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The Confederate Flag ... Racist?

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The Confederate States of America was a breakaway nation of the United States for three years and three months. The main reasons for seceding from the U.S. were the states’ rights (questioning the strength of the Union for the inability to not follow the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850), and, of course, slavery.


Here are quotes from a few states’ secession letters defending slavery:

  • Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.”

  • Texas: “The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.”

  • South Carolina: “Those [Union] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery…”

  • Georgia: “That reason was [the North's] fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.”


Some states even mentioned that slavery should be expanded:

  • Georgia: “Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it… or an equal participation in the whole of it. The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections-- of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice.”

  • Texas: “The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.”


After also attacking the idea of abolitionism and Then-President Abraham Lincoln, they then pointed out how slavery accounts for a huge portion of the southern economy. The Confederacy made it clear why they were fighting: to own fellow human beings. These despicable actions happened congruently around the symbolic flying of the Confederate flag. The first flag isn’t the one of the conversation as the “Stars and Bars”, but the second and third flag (first used on Stonewall Jackson’s casket) included a patch on the top left that included the flag design commonly known today as the Confederate flag.

The design has historically been and sometimes still is being used in the last century by groups like the Dixiecrats, segregationists, the Ku Klux Klan, and other neo-Nazi groups. Recently, Pew Research Center hosted a poll that asked what type of reaction people have to the Confederate Flag. Almost 30% of Americans had a negative reaction when "they saw the Confederate flag displayed." According to the same poll, 9% of Americans had a positive reaction. A majority (58%) did not react. Among African Americans, 41% had a negative reaction while 10% had a positive reaction.

Very few actually believe the Confederate Flag symbolizes anything positive. This flag has a racist background, so why are we waving it around like it’s our own country’s flag?


Click here to vote in our new poll, or go to the newspaper's "Vote Your Mind" section.


- Jacob Francy


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