Re: Confederate Flags

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999 15:27:37 EST, JohnDHamill@aol.com wrote:

>The flag to which you refer, known as a "rebel flag", is the battle
flag of 
>the army of Northern Virginia, it was never the official flag of the 
>Confederacy as a whole. Many people, including southerners, don't
realize 
>this, and have used the "stars and bars" to represent the confederacy,
and 
>their own beliefs, rather than keeping it as an honorable symbol of the
brave 
>men who fought and died. It would be in keeping for those who have
forgotten 
>it's history to use it as their national flag...

Okay, first off... the flag of the Confederacy WAS the "Stars and Bars".
What
you have been talking about, the blue "X" shaped cross with 11 stars on
a
field of red is NOT the "Stars and Bars". It's a Confederate battle
flag. In
fact, there are several that look very similar. Some had a white outline
around the blue cross, some didn't. Some had gold around the edge, and
some
didn't. The number of stars varied. There were 9 states in the
Confederacy,
but some flags had 11 stars (representing Kentucky and Missouri which
were
technically northern states, but claimed by the Confederacy.

The problem the early Conferate units had was that there was no one
uniform
flag. Each state, and often each regiment, flew a different flag. Later,
the
"stars and bars" was adopted as the "national" flag, while individual
units
flew their own flags. The battle flag that everyone knows was flown by
several
states, including Virginia. It became the national flag of I believe
North
Carolina (but it might be south...) and was used by early white
supremacists
as a rallying flag, hence it's modern negative connotations.

The "Stars and Bars" was obviously modeled on the "Stars and Stripes".
It had
a blue square in the top right corner of the flag. The square was 2/3
the
"height" of the flag. Inside were the stars of the Confederacy, usually
in a
circle. Instead of stripes, there were three bars. One red bar ran under
the
blue square for the width of the flag, horizontally. To the right of the
square, running parallel to the full red bar, was a red bar on the top
and a
white bar in the middle. One picture I've seen shows 7 stars, the 7
states
that were in the Confederacy when Sumter fell.

(Tom, let me know if you want to see what this looks like, if my
description
isn't clear; I'll scan a picture and ship it to you via e-mail.)

I've seen another variant of the stars and bars where the stars were
shaped in
the form of a rounded letter "A". 

Oh, and Tom, let me know if you still want a list of Confederate
generals'
names. Didn't know I was a Civil War buff, did you? *L* 

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@interlog.com
Goodall's Grotto: http://www.interlog.com/~agoodall/

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"