Old Glory Revisited

[XXXXXX]

Old Glory Revisited

Recently here at Harvard U. there was some controversy over some southern students flying the confederate flag in the yard, out of dorm windows... I need to find the story.

And to keep on the subject of the flag...but off at a tangent.

When I was a young teenager in the early 70's, there was a speedway tream from London called the 'White City Rebels.. They had the coolest looking team body colours.

The franchise still exists, and is located in Somerset.







I have posted on various speedway boards and fan sites, asking whether or not people underatand what this flag represents (here in the states) and whether or not it's about time that the franchise drop the logo, nickname etc. Most responses are of the get stuffed varierty. People in the UK do have a fondness for the imagery, there is some romaticsim still attached to the 'confederate rebels' and their uniforms and flag.

[Ginger Yellow]

Old Glory Revisited

Toro, the point is that he brushes the ugly reality under the carpetto make his hagiography cleaner. Given the subject of the hagiography, that's a bit disturbing. Similarly in the next passage, he says that he's not going to apologise for why they fought, and then goes on to do precisely that. The whole speech is a bit creepy. It's one thing to honour dead soldiers who thought they were doing their duty, it's another thing to romanticise them and sustain southern resentment.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Old Glory Revisited

No, he ignores an ugly irrelevancy in order to make the actual point he's making about regular armies without getting out the sackcloth and ashes.

And I don't see any attempt at apologia for the Confederacy, only for its soldiers. Indeed, the very terms of his claim - that one should not hold soldiers responsible for the causes they fight for - presuppose general disapproval of the Confederate cause.

I think if "a bit creepy" reflects anything substantive at all, it's your own discomfort with seeing shades of grey here.

I don't see how one honours soldiers without a somewhat romantic view of them, I don't see how there's anything wrong with doing so when you are as clear about repudiating their cause as he is, and I don't see how the speech can possibly be seen to "further Southern resentment." Quite the contrary, I think it attempts to explain and thereby defuse it.

[Eggchaser]

Old Glory Revisited

That saw 60 percent of its soldiers become casualties, some 256,000 of them dead.

And one of the main reasons for that was that the generals on both sides were comfortable fighting with what were essentially Napoleonic tactics of massed ranks firing on one another at close quarters, but with weapons far more accurate and deadly than those used in the early 1800s, causing massive casualties.

[Reed John]

Old Glory Revisited

As I recall, more soldiers died in the Civil War due to disease than battle.

That Somerset Rebels thing is ridiculous. The University of Mississippi, whose mascot is The Rebels, banned the flying of the Confederate flag at football games and, even though it was popular, didn't seem to get much objection from their students. It was as if once they were told that black people found it offensive, they understood. I don't know if the alumni felt the same way.

Regardless of what the flag meant 150 years ago, it has since come to be a symbol of segregation. The KKK, et al. use it. It was flown above southern state capitals or added to state flags, to show their disdain and defiance of integration. (wiki that if you're interested).

Instead of MLK day, in Virginia they celebrate Lee-Jackson-King day. I shit you not. Of course, that's just the official holiday name. Everyone with half a braind just calls it MLK Day.

I also don't have much sympathy for the romanticization of the Confederacy or talk of the importance of it's "Heritage." It is true that only a minority of southerners ever owned slaves. Indeed, many whites in the south opposed the Confederacy on the basis that slavery gave rich land owners an unfair advantage over poorer farmers.

But obviously, a whole lot of southerners did sign up to fight for the Confederates through some vague ideas about "Sovereignty" and "states rights" ignoring that the "right" those states were fighting to protect was the "right" to enslave a big part of their population, who in turn were descendants of people's brought forceably to this country (the slave trade ended in the early 1800s, I think, so I don't think there were many slaves in the US born in Africa by 1860).

Really, that's what it was about. It's true that Lincoln didn't free the slaves in the non-confederate free states until later on, but that was just a temporary political and military expediency. The wedge issue in the civil war was slavery and all the talk of "northern agression," "states rights" or what a nice guy Robert E. Lee was (I've heard it all. I lived in Virginia for a total of about 10 years of my life) are not going to change that this "Southern way of life" that so many died for was really an economic system whereby a handful of very rich people owned people with dark skin and the rest of the white people just barely got by.

Besides, it wasn't all about southerners sticking up for themselves. The confederacy was trying to get help from Britain, but Britain decided not to after Gettysburg because it wouldn't have been popular domestically.

Basically, the poor guys that signed up for the "Southern Cause" were suckers - fighting to protect the wealth of very few rich planters who before the war would have gladly stomped on them almost as readily as a black person.

Of course, that was sort of true in the North too and more than a few people, especially poor Irish immigrants, recognized it. The riots in New York were about that. A lot of northern white men didn't want to fight to give black people the opportunity to compete with them for jobs. Also, they resented the government's policy of letting rich people buy their way out of the draft (it was like $300 or thereabouts, a lot of money back then).

If you want a "Rebel Flag" that we can all be proud of (at least all Americans) go with this piece of bad-assery.



or this

[Wyatt Earp]

Old Glory Revisited

[Reed John]

Old Glory Revisited

Right now I'm watching a thing on the local schools public access tv channel about the run up to the Civil War. The professor guy just said that one quarter of southerners owned slaves and 1% owned more than 50. That goes against the claim, in that speech, that only 5% owned slaves.

Edit: I think I sorted it. Wiki says "According to the 1860 U.S. census, nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was still legal. Of all 1,515,605 families in the 15 slave states, 393,967 held slaves (roughly one in four), amounting to 8% of all American families. Most households, however, had only a few slaves. The concentration of slaves were held by planters, defined by historians as those who held 20 or more slaves. The planters achieved wealth and social and political power. Ninety-five percent of black people lived in the South, comprising one-third of the population there, as opposed to 2% of the population of the North."

So 1/3 of families owned slaves, even though maybe less than 5% of people owned slaves. Given the highly patriarchal society, I imagine few women and no children ever held the "title" on a slave, but being the minor child or wife of a slave-owner is pretty much the same thing as being a slave owner.

[jason voorhees]

Old Glory Revisited

What reed said.

The Stars & Bars is obviously a visually incredible flag, or else it wouldn't make its way onto Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirts here and Primal Scream t-shirts there.

And the Southern soldiers obviously were one of the bravest, gutsiest fighting forces ever assembled (key part of that word being "ass.") However, Grant said something along the lines of "never has anyone fought so valiantly, for so idiotic a cause."

Ah, my first edit - "I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

[Reed John]

Old Glory Revisited

"never has anyone fought so valiantly, for so idiotic a cause."

I think that distinction has been eclipsed several times in the 20th and 21st Century.

[Incandenza]

Old Glory Revisited

Reed Miller wrote:

So 1/3 of families owned slaves, even though maybe less than 5% of people owned slaves. Given the highly patriarchal society, I imagine few women and no children ever held the "title" on a slave, but being the minor child or wife of a slave-owner is pretty much the same thing as being a slave owner.

Many poor yeoman families could also save up and basically rent a slave for a short amount of time from their local wealthy planters. So while they weren't slave owners, they still benefited from the labor of enslaved blacks.