Fly the flag of the Confederate States of America?

[SteveInCOParticipant]

I’ve seen it used from time to time on the internet, myself, but I don’t have even Strega’s amount of direct experience with the general public in the South, in spite of multiple business and personal trips to northern Alabama, Charlotte and Atlanta.

[UnseenParticipant]

Strega, while I grew up in the North (Ohio), I’ve been around on Earth 68 years and I don’t think I’ve heard “The War of Northern Aggression” until recently, even in movies or in TV dramas.

At the same time, I have to wonder how many of these people who claim to revere what they call The Confederate Flag (though it really isn’t that at all) really think they’d be better off today had the South seceded.

BTW, while not widely known or discussed, there was a strong anti-Confederate sentiment among southern white women, whose men were called up to fight the North:

In the spring of 1863, soldiers’ wives took direct action in a wave of spectacular food riots. Mobs of women—numbering from a dozen to more than 300 and armed with navy revolvers, pistols, repeaters, bowie knives and hatchets—carried out at least 12 violent attacks on stores, government warehouses, army convoys, railroad depots, saltworks and granaries. The attacks occurred in broad daylight, and were all perpetrated in the space of one month, between the middle of March and the middle of April 1863. It was truly a Confederate spring of soldiers’ wives’ discontent.

That wave of riots had a measurable impact on Confederate war policy, forcing revisions of conscription and tax policy. It also prompted the development of a massive welfare program by the states that, in allocating scarce funds and foodstuffs to the relief of soldiers’ wives and children, dwarfed anything undertaken in the North. In the heart of Confederate national territory, the mass of Southern women had emerged as formidable adversaries of the government in the long struggle over its military policies. By insisting that the state live up to its promises to protect and support them, even taking up arms to do so, these poor white women, who had never participated in politics before, stepped decisively into the making of history. (source)

[StregaModerator]

We would have no way of knowing what the south would be like if they’d successfully seceded all those years ago. Certainly the north would also have been affected.

Thanks @unseen for that interesting snippet of the wives revolt. It’s the first I’d heard of it.

Going back briefly to the term “war of northern aggression”, I’ve only ever heard it in the context and location I mentioned in my previous post. It’s kind of reassuring to hear that it’s not as rife as I’d believed.

[erock68laParticipant]

@strega
I have witnessed on occasion southerners become a little extra-southern in the presence of non-southerners. The accent becomes a little thicker and the language and expressions a little more colorful. I wonder if you experienced some of that.

It sounds like you were in mah neck o’ the woods. I live about 30-45 minute drive east of Baton Rouge.

[StregaModerator]

@erock68la I was staying in St Francisville I believe, island road, La 70775.

[SteveInCOParticipant]

Strega wrote:

We would have no way of knowing what the south would be like if they’d successfully seceded all those years ago. Certainly the north would also have been affected.

There is a very long series of alternate history novels by Harry Turtledove premised on the South winning the battle of Antietam (the officer who dropped the plans that (in fact) ended up in Union hands, allowing the victor, was, in the alternate “universe,” rescued by one of his soldiers noticing it, and picking the packet up and giving it to him).

[SPOILERS AHEAD!]

In this series, there’s another North-South war in 1881, with England and France aiding the south and the Union getting its ass kicked. The US then starts to align itself with Germany. Spoiling for revenge, WWI becomes England, France, and the Confederacy on one side, the US, Germany, and Austria-Hungary on the other. The US wins, occupies Canada and parts of the south.

WWII is being set up, with an embittered south and France playing the role of Nazi Germany. I haven’t read those books because they were never issued in mass market paperback.

It would have been a VERY unpleasant timeline to live in, with North America being war torn, as well as Europe.

[Ron HParticipant]

If the South had been able to negotiate a settlement and seceded, does anyone really think that slavery would have been abolished? No matter how the defenders of the flag flown by the south, the war was fought to keep slavery. You only have to read the Ordinances of Secession written by the southerners to see this. They made no apologies. Oh, by the way, I am a southerner born and raised in Georgia. I have been exposed to the defense of the south all my life and don’t buy it. You can’t defend the indefensible.

