The Curious Story of the Captured Confederate Battle Flags
BY BERNARD KENNY
“Yet , if God wills that it continues …..until every drop of blood drawn with the lash , shall be paid by another drawn with the sword , as was said three thousand years ago …
‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
Abraham Lincoln
1865
In this, his Second Inaugural Address, President Lincoln laid it down that the Civil War was God’s retribution for two hundred and fifty years of “unrequited toil” ….slavery. It was certainly the cause for the war and the secession four years earlier, as the Declarations of the seceding Confederate States and their constitutions explicitly state: the maintenance of slavery in the South; the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act; the expansion of slavery into the territories; and the enshrinement of the Dred Scott decision.
The Thirteenth , Fourteenth , and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were enacted between 1865- 1870 in connection with the abolition of slavery and in response to the nearly 650,000 war- dead.
It is one of the wonders of American history, however, that this truth was not so slowly replaced by the mythology of the Lost Cause: that the Civil War was not really about slavery; that Confederate soldiers had no slaves; that it was really a war about governance and a way of life. It was in effect a rip -roaring spat between brother against brother… A War Between The States. This mythology of the Lost Cause in fact prevailed for a full century after the Civil War not only in the South but in the country at large. I grew up on it.
In the immediate aftermath of the War, the Ku Klux Klan sprung up to terrorize African-Americans and White Republicans who were attempting to implement Reconstruction; the first Grand Wizard being the legendary Confederate General Nathan B. Forest. Then, in 1877, in order to secure the Electoral Votes for Rutherford B . Hayes over Democrat Samuel B. Tilden, the Republican Party made a deal with Southern Democrats in Florida , South Carolina, and Louisiana to pull Federal troops out of the South thereby effectively abandoning African-Americans and disempowering and disenfranchising them by the turn of the century. So within a dozen years of the War’s end and Lincoln’s death, the true purpose of the War – the lifting of those formerly in horrific servitude from that hell to a place of dignity envisioned by those Civil War Amendments set forth above – was forgotten.
And while all of this retrenchment and revisionism is ongoing, the curious story of the captured Confederate Battle Flags unfolds.
In the Civil War, battle flags of military units, North and South, were of paramount importance for leading men into battle and for giving commanders knowledge of the flow of battle. Glory attached to them. Capturing the enemy’s battle flag was an heroic act which, in the Union Army, was rewarded with the Congressional Medal Of Honor, the highest of all honors. These captured Confederate battle flags were housed in Federal and State armories and other safe places throughout the North after the war.
In 1887 , President Grover Cleveland , a New York Democrat elected with Southern support, proposed returning the captured Confederate battle flags to the states from whence they came. The leadership of the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) vigorously protested, saying such conduct would be treasonous. Cleveland relented.
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican and Spanish – American War hero , ordered a Federal armory in the War Department to release its captured flags to various Southern states. There was no protest this time from the now aging GAR. So, the captured Confederate battle flags for which Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded were returned ; the battle flags which represented the Confederate States of America that had split the Union and fought for the preservation of slavery were honored by being sent back home. The Civil War had ended only forty years beforehand. A great Re-Union was held at Gettysburg in 1913, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle.
America was moving on.
And move on it did to all kinds of crimes and lynchings against black people and to a massive revival of the Ku Klux Klan throughout the nation in the 1920s.
The Great Depression and World War II gave birth to a psychic change in America, a change embodied in The Greatest Generation; the greatest among them being Martin Luther King Jr. Born of these times were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ; fully one hundred years after the Civil War . A century.
Some might say that this tortured story demonstrates there is a “ moral arc to history which bends slowly but bends toward justice.” Others might not be so sure and look at our politics today and of the overt appeals to racism and white nationalism by a sitting President of the United Stated and question whether we are as a nation forever to be ensnared by this curse until we are finally broken; that a Democracy in a nation of such vast diversity is loaded with impossibility; that our core principle of equality under the law is unspeakably under siege.
