Circa1865

It is widely acknowledged that had the representatives of each of the thirteen colonies been told that there would be no voluntary withdrawal from the Articles of Confederation once ratified, that none would have ratified it. And none would have ratified the new Constitution had the same been declared – no withdrawal. And North Carolina made it requisite that a Bill of Rights, including a Tenth Amendment, to ensure that States were sovereign in anything not expressly and specifically delegated to the federal agent. And Americans celebrate secession every 4th of July.

Flags and Historic Erasure

“How refreshing it would be for someone to acknowledge the historic reality of the Secession of 1861! The South did secede, even if the arbitrament of war reversed the action. Since there was no Union to be saved, therefore this preservation never occurred. What did eventuate was rather a conquest and an imposed rule, which we have lived under ever since.

Only some few Northerners have ever realized that the triumphalist view has, though not without some justification, occluded an understanding to the damage done to the interests of all citizens, even themselves. The confusion about the meaning of a flag is an internal problem [for Americans], exclusively. And a rather convenient problem it is, especially for politicians.

My own view about the Confederate [Battle] flag is that it is no issue at all, which is not to say that it has not been made into one. But the flag is necessary for the hatemongers – the progressives who love to hate. Few of the hatemongers know anything about the various flags of the Confederacy and the State regiments and the corps within armies.

But now there has developed a movement to reconstruct various Southern State flags that have any Confederate aspects at all. The focus on State flags is related to an obsession with historic erasure that is deceptive and dangerous. Since the Stars and Stripes denoted a slaveholding nation for decades before the Confederate flag existed, it would seem that the flag of the United States is the one that should be reformulated or replaced, or at least referred to as being “like the swastika.”

Educated people know what that means – and what it doesn’t. Though flaunting the swastika is intolerable, the study of imagery, art, art, symbols, religion and anthropology is not. In an academic sense, even the swastika can be looked upon without sinister implications.

But with fierce recklessness, some can deface graves, destroy monuments, and forbid the sight of offensive and dreadful images. But memory depends on something to remember, which was the point of the memorials in the first place. And I know how difficult this is.”

(A Monumental Proposal, James O. Tate, Chronicles, June 2016, excerpts pp. 36-37)