In recent years, the Confederate flag has become as much a news item as a Civil War relic. Intense public debates have erupted over Confederate flags flying atop state capitols, being incorporated into state flags, waving from dormitory windows, or adorning the T-shirts and jeans of public school children. To some, this piece of cloth is a symbol of white supremacy and enduring racial injustice; to others, it represents a rich Southern heritage and an essential link to a glorious past. Polarizing Americans, these flag wars reveal the profound--and still unhealed--schisms that have plagued the country since the Civil War. The Confederate Battle Flag is the first comprehensive history of this contested symbol. Transcending conventional partisanship, John Coski reveals the flag's origins as one of many banners unfurled on the battlefields of the Civil War. He shows how it emerged as the preeminent representation of the Confederacy and was transformed into a cultural icon from Reconstruction on, becoming an aggressively racist symbol only after World War II and during the Civil Rights movement. We gain unique insight into the fine line between the flag's use as a historical emblem and as an invocation of the Confederate nation and all it stood for. Pursuing the flag's conflicting meanings, Coski suggests how this provocative artifact, which has been viewed with pride, fear, anger, nostalgia, and disgust, might ultimately provide Americans with the common ground of a shared and complex history.

The definitive history of South Carolina's Confederate flag controversy and 2005 finalist for Popular Culture Book of the Year from ForeWord Magazine.

Flags that represented the Southern nation between 1861 and 1865 and the history of national, state, and military flags.

As rancorous debates over Confederate symbols continue, Robert Bonner explores how the rebel flag gained its enormous power to inspire and repel. In the process, he shows how the Confederacy sustained itself for as long as it did by cultivating the allegiances of countless ordinary citizens. Bonner also comments more broadly on flag passions--those intense emotional reactions to waving pieces of cloth that inflame patriots to kill and die. Colors and Blood depicts a pervasive flag culture that set the emotional tone of the Civil War in the Union as well as the Confederacy. Northerners and southerners alike devoted incredible energy to flags, but the Confederate project was unique in creating a set of national symbols from scratch. In describing the activities of white southerners who designed, sewed, celebrated, sang about, and bled for their new country's most visible symbols, the book charts the emergence of Confederate nationalism. Theatrical flag performances that cast secession in a melodramatic mode both amplified and contained patriotic emotions, contributing to a flag-centered popular patriotism that motivated true believers to defy and sacrifice. This wartime flag culture nourished Confederate nationalism for four years, but flags' martial associations ultimately eclipsed their expression of political independence. After 1865, conquered banners evoked valor and heroism while obscuring the ideology of a slaveholders' rebellion, and white southerners recast the totems of Confederate nationalism as relics of the Lost Cause. At the heart of this story is the tremendous capacity of bloodshed to infuse symbols with emotional power. Confederate flag culture, black southerners' charged relationship to the Stars and Stripes, contemporary efforts to banish the Southern Cross, and arguments over burning the Star Spangled Banner have this in common: all demonstrate Americans' passionate relationship with symbols that have been imaginatively soaked in blood.

Civil War Flags of Tennessee provides information on all known Confederate and Union flags of the state and showcases the Civil War flag collection of the Tennessee State Museum. This volume is organized into three parts. Part 1 includes interpretive essays by scholars such as Greg Biggs, Robert B. Bradley, Howard Michael Madaus, and Fonda Ghiardi Thomsen that address how flags were used in the Civil War, their general history, their makers, and preservation issues, among other themes. Part 2 is a catalogue of Tennessee Confederate flags. Part 3 is a catalogue of Tennessee Union flags. The catalogues present a collection of some 200 identified, extant Civil War flags and another 300 flags that are known through secondary and archival sources, all of which are exhaustively documented. Appendices follow the two catalogue sections and include detailed information on several Confederate and Union flags associated with the states of Mississippi, North Carolina, and Indiana that are also contained in the Tennessee State Museum collection. Complete with nearly 300 color illustrations and meticulous notes on textiles and preservation efforts, this volume is much more than an encyclopedic log of Tennessee-related Civil War flags. Stephen Cox and his team also weave the history behind the flags throughout the catalogues, including the stories of the women who stitched them, the regiments that bore them, and the soldiers and bearers who served under them and carried them. Civil War Flags of Tennessee is an eloquent hybrid between guidebook and chronicle, and the scholar, the Civil War enthusiast, and the general reader will all enjoy what can be found in its pages. Unprecedented in its variety and depth, Cox's work fills an important historiographical void within the greater context of the American Civil War. This text demonstrates the importance of Tennessee state heritage and the value of public history, reminding readers that each generation has the honor and responsibility of learning from and preserving the history that has shaped us all--and in doing so, honoring the lives of the soldiers and civilians who sacrificed and persevered.