If Abraham Lincoln were with us today, he would, I think, say it is unknowable to man whether there is a moral arc to history. It is beyond our power to discern it but it is within us to earn it, to believe it. And he might say again:
“Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
Bernie Kenny is the former 33rd District from Hoboken.
I’m sad to say that people’s veiw is still imbedded in civil reference, I one have no Quarl with any blacks or African people but you still can feel resentment of some kind imbedded in their personnel auro.That makes me believe that the southern tradition s even stronger in my personnel quest threw life. I proudly fly the Confederate flag in the end result .and my grand children and great grandchildren will know the reasons why? John D Angel ,Madison,Alabama.
Absolutely correct Sir. No where in this article is mentioned the Corwin amendment or the Morrell tariffs. They are also in their belief that the Northern soldier fought to end slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read.
You are very correct sir. No one ever mentions Lincoln’s call for 300,000 troops signaling his unwillingness to pursue a diplomatic solution. After the war, the Government abandoned the plight of the black man and pursued the violent extinction of the American Indian. History should also remember that slavery in North America was instituted by the Dutch, English and Spanish in the 1600’s. It took Americans 87 years to abolish it because the King of England wasn’t going to do it.
by the wind from odin’s crotch u knuckle daggers doth verily POST some risible, dim witted shite. SIR. ea “northern soldier” fought 4 what they believed; there was no monolithic block of thought THEN anymore than there is NOW. OF COURSE u can “judge people from the perspective of the future.” which is y nazi paraphernalia is OUTLAWED in germany. we will most assuredly be judged ‘in the future’ 4 how we treated the planet & ea other; whether those judgements r valid will be adjudged by generations following those. & so on ad infinitum (if we last much longer as a species anyway). you mendacious mental midget. SIR. 😂🤣 judt pathetic. SIR.
aside from being only semi-literate, your assertion must have as it’s basic tenet, the suggestion that u have met ALL “blacks or African people” & viewed or felt their “personnel auro” (whatever the fuqq THAT means) from gen. colin powell to ben carson to all the drs., nurses, firemen, teachers, small business owners, ALL the children, military personnel (the CORRECT usage of that word btw), postal workers, professional gamblers, LEO’s & on & on yada yada. intellectually u aren’t even chump change & my suggestion is u get a dictionary (by hook or crook) & some history books written by actual, accredited historians & avail yourself of some due diligence. give the “NASCAR” a rest 4 awhile & IMPROVE your mind &, consequently, your vocabulary.
Learn to spell “you”. Hint: it isn’t “u”.
What’s your native language? Please don’t tell me it’s English!
Slavery was legal under the Constitution during the Civil War. Slavery was legal until December 1865, 6 months after the end of the war. The North fought to preserve the Union. The end of slavery was a result of the conclusion of the war.
FYI boyo; slavery is STILL legal. read the 13th amendment AGAIN
it’s not that difficult to divine.
Incarceration for a convicted crime is slavery in that it’s against one’s will but that is not slavery as defined by those who are oppressed during their entire lives.
Bernard Kenny has been drinking the kool-aid!
The war was not about slavery and Lincoln was a tyrant.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was not the 1st leader of the Klan, but he did shut the Klan down in one day. Mr. Kenny is so ignorant about Nathan Bedford Forrest that he is too stupid to know that Nathan Bedford Forrest was America’s first civil rights leader. He was the only white man ever asked to address the Polebearers Association., the first black organization in America for blacks.
Mr. Kenny has it all wrong and could use to do some real research, maybe read the Real Lincoln by Thomas D’Lorenzo, or The South was Right by The Kennedy Brothers.
Right on fellas. The colonies after Revolution received their state sovereignty from the English king. They felt their state was their country. They believed that by joining the US Union, that they had not given up their sovereignty. All if that was ..became … buried history and not taught, as predicted by General Cleburne and Jefferson Davis.