DON'T tear down this flag!

Walt is incensed -- putting it mildly -- by the increasingly strident demands of the usual suspects (including Mitt Romney and a starlet posing as Governor of South Carolina) to remove the Confederate battle flag from its position next to the SC state capitol. Their argument is that since the "Southern Cross" (as it is sometimes known) has been appropriated by some racists and social misfits, including the nutbar who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston last week, the flag which the South has loved for a century and a half is no longer worthy of respect. They are wrong.

The Confederate battle flag was not intended to stand for racial supremacy, let alone slavery. THIS is what it stands for.

For over 150 years, the Confederate battle flag has been displayed throughout the Old South (and all over America) to honour the 260,000 Southerners who died in the War of the Secession fighting for the Cause in which they believed. That cause was not slavery, but the right of the people of the sovereign states to decide for themselves what form of society they wished to live in, and what form of government they wished to have.

Slavery only became an issue when Abraham Lincoln made it so, in his Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863. He did this for political reasons, not because he was a believer in the equality of the races. Here, from "Abraham Lincoln Never Believed in Racial Equality", is a direct quote from a speech by "the Great Emancipator" at Springfield IL in 1858:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality ... I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negros and white men.

But the civil war -- regarded by blacks as a white man's war -- was going badly. In the North, anti-war sentiment was growing, enlistments were declining, and morale was bad. However, there was a strong abolitionist faction in Congress and in the upper strata of Northern society, and Lincoln felt that making the conflict about slavery, rather than about states' rights, would get the "progressive thinkers" more engaged. So, "Free the slaves!" became the new war cry -- "the battle cry of freedom".

And so it was that the Stars and Stripes was made to represent "freedom" and the Confederate flag slavery, a mischaracterization which is being revived in the heat of overreaction to the Charleston shootings. The deranged kid had a Confederate flag sewed to his backpack. So what? Many of the cops, white and black, who shoot innocent people, black and white, have the Star-spangled Banner sewed onto their uniforms. Does that make them evil racists or advocates of a return to slavery? [Well? Does it? Ed.]

And how about the Sandy Hook massacre? The Stars and Stripes was flying outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on the day Adam Lanza shot 26 adults and children. The same flag was flying -- and still flies -- at the CT state capitol in New Haven. Does anyone seriously suggest it was the sight of that flag that fuelled the killer's depravity? Ridiculous?! Certainly. Just as ridiculous as the notion that banning the display of the Confederate flag will somehow end race hatred in America.

Footnote and recommendation: For an even-handed commentary on the reasons for the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Walt can think of no better reference than Ken Burns's superb TV mini-series, The Civil War, available as a boxed set  from Amazon and other sources.