"The White Man's Flag"

One of the many enjoyable things about writing historically-themed posts is finding out new things or re-finding out things I'd dimly known or learned at some point but had almost entirely forgotten. That happened today as I was writing about the history of the Confederate flag and the fact that what we know as the Confederate flag was actually never the national flag of the pretended Confederate States of America. What I didn't remember, though, was this issue of the "White Man's Flag" which was the official national flag of the CSA for most of its history. As I noted in this post, the second flag of the Confederacy was what we recognize as the 'confederate flag' in the top left corner on a field of pure white. And unless you think this is just ironic given what the Confederacy stood for ... nope not ironic.


1863 until just weeks before the end of the war in 1865. Note that this flag was adopted not long after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Why was it called the "White Man's Flag"?

Well, because that's the name given to it by the guy who designed it, William T. Thompson, the editor of the Savannah Morning News (then known as the Daily Morning News).

Actually born in Ohio, Thompson designed the flag and editorialized on its behalf repeatedly in the paper he edited: "As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause." And then in a later editorial, he cheered the design as one that will "be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN's FLAG." And then finally "As a national emblem it is significant of our higher cause [,] the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity and barbarism."

Read More http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-white-mans-flag

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Shame on us.