I have a question about the Confederate States of America

[DetlefK]

4 years.

They existed for 4 years.

They were formed from entities that were US-states when it all started and which later became US-states again when it all ended.

4 years.

What happened during those 4 years culturally? The Southern Cross battle-flag is used as expression of cultural heritage, but why a flag that was only in use for these few years?

When refering to the "Spirit of the South" and "Southern Heritage" (whatever they are), why the connection to the Confederation?
4 years!
The Confederation lasted only 4 years, so why can't the Southern Heritage be expressed with something that happened during all the decades the South was part of the US?

Why is the Confederation and its battle-flag regularly dug up from history to represent a thing it is just a tiny component of?




Could it be that all that talk about "Southern Heritage" is just empty talk and that this flag really doesn't mean anything culturally?
Could it be that the confederate battle-flag, a symbol of secession, is nowadays simply a symbol for distrust towards the US-government?

[Ron Green]

1. Fear and nostalgia. A dangerous combination.

That flag represents for them a world that never really was: rural and benign, with opportunities for prosperity and happy coloreds to support them.

[upaloopa]

2. I think the 4 years you speak of was the period

of the Civil War. The culture of slavery the flag represents was much longer than four years.
There was a battle going on before the civil war over slavery. For states to join the union they had to be either slave or free and there was a new free state for every new slave state. The "bloody Kansas" history was over whether it would be free or slave. The confederate flag represents all that history I think.

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. Ulysses Grant couldn't understand why dirt poor white folks.....

who where not much better off than the slaves, would fight to support the aristocracy.
It is a certain mindset that you see today with people losing jobs yet supporting tax cuts for the wealthy. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[patricia92243]

6. Bingo! How the Republicans hoodwink poor people into voting against their own interests

has always been a mystery to me.

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. The southern economic model has always been based on....

cheap labor. They have now exported that model to the rest of the country.

[LondonReign2]

14. This LBJ quote explains it

?hc_location=ufi

[Bonhomme Richard]

16. Yes it does. n/t

[Johonny]

17. +1

[Proud Public Servant]

4. Just last night I was reading,

in the biography of Alexander Hamilton I'm plowing through, that Abigail Adams was one of many, many people who expected the South to leave the union -- in the 1790s, less that 5 years after the Constitution was ratified.

So maybe one way to think of it is that the South, from the very beginning, has seen itself as a distinct place with a distinct culture, but the Confederate flag is one of the only visual symbols ever created to proclaim that. Hence the embrace and the blather about "tradition."

[LanternWaste]

5. One could make the argument that they are celebrating their antebellum heritage

One could make the argument that they are celebrating their antebellum heritage (neoclassical and Greek revival architectures, Penny presses, canal systems, etc); but on the other hand, anyone intelligent enough to use the word antebellum is going to be far too intelligent to celebrate it any more than one might "celebrate" their heritage being traced back the Hanseatic League...

[Proud Public Servant]

7. Also, if you want some irony

The place I've been to where I've seen far more Confederate flags than anyplace else (on clothing, on cars, on houses, even on pets) is West Virginia -- a state formed when it seceded from the Confederacy.

[1939]

9. I have a different take

In 1865, the Confederacy was totally crushed, never to rise again. The Confederates suffered massive losses in dead, in maimed, and in PTSD damaged men. Economically, the seceding states were devastated and destined to become economic colonies of the north for a hundred years.

Out of this, the opinion leaders of the south rebuilt the spirit of the populace by declaring that the cause had been noble, that their soldiers had struggled valiantly at great odds, and that they had been overcome only by a juggernaut. Lee's surrender at Appomattox was elevated to rank with Christ's death on the Cross. The entire myth of the lost cause was begun by Pollard and elevated to an art form by Jubal Early. All of the "brothers were valiant" except those like Longstreet who turned Republican.

My father, like me, enjoyed history as an avocation. As he related to me, while he was working in Virginia in the late 1930s, he visited the Museum of the Confederacy (the wartime CS "White House&quot to see the exhibits. While touring the museum, he noted a lot of men and women sitting quietly in a room off the main gallery. He asked a docent about the people and she told him that they came regularly to "mourn the lost cause".

[Rex]

13. The North decided to go with industry and the South decided to go with labor.

Grant threw troops at the South so the losses in dead and maimed and PTSD for both sides was staggering. The burning of the South as retribution probably didn't help calm people down and probably is were some of the animosity comes from to this very day. Unfounded in reality, but it is there.

However, I have to say, the majority of us in the South...we got over it and never had a problem with the North crushing the South to begin with. It is those few you saw in that room, that make the most noise and get picked up by what can only be called Infotainment channels like CNN/Foxnews.

[packman]

10. Nothing to do with heritage

everything to do with the Klan - founded in Tennessee by ex-confed soldiers who rallied under the battle flag for their Klan meetings.

"Six well-educated Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, during the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War"

A sad note- "In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern "


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan

[Rex]

11. LOL! I sometimes wonder that myself, I am a native Texan and laugh at how so many

here pretend the Rebel Flag is part of their culture...er, no, not at all, not even half or a quarter, it is a fragment of your imagination!

4 years and yet some pretend it was 400 years, then again I do not expect much (except for trouble) from people that want the South to Rise Again. They are mostly lost in their deluded fantasy of race wars and white power.

Sadly, Texas is infested with them.

[Paladin]

12. The book and movie of "Gone With The Wind" really set things back.

I've run into way too many people who regard "GWTW" as a non-fiction work......

[CK_John]

15. IMO, they were Tories at heart and never accepted the Union. England was there

main economic partner and the South produced their cotton.