Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia
This flag represents something that many consider racist and bigoted. Our rights to free speech permit us to display it and use it privately or to publicly display it. It is time to remove it from any federal or state institution.
This flag represents something that many consider racist and bigoted. Our rights to free speech permit us to display it and use it privately or to publicly display it. It is time to remove it from any federal or state institution.
Although I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, I was not familiar with the official flag. I believed the battle flag of the Army of Tennessee was the official Confederate flag. The Ku Klux Klan used it and made it popular. The TV show Dukes of Hazzard car General Lee displayed it proudly. It was used on bumper stickers, mugs, shirts, decals and thousands of Bric-à-brac and it still is. But it never was THE Confederate flag.
What was the Civil War about? Very rich guys and cotton. The South was getting extremely rich exporting cotton to Europe. In the United States, Southern cotton provided capital for the continuing development of the North. Much of the Southern cotton was trans-shipped through northern ports and federal taxes went to northern states. Abraham Lincoln promised to end slavery. The South hated that.
Was it about slavery? You bet it was. Cotton plantations required vast labor forces to hand-pick cotton. Imagine the cost of suddenly having to PAY them. It represented so much money that rich southern politicians convinced people to die over it. Cotton was worth so much money that even after the end of the Civil War across the South, sharecropping evolved, in which free black farmers and landless white farmers worked on white-owned cotton plantations of the wealthy in return for a share of the profits and they all got rich. Money continued to flow to the north. It was all about money.
On March 21. 1861, a speech by Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate Sates of America, exposed another reason for the war. It is called the “Corner Stone” Speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech
http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142313/http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/"Our new government is founded upon, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. They (the North) were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal."
Thus, the Confederate Flag as we know it is a WAR flag and the Civil War was fought over slavery and money. Only after 1865 was the reason for the war claimed to have been based on State's Rights.
The rich continue to try and control the government. Doug Hughes, now known as "the man who flew a gyrocopter to the Capitol" risked his life to bring attention to this current problem. A simple patriot and concerned about our country he performed a non-violent act of civil disobedience for election reform. He wants to get money out of politics. Now he is charged with serious crimes and will probably spend time in prison.
To me, he is a hero.
Doug Hughes, "the man who flew a gyrocopter to the Capitol"