This short video that will help you sort through the different flags associated with the Confederate government and its armies. Tom recently started a blog that will support the first of two edited volumes of Ezra Carman’s account of the Maryland Campaign.
Confederate Flag 101 with Tom Clemens
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Tom Clemens is wrong, wrong, wrong!
1. The Bonnie Blue Flag was created for the Republic of West Florida which was declared by rebellious US settlers in 1810. West Florida was a Spanish territory bounded on east and west by the Apalachicola and Mississippi Rivers, and north by the 31st parallel. It was comprised of lands now part of Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. Pensacola was the colonial capital.
2. Lots of Confederate battle flags WERE rectangular. In the western theater, almost all CSA flags of the Virgina pattern were rectangular, with proportions that varied from 1:1.2 to 1:1.7 (Mr.Clemens should go to state museums’ websites and examine the originals!)
3. The “modern” battle flag with a 1:1.66 proportion first appeared in the 1890s as companies filled demand for flags by veteran groups and heritage societies such as the UDC. Racism didn’t have a damn thing to do with the “modern” flag’s popularity from the 1890s to 1950.
++See a modern battle flag at Paris TX in a photo from the 1920s or 30s. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixpounder /3586090016/ )
++See a 48″x72″ manufactured flag on p.492 of Confederate Veteran, 1917, Vol 25, issue 11, viewable at Google Books.
In the above cited issue of Confederate Veteran, the opening article is titled, “WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS,” the editor was lamenting: “Whenever opportunity presents (or is created), some perfervid orator or reckless writer of Northern bias takes occasion to have a fling at the South.” That was written back in 1917. Mr.Clemens proves that nothing has changed in 94 years. Yankees are still ignorant of Southern history, and still smearing Southerners.
Hey sixpounder,
Your powder’s all wet. Clemens is not a Yankee– I’ve even seen him dressed in Confederate uniform. Take your vituperation and blow it out a 13-inch seacoast mortar.