Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats). \u201cI\u2019m too sexy for my sheet,\u201d sneered Steyn.<\/p>\n
It fell to the woman who used to come across as the consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann Coulter<\/a> is indeed lovely.<\/p>\n Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was \u201cappalled by\u201d South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley\u2019s call \u201cfor the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.\u201d As \u201ca student of American history,\u201d Coulter offered that \u201cthe Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history knows that there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field than the Confederate Army.\u201d<\/p>\n And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor knows that there was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose \u201ctwo uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.\u201d<\/p>\n The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia\u2014known as “Lee’s Army”\u2014is not to be conflated with the “Stars and Bars,” which \u201cbecame the official national flag of the Confederacy.\u201d According to Sons of the South,<\/a> the \u201cfirst official use of the \u2018Stars and Bars\u2019 was at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.\u201d But because it resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union, the “Stars and Bars”<\/a> proved a liability during the Battle of Bull Run.<\/p>\n The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future. This idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today was a red square,<\/a> not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue Southern Cross. In the cross were\u2014still are\u201413 stars representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.<\/p>\n Wars are generally a rich man\u2019s affair and a poor man’s fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most<\/em> Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All<\/em> Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a \u201cWar for Southern Independence.\u201d They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, \u201cThe South was protesting not only against the North\u2019s interference in its \u2018peculiar institution\u2019 but against the growth of government generally.\u201d<\/p>\n Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in predatory boldness.<\/p>\n \u201cSlavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,\u201d wrote the South\u2019s greatest hero, Gen. Lee. He did not go to war for that repugnant institution. To this American hero, local was truly beautiful. \u201cIn 1861 he was offered command of all the armies of the United States, the height of a soldier\u2019s ambition,\u201d chronicles<\/a> Clyde Wilson, distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina. \u201cBut the path of honor commanded him to choose to defend his own people from invasion rather than do the bidding of the politicians who controlled the federal machinery in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n To his sister, Lee wrote: \u201cWith all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.\u201d Lee, you see, was first and foremost a Virginian, the state that gave America its greatest presidents and the Constitution itself.<\/p>\n Lord Acton, the British historian of liberty, wrote to Lee in praise. The general, surmised Lord Acton, was fighting to preserve “the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will”: states’ rights and secession.<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s inspired reply to Lord Acton:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 I believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people \u2026 are the safeguard to the continuance of a free government \u2026 whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another extraordinary Southerner was James Johnston Pettigrew. He gave his life for Southern independence, not<\/em> for slavery. Quoting Pettigrew, professor Wilson likens<\/a> the forbearance of his own Confederate forebears to \u201cthe small Greek city-states who stood against the mighty Persian Empire in the 5th century B.C.\u201d<\/p>\n Not quite Leonidas’ 300 Spartans<\/a> at Thermopylae, but close.<\/p>\n \u201cThe U.S. government had quadruple the South\u2019s resources.\u201d Yet \u201cit took 22 million Northerners four years of the bloodiest warfare in American history to conquer five million Southerners,\u201d who \u201cmobilized 90 percent of their men and lost nearly a fourth.\u201d<\/p>\n When they hoist the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, it is these soldiers Southerners honor.<\/p>\n Unable to defeat the South, the U.S. government resorted to terrorism\u2014to an unprecedented war against Southern women and children.<\/p>\n With their battle flag, Southerners commemorate these innocents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of … Continue reading “Ilana Mercer: Yankee Supremacists Trash South\u2019s Heroes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2957,"featured_media":16009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[12011,7506,11886,5889],"class_list":["post-19556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-ilana-mercer","tag-condederate-battle-flag","tag-confederacy","tag-mark-steyn","tag-robert-e-lee"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/ilana_nuut2.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19571,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19556\/revisions\/19571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}