DÉjÀ Vu

A Much-Hated Flag

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

2015

South Carolina governor Nikki Haley announced this week that the Confederate flag, which has flown on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol since 1962, will be removed even if she has to override an upcoming vote by the state's legislature. Her decision was sparked by a recent mass shooting at an African American church in Charleston, though some state residents have been pushing for the flag's removal for decades. CNN reports

“This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state,” Haley said.

The flag can only be removed from its location in front of the State legislature with the approval of two-thirds of that body. And Haley said if the state's General Assembly doesn't convene on the matter in this last week of the legislative year, she would call up lawmakers to the capital under “extraordinary measures.”

1862

Aside from secession (and slavery), Confederate advocates couldn't agree on a whole lot during the Civil War, and that extended to the flag. Three different flags were officially attached to the Confederacy, and in 1862, The Southern Literary Messenger reiterated the need for a flag while denigrating the existing one:

Every body wants a new Confederate flag. The present one is universally hated. It resembles the Yankee flag, and that is enough to make it unutterably detestable.

All sorts of bars, triangles, suns, moons, stars, comets, nebulas, and hideous colors and figures have been proposed, and all have been very rightly cast aside as no matter of account.