Is the Confederate Battle Flag truly a symbol of "hatred, racism, and slavery," as Liberals maintain? Of course not. It's the opposite: it's a symbol of Christian love, universal brotherhood, and freedom, but they don't want you to know that! More importantly it's a sacred emblem of Southern heritage, history, and honor, one that every traditional Southerner is rightfully proud of. In "Confederate Flag Facts: What Every American Should Know About Dixie's Southern Cross," award-winning Southern historian Lochlainn Seabrook corrects the many falsehoods fabricated by the anti-South movement about the South's most famous ensign: the Starry Cross (the Confederate Battle Flag). In the process, he provides the true history of the Confederate States of America and its three official flags: the Stars and Bars (the First National), the Stainless Banner (the Second National), and the Blood-Stained Banner (the Third National). We learn why the C.S.A. patterned itself on the original U.S.A. (which was known as "the Confederate States of America"), even copying her Constitution and flag, all in an effort to preserve the confederate republic of the American Founding Fathers. In debunking the many myths and lies invented by Liberals about the Confederate Flag, a wide range of pertinent topics are covered concerning Lincoln's War, including secession, slavery, and abolition. Special attention is paid to Dixie's brave "boys in gray," the Confederate soldier, a unique breed of warrior who was represented by every race. Mr. Seabrook backs up his in-depth research with numerous eyewitness accounts, both from the Confederacy and the Union. This generously illustrated work, complete with endnotes, an index, and a bibliography, is jam-packed with little known facts about the South and her flags, making it a powerful educational tool. Not just for beginners and enemies of the South, but for seasoned Civil War buffs and writers as well. Pick up your copy of the most informative guide ever written on the Confederate Flag. Give it out to unenlightened friends, neighbors, educators, journalists, and politicians, and help combat the Left's contrived, malicious, and historically inaccurate war on the South and her symbols. Civil War scholar Lochlainn Seabrook, a descendant of the families of Alexander H. Stephens and John S. Mosby, is the most prolific and popular pro-South writer in the world today. Known as the "new Shelby Foote," he is a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal and the author of over 45 books. A seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage and the sixth great-grandson of the Earl of Oxford, Mr. Seabrook has a forty-year background in American and Southern history, and is the author of the runaway bestseller "Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!" Seabrook's other titles include: "Everything You Were Taught About American Slavery is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!"; "The Great Yankee Coverup: What the North Doesn't Want You to Know About Lincoln's War"; "Give This Book to a Yankee: A Southern Guide to the Civil War for Northerners"; "Confederacy 101: Amazing Facts You Never Knew About America's Oldest Political Tradition"; "Slavery 101: Amazing Facts You Never Knew About America's 'Peculiar Institution'"; "A Rebel Born: A Defense of Nathan Bedford Forrest"; "Honest Jeff and Dishonest Abe: A Southern Children's Guide to the Civil War"; "The Unquotable Abraham Lincoln: The President's Quote They Don't Want You to Know!"; "The Quotable Stonewall Jackson"; "The Alexander H. Stephens Reader"; "The Constitution of the Confederate States of America Explained"; and "The Old Rebel: Robert E. Lee As He Was Seen By His Contemporaries."

A unique study that analyzes the most powerful symbol of the Civil War from the perspective of both sides. Includes 41 full-color photos of flags captured at Gettysburg.

This detailed historical reference covers every known flag representing the Confederate State of Carolina and its role in the Civil War. Many flags have represented the state of South Carolina over its long history. After years of locating, measuring, and determining the historical significance of more than one hundred flags displayed during the War Between the States, historian Glenn Dedmondt presents the most detailed and comprehensive look at South Carolina’s Civil War-era flags. Included in this volume are: the Lone Star and Palmetto Flag, the first Southern flag hoisted over Fort Sumter; the Charleston Depot battle flag, and the naval Jack, flown only on a ship of war when in port. Through these banners and the stories that surround them, Dedmondt relates the story of South Carolina’s Civil War years.

In this fascinating book, George Schedler offers fresh moral and legal perspectives on two legacies of the Civil War: the adoption of the Confederate battle flag by Southern states and the question of African American reparations. Schedler demonstrates that constitutional objections to Southern states' display of the battle flag are without merit, arguing that either the flag is not a racist symbol or there is a similar case for attaching racist significance to the stars and stripes. Drawing on scholarship of the Civil War and its aftermath, the author concludes that the Confederate battle flag can actually be seen as a multicultural symbol. Schedler's analysis of reparations focuses on the principle that whatever the enslaved would have earned and enjoyed had they not been enslaved should determine compensation. Highly original and thought-provoking, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of the Civil War, moral philosophy, and constitutional law.