The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.
.. Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman’s body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.
.. You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.
.. I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well—if not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican Stats; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.
.. Thus in 1861, when the Civil War began, the Union did not face a peaceful Southern society wanting to be left alone. It faced an an aggressive power, a Genosha, an entire society based on the bondage of a third of its residents, with dreams of expanding its fields of the bondage further South. It faced the dream of a vast American empire of slavery.
.. Fighting for slavery presented problems abroad, and so Confederate diplomats came up with the notion of emphasizing “states rights” over “slavery”—the first manifestation of what would later become a plank in the foundation of Lost Cause mythology.
.. “I’ve never heard of any other cause than slavery,” wrote Confederate commander John S. Mosby. The progeny of the Confederacy repeatedly invoked slavery as the war’s cause.
.. This mythology of manners is adopted in lieu of the mythology of the Lost Cause. But it still has the great drawback of being rooted in a lie. The Confederate flag should not come down because it is offensive to African Americans. The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans.
What the Confederate flag really means to America today, according to a race historian
One of the great stories of the past few decades is how white supremacist organizations have adopted the language of the civil rights movement and have come to sound like minority multicultural organizations. They say that they are only lobbying for their respective traditions and beliefs to be celebrated alongside those of other people’s. They want a white history month, because it’s only fair.
But just because someone says something doesn’t make it honest. And it certainly doesn’t make it true.
.. The reason we give equal credence to both sides of a story that only really has one true side has so much to do with the last couple decades of media journalism, and the rising conservative critique of a liberal education and critical thinking. It’s about the emergence of Fox News and alternate spaces that demonize or reject conventional histories of things. Just yesterday, Fox News suggested that the shooting was about religious liberty, which is perhaps the most ridiculous and farcical thing ever uttered on that network.
.. Even to say that it’s about heritage not hate, is to recognize that for many people it is inextricably about hate. You can’t filter out the racism and leave what’s pure and historical in the flag, because that purity doesn’t exist. Some things are so primitively stained or tarnished by history that that can never be set side. The flag is a perfect example.
The Truth Does Not Change According to Our Ability to Stomach It: A Southerner’s Perspective on the Confederate Flag
What we cannot be proud of is our roots in the Confederate States of America. Pride in the Confederacy is irresponsible, it is dangerous, and it is dishonest. Lay aside the revisionist history you were fed in the sixth grade, and open a book. Southern historian Gordon Rhea can lay it out for you right now:
“The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans’ groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election.
Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now
The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act—it endorses it. That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…