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This may look like an Alternate History Photoshop, but its not. It's a real Veitnam photograph.

Zor

Why would it be a Photoshop? Confederate flags started getting popular around that time, and IIRC one state used the Battle Flag (seen above) as its state flag. Nothing special, in other words.

Elheru Aran wrote:Why would it be a Photoshop? Confederate flags started getting popular around that time, and IIRC one state used the Battle Flag (seen above) as its state flag. Nothing special, in other words.

Alabama (how stereotypical), IIRC, used the Battle Flag as the quarter of its flag (like the blue with stars of the American flag is the quarter, wrong term, I know.)

Yeah. Georgia also had the Battle Flag (square version) as a full 2/3 of its flag, the other 1/3 (section attached to the staff) was plain blue with the state seal within. Changed it recently after a lot of whining about how it was 'racist' though...

MRDOD wrote:

Elheru Aran wrote:Why would it be a Photoshop? Confederate flags started getting popular around that time, and IIRC one state used the Battle Flag (seen above) as its state flag. Nothing special, in other words.

Alabama (how stereotypical), IIRC, used the Battle Flag as the quarter of its flag (like the blue with stars of the American flag is the quarter, wrong term, I know.)

Union is the term.

The funniest pictures ever are of Tanks in Vietnam flying the 3rd Reich flags.

Elheru Aran wrote:Yeah. Georgia also had the Battle Flag (square version) as a full 2/3 of its flag, the other 1/3 (section attached to the staff) was plain blue with the state seal within. Changed it recently after a lot of whining about how it was 'racist' though...

It was racist.

Didn't say it wasn't. Admittedly, I worded my post badly; however, I do think too much of a big deal was made of it on both sides. The fact that the flag that followed it was a rather turpid piece of shit didn't help. But this is getting a bit derailed...

The flying of a Confederate flag does not nessecarily condone racism. Many people here (Raleigh, NC) who display Confederate flags on their cars or apparel do it because of pride in other aspects of the Old South. If you were to travel back in time to the Civil War and ask any Confederate soldier or leader why they were fighting, the answer would not have anything to do with racism, slavery or segregation. While I do not condone the display of the Confederate flag, it is often mistaken as a racist symbol, which it is not even though some people may choose to use it as such. These people are wrong in addition to being assholes.

If you were to travel back in time to the Civil War and ask any Confederate soldier or leader why they were fighting, the answer would not have anything to do with racism, slavery or segregation.

So none of the soldiers read or knew anything about the declarations of secession? I find that hard to believe.

The declarations of secession were written by the rich planter class slave owners, whos primary interest was to keep their slaves. The vast majority of white southerners owned no slaves. Because of their writers, the declarations of secession represent a minority view of Civil War causes in the South.

Zor wrote:This may look like an Alternate History Photoshop, but its not. It's a real Veitnam photograph.

Zor

"Yeah, right about that time those Duke boys were chasing up the delta from Saigon with Boss Hogg right on their tail."

Oline61 wrote:The declarations of secession were written by the rich planter class slave owners, whos primary interest was to keep their slaves. The vast majority of white southerners owned no slaves. Because of their writers, the declarations of secession represent a minority view of Civil War causes in the South.

I know most owned know or few slaves; however, they still had an interest in maintaining slavery due to the fact that they always had someone lower on the rung. According to the American Pagean, it was a status element; they knew if the africans were slaves, they were higher than someone and, no matter how bad their situation was, they would never be the lowest in the system of social stratification.

What exactly do you think they were fighting for? Freedom? If that's what they thought, that's hardly the truth. They new well enough what the confederacy was fighting for. They all were using that freedom and liberty reasoning to disguise the truth. While the planter aristocrisy used it to disguise their economic interests, the poor slobs used it because they simply despised the idea of being equal to africans. They had to have someone to kick.

I will not entirely rule out a desire to keep slavery as motivation for secession, however other things contributed more greatly. One important reason was the Tariff, which served to protect industry in the North, but hurt the South because prices were driven up. The Tariff effectively siphoned money from the South to the North, as the money went to Northern industries. The South was always anti-Tariff, yet Tariffs were continuously driven up. The Morill Tariff of 1861 was the straw that broke the camel's back. It followed the lenient Tariff 1857, and drove rates up substantially from what had been one of the lower Tariffs of the century.

The Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 was another important cause of the War. The Act deemed that slavery in Kansas would be determined by popular sovereignty, which pretty much resulted in open warfare between abolitionists rushing down from the North in an attempt to throw the vote and Southerners rushing from the South to do the same. Other's who insisted on using violence, such as John Brown helped to increase the growing tide of Southern Nationalism.

You may be interested to learn that most students educated in former Confederate states were taught the Civil War under a quite different name. My parents know this war better by the name “The War of Northern Aggression”. Indeed the South hoped to peacefully secede, and didn't intended to instigate violence with the North. Then Lincoln said that he would use violence to maintain possession of federal property, which the Confederacy offered to buy from him, but all diplomatic forays by the Confederacy were ignored or turned away by the US. Then the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter which royally fucked any chance for peacefully resolving secession.

In conclusion I submit the following quote (from Wikipedia)
"When secessionists protested in 1861 that they were acting to preserve traditional rights and values, they were correct. They fought to preserve their constitutional liberties against the perceived Northern threat to overthrow them. The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. ... The ascension to power of the Republican Party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the Northern majority had turned irrevocably towards this frightening, revolutionary future."
James McPherson, "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question," Civil War History 29 (Sept. 1983)

Sorry to hijack your thread Zor .