Then, as Confederate veterans began to die in the early 20th century, groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy pushed to commemorate them-and make their version of history the official doctrine of Southern states.Ĭonfederate monuments soon dotted the South, and the battle flag was added to the state flag of Mississippi. Janney notes, the Lost Cause myth came about immediately after the war as Confederates struggled to come to terms with their defeat “in a postwar climate of economic, racial, and social uncertainty.”Įfforts to memorialize the Confederate dead also began as soon as the war ended, but they ballooned as white Southerners reclaimed their power after Reconstruction. The myth of the Lost Causeīy the early 20th century, white Southerners had mythologized an imagined South that fought the war not to uphold slavery but to protect states’ rights and a genteel way of life-an idyll endangered by “Northern aggression” and interference. Segregation and oppressive “Jim Crow” laws soon disenfranchised Black Southerners-and members of the Ku Klux Klan terrorized them. But once Reconstruction ended in 1877, white Southerners hastened to restore what they saw as their rightful place at the top of a racially segregated social order. With the war over, the South entered Reconstruction, a period during which the now reunified United States ended slavery and gave Black Americans citizenship and voting rights. The Confederacy adopted a total of three national flags before its collapse in 1865. Although future official Confederate banners did incorporate its symbolism in the left-hand corner, they instead added a white field that represented purity. Andrew’s Cross and emblazoning it with one star for each seceding state.īut though it was extremely popular, this new battle flag- which eventually became known as the “Southern Cross”-wasn’t adopted as the Confederacy’s official military or government symbol. William Porcher Miles, a Confederate congressman and Beauregard’s aide-de-camp, designed it, borrowing an X-shaped pattern known as St. In an effort to avoid the visual confusion, General Pierre Beauregard commissioned a new battle flag design. This caused major problems at the July 1861 Battle of First Manassas and during other skirmishes as some troops mistakenly fired on their own comrades. But it didn’t look like that from a distance-and in the thick of battle, it was hard to tell the two apart. Known as the “Stars and Bars,” the flag featured a white star for each Confederate state on a blue background, and three stripes, two red and one white. But as secession got underway, the Confederate States of America adopted a flag that riffed off the Union’s stars and stripes. When rebels fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, they flew a blue banner with a single white star called the Bonnie Blue Flag. Though inextricably linked with the Confederacy, the flag was never its official symbol. Today, alongside the nation’s growing acknowledgment of systemic racism and widespread Black Lives Matter protests, the Confederate flag predictably makes appearances at white supremacist gatherings.īut how did the battle flag, also known as the Southern Cross, come to represent the Confederacy in the first place? It’s a story of rebellion, racism, and disagreement over the true history of the Civil War-and as the controversy over its use during the Capitol riots shows, it’s divisive even 160 years after it was designed. As the crowd of President Trump’s supporters rioted, many hoisted the symbol of a short-lived splinter nation that tore the Union apart. Capitol on January 6, 2021, they brought an accessory: the Confederate battle flag. When a mob of armed insurgents flooded the U.S.
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