flag for later – We Saw a Grate Smoke Raise Up: Letters, Diaries, Wires from the Valley of the Late Rebellion

9/29/24

I compiled this info. a couple years back but never got back to it to publish on this site. Hopefully it’s correct & true info. I often end up in confusion re types of flags, dates, all ephemera/actions/undertakings (can’t even find the right word) associated with the Rebel flag. At any rate, over at Civil War Talk, user RedRover has an outstanding post if you’re interested in more about the evolution of this flag: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/how-did-confederate-soldiers-feel-the-first-time-they-fought-against-their-former-country.212002/#post-2797146. Scroll down on the page.

Confederate Flag Information:

Evolution of the Rebel flag in 5 stages (Beauregard designed the new Confederacy flag after 1^st Bull Run):

Bonnie Blue Flag (blue with white star centered)

Stars & Bars (3/61-5/63)

The X Battle Flag (stars & bars)

The Stainless Banner (5/63-3/65)

Blood-stained Banner (March-April 1865)

Salute to the Confederate flag:

“I salute the Confederate Flag with affection, reverence and undying devotion to the Cause for which it stands.”

Salute to the Virginia flag:

“I salute the Flag of Virginia with reverence and patriotic devotion to the ‘Mother of States and Statesmen’ which it represents the ‘Old Dominion’, where liberty and independence were born.”

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War Tony Horwitz P. 153

“Foote’s views on the Confederate battle flag were equally nuanced. In his view, those who saw the banner as synonymous with slavery had their history wrong. The battle flag was a combat standard, not a political symbol. “It stood for law, honor, love of country,” Foote said, and the banner was revered as such by the veterans who had fought under it.

At the same time, Foote recognized that the flag had become “a banner of shame and disgrace and hate.” But he pinned the blame for this on educated Southerner who allowed white supremacists to misuse the flag during the civil rights struggle. “Freedom Riders were a pretty weird-looking group to Southerners,” Foote said. “The men had off haircuts and strange baggy clothes and seemed to associate with people with an intimacy that we didn’t allow. So the so-called right-thinking people of the South said, “They’re sending their rifraff down here. Let our rifraff take care of them.’ Then they sat back while the good ol’ boys in the pickup trucks took care of it, under the Confederate banner. That’s when right-thinking people should have stepped in and said, ‘Don’t use that banner, that’s not what it stands for.’ But they didn’t. So now it’s a symbol of evil to a great many people, and I understand that.’”

See: Freedom Riders James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, murdered in Mississippi in 1964. See John Doar, lawyer who received the Medal of Freedom. The film “Mississippi Burning” is said to be false narrative of the nature of FBI Agents & the events themselves. See too: Detroit Riots, 1967, & the “Long, Hot Summer of 1967.” Just 5 & a half in ’67, I vaguely remember the 1960s: our small b&w TV with the antenna showed molotov cocktails, the crowds of people outside in cities standing or running on concrete streets, the marching, the Washington Monument, the police dogs biting Black people. Billy clubs. Fires & smoke. Water hoses. President Johnson had come on TV: “Law and order have broken down in Detroit, Michigan. Pillage, looting, murder, and arson have nothing to do with civil rights.” That I don’t recall, just the name Johnson & his face everywhere. The moon landing I definitely remember, sitting on the rug in front of the TV asking how far away the moon was, my mother saying it was so far I couldn’t imagine, just veryveryvery far away in the sky, so I took that to be Denver, where her parents lived, so I said it was near Denver, right, & she laughed, said no, then my brother said “I know where the moon is!”

Foote: interview YT video published 11/23/15 from 1997 90,814 views

“I tell them to their faces that they’re the scum who have degraded the confederate flag, converted it from a symbol of honor into a banner of shame, covered it with obscenities like a roadhouse men’s room wall. What are you talking about?

I’m talking about the yahoos who ran around waving the Confederate flag uh, in favor of, uh, segregation, and all that kind of thing, uh, I regret it to this day the Confederate flag is a, a, a, a banner, uh, for a noble cause as well as some people see it as a banner of an ignoble cause because they would defense [sic] of slavery.”

“Shelby Foote Indepth 3 hour Interview” video on YouTube (minute 1:29.00):

“‘I regret very much what has happened about the flag. Uh, the flag that people look at now is a flag that was carried during the demonstrations against civil rights, it was carried by Ku Klux Klansmen, and all that kind of thing, and that’s what it represents to a great many people and I don’t wonder that they’re feeling pain and wanting to take it down. I understand perfectly well they do that. But to my mind, they’re misidentifying that flag. Uh, that flag represents many good things. And you have to translate yourself back into the time of secession to understand how some states would want to secede. The Constitution had not been amended in 61 years. This was the first amendment– the emancipation amendment– was the first amendment in 61 years of the Constitution and absolutely the first amendment that ever had anything to do with anybody’s private property. So, they saw this amendment coming, uh, they said we don’t want any part of this Union, we want to get out of it. And people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say slavery had everything to do with the war. That was a very complicated civic thing. Uh, Robert Toombs or somebody once gave the best definition of that war I’ve ever heard. He said it was a war of one form of society against another form of society. And because one of those forms of society included, uh, chattel slavery, and the other side didn’t, except to a limited extent, uh, it’s always been identified as a war over slavery. Uh, believe me, no soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves. Uh, they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds. Southerners thought they were fighting the second American Revolution. Northerners thought they were fighting to hold the Union together. And that held true throughout the whole war, except for some people who were absolute partisans on both sides. Fire Eaters in South Carolina, and abolitionists in Massachusetts. Uh, but most of the people were fighting because they were fighting for, Southerners once said I’m fighting ‘cuz you’re down here, uh, if you want to invade my home, you got me to fight. Others say you’re trying to tear the fabric of the Union, therefore you should be put down and not allowed to do what you claim you want to do. It’s a very complex subject and I’m sorry to see it, uh, degenerate into such things as identifying that flag as a symbol of, uh, racism. It is not. It was never intended as such. Confederacy respected law above all things.’”

