I certainly agree with Jonathan that the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of racial oppression and has no business flying on government property, even over the Confederate Soldier Monument on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol. But it became that symbol in the civil rights era, when the South resisted desegregation, not in the 1860’s, when it fought for independence.

I also agree that slavery was the real cause of the Civil War. As Jonathan explains:

Without slavery, there would have been no war. The South seceded because it feared limits on the expansion of slavery would eventually doom the institution. To protect a heritage built on the uncompensated labor of slaves and their vast investment in human “property,” the states that formed the Confederacy waged a bloody war that costs hundreds of thousands of American lives and left the South in ruins.

But about 90 percent of white Southerners did not own slaves in 1860. They fought for their homes and their land and, yes, for “states’ rights.”

Although both my parents and I were born and raised in New York City, three of my four grandparents were Southern and all had ancestors and near relatives who fought, and sometimes died, for the Confederacy. None of them were slaveholders. While I am profoundly grateful that they lost the war and that the scourge of slavery was finally banished from this country, I honor them for their courage and sacrifice. They were fighting for something they deeply believed in and it wasn’t slavery, it was home and hearth and family.

The flag that flies over the Confederate Soldier Monument is the Confederate battle flag, not the Confederate flag. The Confederacy had three national flags in its short existence. The first (from March 1861 to May 1863), known as the “stars and bars,” was often confused with the American flag in the heat of battle, and so it was replaced by “the stainless banner.” But it, in calm winds, could look like a surrender flag, and so in March 1865, as the Confederacy was rapidly collapsing, it was replaced with the “blood-stained banner.”

I would recommend that the battle flag—today only a symbol of racism—be replaced by the “stars and bars,” a symbol only of “the lost cause” for which so many fought and died. It should fly at half-staff.

Flags are powerful symbols. And they can be symbolic of both a cause and of reconciliation. Consider this poem, written in 1909, about a flag, captured by Union forces in a battle in the Civil War, that was returned to the 2nd Maryland Infantry, CSA:

Recovered relic of those stirring days,

Long lost, but ne’er surrendered, now restored,

We greet thee, to thy donors give the praise

For loving-kindness, not to be ignored.

 

We hail thee: “Hallowed Banner!” and we love

To con o’er fields where thou wast proudly borne

Straight to the front, which did the prowess prove

Of those great souls, all, save a few, now gone!

 

We honor that brave band, whose every breath

Marked deep devotion to the holy cause.

Wherein they struggled, even unto death,

Defending homes! Upholding righteous laws!

 

And here, dear flag, we place thee now to rest

Among thy fellows, evermore to be

Entombed in state, amid the sacred, blest

Emblems of blood-bought immortality!

The author was Major William Meade Pegram, an aide-de-camp to Confederate Cavalry General J. E. B. Stuart. He had three horses shot out from under him before being wounded at the battle of Brandy Station, June 9th, 1863, the greatest cavalry battle of the war. He was my great great grandfather.