[_Robert_Participant]

If the North had an agricultural based economy and the South had an industrial base, the war could have been fought inversely. The South’s economy was based on slavery, the North’s economy was based on cheap immigration labor for their factories and low paid servants. So yes, the war was based in slavery, but it was also based on the South fearing it would lose it’s economy with the stroke of a pen. It’s about the power and money, as always.

As freed slaves headed North and competed for employment, race riots erupted in many Northern cities. Freed slaves were murdered in the streets. The freed slaves that stayed south, most became share croppers, basically indentured servants, living in extreme poverty. The South was ravaged after the war and “reconstruction” was ditched way too early, even resulting in resentment and a slew of ignorant unemployed racists thugs, KKK members, and criminal gangs comprised of former soldiers. The average Southerner just put the musket down and went back to work.

Farming machinery would have replaced slaves within a few decades, so either way slavery was doomed economically. In any event, the South was idiotic in believing it could win such a war. If it wasn’t for the even more idiotic Northern generals, the war would have been over in a few months. Even if the South had won that war, the North would have probably reinvaded within a decade or two.

This comes down to what does the flag represent to most people, and I believe it has become a racist symbol over the decades. To many of us ( like me in the past ) it just represented regional pride, but just like the Native American symbol that is now known as the swastika, it should be retired now. In fact my fathers’ Korean war army outfit, the 45th infantry division wore the swastika up to the late 1930’s.

[StregaModerator]

@_Robert_ that’s fascinating, and I had no idea the image commonly known as a Swastika was the Native American symbol. How cool is that? (the info, not the logo).

[SteveInCOParticipant]

More food for fascination re: the swastika.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika,_Ontario

Strega, to clarify swastikas were “a” Native American (or First Nations, which seems a more apt moniker, thank you Canada) symbol, not “the” symbol of the First Nations. I recall seeing a couple in petroglyphs in the Mesa Verde area. By the way, it was usually displayed as a square, not a diamond as Hitler used it, often with the arms bent the other direction (which always looked “backwards” to me, maybe I watched too many war movies as a kid).

(I think I just managed to mention Hitler without it being an example of Godwin’s law…)

[StregaModerator]

Swastika Information, fantastic, the sign is at least 12,000 years old!

[UnseenParticipant]

erock68la wrote:

I have witnessed on occasion southerners become a little extra-southern in the presence of non-southerners. The accent becomes a little thicker and the language and expressions a little more colorful. I wonder if you experienced some of that.

How do you even know how to make your native accent “thicker”? I’m northern and I can’t even imagine what a “thicker” northern accent would be.

Can anybody help me with how to do that?

[SteveInCOParticipant]

I know people who have schooled themselves to get rid of either a foreign or regional accent, and they even get upset when I detect it. (One man was upset I noticed a Swedish accent; I don’t know why he cared, a slight accent is probably a good thing.) Anyhow, unwinding that process is probably straightforward.

I suspect it works better when your accent isn’t considered “standard” and you’ve tried to conform to the standard. Not trying so hard might thicken it.

A northern or “General American” accent is considered the standard in the US, so it’s kind of hard to make it more so. But someone from Boston who tried to get rid of that Bostonian accent can probably revert to Bahston “why’d you pahk yah cah so fah from the bah” mode pretty readily.

[UnseenParticipant]

SteveInCO wrote:

A northern or “General American” accent is considered the standard in the US, so it’s kind of hard to make it more so. But someone from Boston who tried to get rid of that Bostonian accent can probably revert to Bahston “why’d you pahk yah cah so fah from the bah” mode pretty readily.

I used to know a lady from Brooklyn, NY and she would pronounce “New York” as “New Yahk” or “New Yawk.” Her funniest pronunciation was “because” which came out sounding to my ears like “be-kwuz.”

[PopeBeanieModerator]

How do you even know how to make your native accent “thicker”?

Of course it’s all relative, or as some Japanese might mock “leratif” (to American ears). Comedians and imitators can do it rather well sometimes, I’m thinking in particular of how they can mock Chinese. I can’t help but hear “r” when Brits say “law” (like “lar”), and yet if they say bar or far, I hear “bah” or “fah”… funny how those Rs are so uniquely pronounced between languages, especially if you include French or Spanish phonemes.

I still enjoy hearing how well some blacks can mock white Americans.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by  PopeBeanie.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by  PopeBeanie.

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