Note: Which law? “I cannot stand & sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.” Jackie Robinson

Note: Foote’s cynical insistence no one on the Union side fought to free the slaves is outdated. Foote’s dead, of course, but this White male insistence on having the right answer is dead too. Dead & gone, hopefully for good, a long stretch in history when they mined all they could from everyone not White & not male. It will be puzzling to look back on. It’s enraging now.

Ephraim was not the only Union soldier also fighting with the slaves in mind. I’m not sure where these people, these historians, get their opinions, but my grandfather got his facts by being there, fighting & writing, in 1862. Ephraim was one of many Union soldiers concerned about the disposition of the slaves (even if they did not voice that concern on paper because they kept no diary). Certainly for a number of so-called Rebels, & definitely to the leaders of the Confederacy, the enslaved were the entity foremost in their minds… after all, the war itself began over expansion of slavery, these White men thinking their White liberty at stake, the liberty to remain free while the humans they owned stayed chained so they could expand into more states generation after generation into infinity.

See Ephraim’s June 14 diary entry, as well as his May 27 letter, for what he wrote about the enslaved. Like a Confederate banknote of varying degrees of soundness, these theories of Union soldier motivations come and go. It’s unfortunate the myth Union soldiers did not fight to free slaves, as if the whole affair were homicidal violence of undetermined etiology, gladiator entertainment perhaps, that Foote’s idea re soldier intention has become so widespread, but now the light hits his pages in a more faded way. You can see the alteration process right in the records as you go through the decades. It’s always been about creating and producing a new kind of story in each era of each century. The Stars & Bars flies high on giant poles in every last hick backwater of each state in the Union, still. What is it with these people? Why can’t they fly the goddamn American flag? On tailgates of trucks, say?

Anyway, what historians have traditionally emphasized muted the lesser-known lived experiences like those of my grandfather. More & more the human stories of war are being heard now, not just abstractions about battle tactics, lines, ammunition. I put this project off so long mostly because I had no interest in learning about this war (was it fought in the 1890s? 1850s? It was Virginia? I thought it was Mississippi, Alabama. Virginia? Really?) & having to figure out where the 110^th was when they were & then doing what, then what happened next in time. I should have skipped all the battles & simply found all the diaries I could written from March 1– July 5 & typed those up instead. Because the abstract can’t save what’s not abstract. The bodies are in the ground & we want the body in the end, not the words. Bones just don’t look like a body. On the other hand, how much sense would Ephraim have made without backgrounding? Context about where he was, why, with whom, along with what was happening in the Valley right then, day to day, month to month? Because the most important thing to him, in the end, was keeping his body intact, whether he’d live, no? But if I didn’t include context, the desperate conditions under which these men lived & fought Confederates, how much sense would his words even have made? And how would Ephraim have wanted this dealt with? He probably wouldn’t have wanted any of this. But he did leave his diary behind when he could have destroyed it or not ever started it. He returned to write for 127 days straight, so obviously understood the significance of his historical moment, & must have intended his ancestors to read his writing. Maybe unfortunate for him that it passed through 11 people down 5 generations then finally into my unlikely hands.

Note: Jefferson Davis’ 3xgrandson: “The battle flag needs to be understood in reference to what it symbolized, which was those troops underneath that leadership in a war. That’s as far as the battle flag is meant to go and that’s where I think it should stay. That’s what it’s meant to say.”

“Blood and Glory: The Civil War in Color” (video, episode two)

“‘The fact is,” he said, “the Confederate battle flag was associated with white supremacy and not only that, but the Confederate battle flag supported a country that was dedicated to the furtherance of African-American slavery. So for a black person, seeing this banner anywhere is an indication they don’t want me. This is not part of my heritage. I don’t really belong here. It’s a flag of exclusion.

“And if you look after the Civil War, when Florida and Alabama made new flags, their flags, even to this very day, resemble the Confederate battle flag.’” bittersoutherner.com/gone-with-the-wind-my-southern-education/rq?=civil%20war David Goldfield

Note: Speaking of flags & regions, here is the Great Migration chosen by African-Americans from 1915-1970: https://www.communitiescount.org/blog/2019/814/the-great-migration

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War James M. McPherson P. 99

“It is perhaps true that Northern nationalism was more “abstract and intangible” than its Southern counterpart. But it was nonetheless just as real and as deeply felt. Union soldiers did not think that they could “retire into their own country” if they lost the war “and possess everything they enjoyed before the war began.” Most of them believed that they would no longer have a country worthy of the name. “If we lose in this war, the country is lost and if we win it is saved,” wrote a New York captain in 1863. “There is no middle ground.”

Again and again one finds similar phrases in the letters of Northern soldiers: “Home is sweet and friends are dear, but what would they all be to let the country go to ruin.” “I do not want to live if our free Nation is to die or be broken [by]… the foul hand of treason.” “Far better would it be if the war should continue until every home should be made desolate [than]… to surrender to those miserable despots who are trying to destroy our country.’”

http://www.usflag.org/uscode36.html

“§176. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.

(a) The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
(c) The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker’s desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
(e) The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
(f) The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.
(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.”

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