Flags Across the South

In Civil War Memory Kevin Levin’s drawn attention to a rather large Confederate Battle Flag that flies in Florida along I-75; another flies along I-65 in Alabama.  Now one flies in Texas along I-35 near Waco, although not without some controversy.  Soon these flags, now part of an initiative called “Flags Across the South,” will be along every interstate (I find the placement of these flags by a network created by the federal government worth a chuckle).

Here’s a call to understand what the Confederate Battle Flag really represents.

Look at it this way: there’s only one of these.

Oh, and for the weekly article on black Confederates, featuring the usual cast, turn here.

William Marvel on the Coming of the Civil War

William Marvel often takes a different view of things.  Agree with him, disagree with him, but I think most people find him worth a good listen (or a good read).  Such is the case with Marvel’s four-volume history of the war from a northern point of view, the first volume of which is the subject of the following talk that he gave in 2007 at the Virginia Historical Society.

Frederick Douglass on Decoration Day, 1871

Recently Andy Hall offered a post as part of a larger series that I think is well worth highlighting.  It reprints Frederick Douglass’s powerful remarks offered about remembering the Civil War dead some six years after the war’s end.

The monument in the photograph deserves your attention as well.  It is the tomb of the Civil War unknown soldiers.  Most of the remains buried here (just a short distance from Arlington House) were gathered in 1865 from the battlefields of the Overland Campaign of 1864.  More on that in a forthcoming post.