw the worst kinds of criminals released from Northern jails and transported south under guard for conscription into the Union Army.

Berry Benson focused all his energy on escaping from the New York hellhole, sometimes called Andersonville on ice. Constantly digging tunnels with other prisoners, Benson felt a dire urgency to gain his freedom, after having been transferred from other camps to Elmira.

Anthony Keiley of Petersburg, Va., the better educated of the prisoners, was a glib-tongue lawyer-politician who talked prison officials into giving him a job that he enjoyed, logging prisoners into Elmira. Then he had to start logging them out, up to 20 or 30 dead in a day. After the war, and always the politician, Keiley became mayor of Richmond.

In one of his prison observations, Keiley wrote: "The Northern people, and I speak from long acquaintance with them, care much less for Negroes than we. ... It is the free states that have made the most odiously discriminating laws against the Negroes as have characterized Chicago and New York." He referred to the New York City draft riots, a reminder that many of the white men who stood guard over him had serious doubts themselves about the fighting ability and intelligence of the black men who had joined the Union army by the thousands.

Then there was John King, a skilled craftsman who refused to build coffins for his fellow prisoners. And Marcus Toney refused to take the Union oath of loyalty to gain his freedom, nor would he take it until many years after the war's end.

Shocking images of gaunt figures with hollow eyes and protruding bones that were released from the Georgia prison at Andersonville have filled our history books. But little thought has been given to the fate of Southern prisoners held in the north. If lessons in morality are to be taught, it's that the South was starving due to the pillaging and destruction wrought by the marauding hordes of William T. Sherman in Georgia and Phillip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. With scarcely any food to feed Southern armies and civilians, almost nothing was available for prisoners.

In locales such as Elmira, food and medicine was plentiful to the Union Army. Still, Confederate prisoners were subjected to starvation and death by diseases for which medicine was purposely withheld. A unique method of thinning out the prison population was to place inmates with smallpox in barracks or tents with "well" prisoners. Malnourishment, exposure to extreme heat in the summer, extreme cold in the winter, and water contaminated with sewage helped take its toll.

At Camp Douglas, in particular, prisoners wore lightweight clothes, even during the biting Chicago winters, to reduce escape attempts. Many Confederate prisoners froze to death.

Some of the Union prisons also became sources of entertainment. Enterprising businessmen built tall wooden towers near the prison fences. They charged civilians up to 10 cents a head to climb up and watch the prisoners in the stockades, on display like animals in a zoo.

The bathroom facilities often were no more than latrines -- trenches out in the open. Everything was sport for the spectators. This kind of unseemly entertainment was available for Northerners at Camp Douglas and Elmira.

But perhaps one of the most villainous individuals at the prison was a Union Army doctor, Major Eugene Francis Sanger, the hospital chief and a "brute" in Keiley's estimation. By some accounts, Sanger failed to provide even minimum attention to those under his care, and some of his activities rivaled those of Josef Mengele during a later war.

As Keiley wrote, Sanger's "systematic inhumanity to the sick" was apparently a response to the rumors of alleged Andersonville atrocities. "I do not doubt that many of those who died at Elmira perished from actual starvation," reflected Keiley with bitter irony, who believed himself to be "in a country where food was cheap and abundant." Union Army medical officers at Elmira and at Camp Douglas would likely have been brought up on war crimes charges had the South won the war.

On July 19, 1866, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War for the Federal government, published a report about prisoners held during the war. Figures in Stanton's report belie the cruelty often associated with Confederate prison camps. From the first to the last, Confederate armies captured and held in prisons 270,000 men. The Federal armies held 220,000 men. Of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands, 22,576 died. Conversely 26,576 Rebels died in "Yankee captivity" -- six times the number of Confederate dead at the battle of Gettysburg, and twice that for the Southern dead of Antietam, Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, Seven Days, Shiloh and Second Manassas combined.

The Confederates, with 50,000 more prisoners, had 4,000 fewer inmate deaths.

And what was the Norths excuse. The south was losing and poor and still did a better job of it.

Congress first appropriated funds for construction of Fort Delaware in 1849; it was completed ten years later. Personalities later famous such as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan were all associated with the construction of the fort in one way or another before the war. The fort was built of solid granite in a pentagon shape with walls thirty-two feet tall and up to thirty feet thick. The fort was built in the Delaware River on what was originally a mud shoal called Pea Patch Island. The fort accepted its first POWs in July 1861 with the arrival of eight Confederate soldiers who had been taken prisoner near Harper's Ferry.

Prisoners originally were kept inside the fort, but a booming population led to the building of barracks outside the walls. The new barracks were located in an enclosed pen encompassing about five acres. The pen was divided into two yards with the smaller pen nearest the fort being used for officers and the larger pen for enlisted men. Each of the yards contained up to ten rows of barracks under one continuous roof, called 'cowsheds' by the prisoners. The sheds were divided into rooms measuring about twenty-three feet wide by forty-two feet long by twelve feet high and had bunks in three tiers on either side of a central passage. The rooms were called 'divisions' and were numbered from one to forty. David McElwain was in Division 11. When the prison population was at its peak, the divisions could be pressed to hold 400 or more enlisted men in each shed with a lesser number assigned to the officers' sheds. The buildings themselves were mere shells constructed of rough pine board that offered little protection from heat, cold or vermin.

Private McElwain had the misfortune to arrive at Fort Delaware when the prison commandant was General Albin Francisco Schoepf, known as "General Terror" by the prisoners. While the previous commandants at least attempted to treat the POWs in a humane manner and improve the conditions at the camp, General Schoepf allowed his men complete freedom to brutalize the prisoners. Schoepf never personally abused any prisoners, but his unsavory crew of subordinates took great pleasure in tormenting them.

Captain George Ahl was probably the most hated guard at Fort Delaware, since his name rarely appears in Confederate memoirs without a disparaging remark next to it. The most creative name given to Ahl was the "autocratic Bashaw of Ten Tails, who is all-in-Ahl, and Ahl-fired mean at that!"

One memorably sadistic guard was a Union soldier from Vermont nicknamed "Old Hike" by the prisoners. He received this nickname by constantly yelling "Hike out! Hike out! You damned rebel sons of bitches," as he swaggered through the barracks armed with a club or whip while protected by two armed guards. "Old Hike," whose real name was Adam or Adams, first arrived at Fort Delaware as a disciplinary prisoner for cowardice at Bull Run. "Old Hike" would use weekly contraband inspections of the prisoners as an excuse to abuse the prisoners and to beat them. He also ran a con game that involved selling pocketknives through the sutler to unsuspecting new prisoners, which he would then confiscate to resell to the next batch of arrivals. Fortunately not all guards were as brutal as "Old Hike," especially those who had served honorably in combat.

Trigger-happy guards also were a danger to the prisoners. Poorly disciplined troops would fire on helpless prisoners without provocation. One incident involved the murder of a prisoner for not returning fast enough from the latrine area -- the prisoner was not able to run because of a crippling war injury. The guard was promoted to sergeant.

When David McElwain arrived, the prison held more than nine thousand inmates and was averaging eighty-four deaths a month. The high death rate was due primarily to inadequate rations, a contaminated water supply and overcrowding. A typical meal by the time Private McElwain arrived was perhaps best described by Randolph Shotwell of North Carolina. He said for breakfast they received: "About one square inch of boiled bacon, very slimy, and one slice of baker's bread, all of which could be packed into a pint tin cup and still have room for almost as much more or say a teacupful of the rotten rain water with its solid inches of tadpoles and wigglers which was our morning draught in lieu of tea or coffee... Dinner was the big meal of the two. It consisted of precisely the same quantity of bread and meat with the addition of half a tin cup of slop which no man had the right to dignify with the name of soup. To the best of our judgment the ingredients were rotten water, rice hulls, white worms half an inch long, grit, nails and hair with now and then a grain of corn." With meals like these, many prisoners turned to catching and eating the rats that infested the island to supplement their diet with more protein.

With this diet, by February of 1864 at least one of every eight prisoners had scurvy. The prison officials had a fund of $17,000 available for the prisoners, but refused to use any of it for vegetables needed to prevent scurvy. The Federal authorizes also imprisoned charitable local civilians who attempted to raise money to buy vegetables for the POWs.

While in the prison hospital, Captain Robert E. Park of the 12th Alabama Regiment described in his diary what his comrades endured: "The poor fellows suffering from scurvy are a sad sight. Their legs and feet are so drawn as to compel them to walk on tiptoe, their heels being unable to touch the floor as they walk from their beds to huddle around the stove. How necessary a few vegetables are to these helpless sufferers. The `best government the world has ever seen' however is too poor or too mean to furnish them."

The location of the POW camp caused problems because it was situated on a low lying island surrounded by a dike that prevented proper drainage. The soil on the island had a tendency to turn into a quagmire when it was the slightest bit wet. The POWs were forced to add their waste products to this muddy mess because the authorities would not allow more than a few prisoners at a time to visit the latrines at night. This excrement eventually contaminated the stagnant canals inside the fort that were originally the only source of water for the prisoners. Besides the obvious health hazard created by these miserable conditions, the smell was horrendous.

Oh those poor terrorist in Gitmo .

LINK

[Kaiser of Arabia]

Bravo Gawain.

[doc_bean]

Doc Bean: you are misrepresenting the situation in Europe. The odd Mosque is burned down but then again so is the odd church. Neo-Nazis may occassionally attack immigrants but far more violent crime is comitted by immigrants than by Neo-Nazis. And the E.U. report on increasingly violent Anti Semitism placed most of the blame on Muslim immigrants.

Over my lifetime (80s and 90s to present), race relations in Europe have improved in some ways and collapsed in others and you can't blame it all on the native Europeans.

Neo-nazism is an ideology, immigration isn't. The crime figures say nothing, since only hate crimes matter here (lots of drugs dealing neo nazis, no one really cares that they are neo nazis).

Race relations differ from place to place, time to time and age group to age group. I don't know if there is a trend, i don't see it anyway.

You're from the UK aren't you ? I think neo-nazism is a far greater problem on the continent than it is there.

[doc_bean]

Oh please where would you like to start? Its really funny how you guys who get on Bush about Gitmo defend Linclon.

Different times set different standards.
WWII bombings in Germany by the English had goals like "we want to kill a million people by...". Specifically targeting civilians is unacceptable now, some might even say it's terrorism.

You can't compare how wars are fought or how prisoners were threated. Norms and morals evolve.

(Oh and the problem with Gitmo is they are denied a fair trial, not as much the way they are treated, I'm sure that chain gang prison isn't a whole lot nicer.)

[Don Corleone]

Actually, the standards were considerably higher back then. The US Civil War re-defined warfare, as until then, warfare was a fairly civilized, limited matter. You didn't attack civilians, you treated captured prisoners with respect, and you didn't fight for 'unconditional surrender'. All three of those were American contributions that propagated to other cultures with the advent of the civil war, and even then, it took some doing. The Franco-Prussian war was more civilized than WWI, which was more civilized than WWII.

[Kanamori]

Lincoln suspended the writ of habeus corpus.