Thursday, March 03, 2016

THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG

Last year Confederate General Motormouth Jones had Pastor Chuck Baldwin on Infowhores. Jones allowed Baldwin to spew lie after lie about the honour of General Robert E Lee. But Jones also allowed Baldwin to claim that the Confederate Battle flag was a representation of Saint Andrew.

But what is the true origin of the Confederate Battle flag?

The guy who designed the flag was William Porcher Miles, a member of the Fire Eaters who strongly believed in slavery, and wanted to resurrect the African slave trade, and believed that the slave states should secede to form a new nation based on slavery. The original design had a St George-style cross, but due to protests from some Jews, Miles used a saltire instead. So nothing to do with a link between the Confederacy and Saint Andrew, and all to do with promoting slavery and appeasing some Jews.

Here is Miles' letter to General Beauregard on this matter.

Richmond, August 27,1861.
Gen. G. T. Beauregard,
Fairfax Court house, Virginia:

Dear General, I received your letter concerning the flag yesterday, and cordially concur in all that you say. Although I was chairman of the 'Flag Committee,' who reported the present flag, it was not my individual choice. I urged upon the committee a flag of this sort. [Design sketched.] This is very rough, the proportions are bad. [Design of Confederate battle-flag as it is.]

The above is better. The ground red, the cross blue (edged with white), stars white.

This was my favorite. The three colors of red, white, and blue were preserved in it. It avoided the religious objection about the cross (from the Jews and many Protestant sects), because it did not stand out so conspicuously as if the cross had been placed upright thus. [Design sketched.]

Besides, in the form I proposed, the cross was more heraldic than ecclesiastical, it being the 'saltire' of heraldry, and significant of strength and progress (from the Latin salto, to leap). The stars ought always to be white, or argent, because they are then blazoned 'proper' (or natural color). Stars, too, show better on an azure field than any other. Blue stars on a white field would not be handsome or appropriate. The 'white edge' (as I term it) to the blue is partly a necessity to prevent what is called 'false blazoning,' or a solecism in heraldry, viz., blazoning color on color, or metal on metal. It would not do to put a blue cross, therefore, on a red field. Hence the white, being metal argent, is put on the red, and the blue put on the white. The introduction of white between the blue and red, adds also much to the brilliancy of the colors, and brings them out in strong relief.

But I am boring you with my pet hobby in the matter of the flag. I wish sincerely that Congress would change the present one. Your reasons are conclusive in my mind. But I fear it is just as hard now as it was at Montgomery to tear people away entirely from the desire to appropriate some reminiscence of the 'old flag.' We are now so close to the end of the session that even if we could command votes (upon a fair hearing), I greatly fear we cannot get' such hearing. Some think the provisional Congress ought to leave the matter to the permanent. This might, then, be but a provisional flag. Yet, as you truly say, after a few more victories, 'association' will come to the aid of the present flag, and then it will be more difficult than ever to effect a change. I fear nothing can be done; but I will try. I will, as soon as I can, urge the matter of the badges. The President is too sick to be seen at present by any one.

Very respectfully yours,

Wm. Porcher Miles.

[source : Confederate Flag Designer William Porcher Miles on the Heraldry of the Battle Flag, http://history.furman.edu/benson/civwar/show/MilesFlagLetter.htm, Accessed: 3rd March 2016]

Neo-Confederacy is today pushing the myth that they seceded and provoked a civil war because of a tariff. Libertarian Thomas DiLorenzo is one who pushes this myth. His work is published by the von Mises Institute (see here), and so is not surprisingly also published on Infowhores.

But I challenge you to find any mention of that Morrill tariff in any ordinance of secession. If you can be arsed to read any of the ordinances of secession they state that they seceded to protect slavery. One or two might mention tariffs as a secondary reason, but they all state that the protection of slavery was the prime reason for their secession.

So we have to ask:
1. who were Alex Jones' Confederate ancestors, and what is the true relationship between between his family and neo-Confederacy?
2. why is Infowhores pushing neo-Confederacy, by pushing the myth that the Confederacy seceded over a tariff (when all ordinances of secession explicitly state that the prime reason was to protect slavery), and having guests on like Pastor Chuck Baldwin to spew lie after lie about such things as the origin of the Confederate Battle flag and the honour of General Robert E Lee?
3. why is Infowhores also pushing a false image of Andrew Jackson of him smelling of pretty pink roses when he was in fact a man who strongly believed in slavery (his raid on Negro Fort), was a slaveholder (he owned 300) and would have his slaves beaten, stabbed native Americans in the back after one had saved his life so he repaid them by forcing them off their lands, those lands forming what would come to be the Confederate states (so Jackson could be called the Godfather of the Confederacy), and who wrecked the development the America by destroying BUS2, and giving the Rothschilds their big break in appointing them as agents for the US in Europe?



No comments: