That's almost certainly true, but it doesn't absolve them of moral responsibility for what they did. These are men who for the most part (your ancestor being an exception) didn't think of lifting a finger to free their fellow human beings who were enslaved, yet thought it was worth fighting and dying to preserve the independence of a nation whose existence was entirely predicated on slavery. There are moral values that should rank higher than patriotism.

In my eyes, the Confederate Battle Flag stands even today for the true honor of my relations, and I believe it is the same for many, many others.

It is a new century, and perhaps such symbols as the CBF cause too much controversy for it to remain a useful conveyor of true honor over a State Capitol. But, there are times and places where she still flies proudly, such as here in Richmond on occasion.

This seems to be the recurrent story in wars. The individual fights for a myriad of different reasons, some honorable, some not. Some may fully embrace the political goals of the leaders, some may just want an adventure, some may feel a sense of duty to country or state, some just get swept up in the spirit of the times and feel it is the thing they are supposed to do.

Your gg grandfather seems like a remarkably honorable man - who managed to transcend the culture of his time and step away from the institution of slavery, I imagine at considerable cost to himself. And yet, in the end, for other and very legitimate reasons, he ended up fighting for a regime that was focused on doing what he didnt want done.

I guess it is an eternal dilemma. I had relatives in Germany who ended up fighting for the Nazis, although they didnt particularly buy into the ideology - being just average farm folks who thought about their crops, not about politics or jews or things like that. Their country called and they served.

We hold values that put a premium on personal responsiblity and the individuals need to take moral responsiblity for their actions, but in the case of war the soldier must make himself a servant of the moral calculus of the political leadership.

I dont have any problem with people honoring the service of their ancestors, for the reasons that those ancestors used to justify their efforts. But when the goals of the war were evil, then I think great care must be made, especially by those doing the honoring, to distinguish exactly what it is that is being honored. Especially in the case of the civil war where the goal of the war was to enslave the ancestors of ones neighbors.

The battle flag may well have been the banner under which honorable men sacrificed, for their own reasons, but it is also a symbol of the regime and its larger goals.

My incompletely expressed paen was inherited from the family and our circle of friends, since my GG Grandfather, who owned slaves, freed them in 1850, and supported emancipation throughout Tennessee, as did many others.

Once that movement failed and Tennessee joined the Confederacy, my GGGF, who was a commander of Tenn guard troops, believed he had to defend his family, farm, state and the Confederacy from Northern invasion, so he joined the CA as a Colonel. He appointed one of his former slaves to manage the farm, and took four free black volunteers with him as his personal guards. He lost an arm in one of the battles under Hood, and his guards brought him home.

The point of the story being that defending his home and state was his objective, not to fight for slavery at all. I believe that this motivation to defend their homeland was true for most Southerners that signed up to fight, not the least reason being that the number of slave owners in the South was on the order of only 330,000 out of a population of some 5 million whites. These people were rather poor farmers or clerks themselves for the most part, and had no slaves. They were pawns in the larger economic and political games going on over their heads.

In the larger picture between the state governments and the Federal Government, however, the issue of slavery was the overarching cause of the conflict.

The people who fought for the Confederacy (at least those who weren’t essentially conscripted) did so for the same reason as in most any war – because they believed it to be the best (or necessary) course to give a better life to their children and grandchildren. To take down the flag as Gov. Beasley did does not dishonor their memory, it instead furthered the very same cause that they fought and died for – to have the courage to do what is now in the best interests of the future of the South.

The average guy with a Confederate battle flag swastika on his pickup truck arm i[s] indeed saying nothing more sinister than “I’m proud to be a Southerner German.”
For most of these guys, it’s about respect for heritage and values rather than race judiasm.

Fixed.

Fact #1: The vast majority of men fighting under that flag were not fighting for "southern honor" or "states rights" or least of all "slavery" (most of them had none... Why fight for what you don't have and never will?)Sure, they told themselves the same old lies that every man going off to war does, but once that first bullet flies you are fighting for one thing and one thing only: The right to go home. (and yes, to a more or lesser extent, the right of the guy standing next to you to do the same)

Fact #2: That flag = LOSER. They lost then, they lose now, and those who fly it still can't get over it. They dream still, of a world that never was.

The United States of America won. The Confederates lost. Which one are you?

tom

The confederate flag represents a government that tried to overthrow the U.S. (our country) government...or in simpler terms "a domestic enemy".

Confederate flags share the same distinction as the flags of Nazi Germany, and the Japanese Battle flag.

Try to fly a Japanese Sun flag in China or a Nazi flag in Germany or Israel. So why is it ok to fly a confederate flag on the very soil it committed insurrection? If Tim McVeigh or David Koresh had a flag that represented them (respectively) would it be ok to fly their flags? The confederacy was no better than McVeigh or Koresh so why display the flag of the confederacy?

For these reasons alone confederate flags should be banned across the entire U.S., Citizens should love the United States of today and not failed-rebel-governments of the past.

Bottom line: why celebrate a domestic enemy?

And you have the nerve to criticize people who rewrite history? That is an absurd statement. The war was totally about slavery - the entire political history of the nation for the decades preceding the war were all about manuevering to insure that the political balance in Washington was maintained in such a way that slavery would not be threatened.

"and defense of the rights of Southerners"

Yeah, the right of southerners to enslave blacks.

"That flag will still fly high and proud in the minds of many Southerners."

Yeah - those that are still bigots, or historical illiterates.

What heritage and what values?
The culture being defended in the civil war was a slave culture. The flag subsequently was a symbol of an apartheid regime.
Southern heritage and values had an irreducible core of evil.

You cant dismiss this as a celebration of values without acknowledging that the values in question centered on racial oppression and slavery.