If you’re a History of the Confederate Flag, a Southerner, or simply an American, chances are good that the Confederate battle flag is part of your world. It’s the banner that rallied comrades in the fearsome disarray of battle, and its symbolism is familiar to many.
But the flag has a much wider history, as a divisive symbol of secession and of the Civil War itself, of its bitter aftermath and Reconstruction, of 20th-century white supremacy movements. Despite its role in these dark chapters of American life, the banner has endured. And in 2015, after images of Charleston churchgoers murdered by Dylann Roof with a Confederate flag emerged, multiple states bowed to pressure to remove it from their memorials and retailers stopped selling the symbol labeled a hate signal.
Controversy and Identity: History of the Confederate Flag
In 1863, the Confederate Congress considered replacing the Stars and Bars, the first national flag of the 11-state Confederacy. Political leader William Porcher Miles favored what came to be called the battle flag, a blue saltire or X shape with a circle of white stars (one for each state) on a field of red. Miles’s design and a rectangular version designed by General P. G. T. Beauregard were the two finalist designs inspected by Congress on March 4.
Both were rejected, but Miles’s design remained popular among soldiers, and he began to issue orders for his army units to adopt it as their official flag. The fad spread, and by the end of the Civil War the battle flag had become, as one southern editor wrote, “confetti in careless hands.” The UDC and other cultural and heritage groups strove to control its use and to discourage its proliferation into kitsch emblazoned on T-shirts, mugs, and baubles. But even they could not stop the flood, which poured in through outlets like TV shows like The Dukes of Hazzard and bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd.