speaking of slavery: book review

[pynchonoid]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-South at h-net.msu.edu (March, 2003)

Robert E. Bonner. _Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of
the
Confederate South_. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2002. 223
pp.  Illustrations, notes, index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-691-09158-7.

Reviewed for H-South by W. Scott Poole
<spoole1 at earthlink.net>,
Department of History, College of Charleston

Flag Flap: Reading the Rebel Banner

[...] In _Colors and
Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South_, Bonner
gives us a
timely, thorough, and highly sophisticated discussion
of the
origins, context, and significance of the flag(s) of
the
Confederacy. Neo-Confederates, with their illusions of
a banner
unsullied by associations with the enslavement of
human beings, will
find little comfort here. However, it should be added,
liberal
academics who sometimes dismiss Confederate symbols as
nothing more
than encoded white supremacy will discover a story
much more
complex. [...] Bonner's voluminous research into
proposed designs for the
first Confederate national flag reveals that some
southerners,
especially those from rabidly secessionist South
Carolina, hoped the
new nation would unfurl a banner that would "make
clear that the
Confederates were establishing a proudly proslavery
republic" (p.
48). One group of South Carolinians suggested a fairly
complex
design that "displayed black slaves picking cotton on
one side of
its eighteen-foot length and slaves rolling cotton
bales on the
other" (p. 24). In 1862, when the debate reopened over
flag design,
some southerners sought to have a black stripe
included in the new
rebel banner in order to openly declare their support
of the
peculiar institution. Surprise awaits those that
assume the
Confederate government would immediately adopt the
most racist
symbolism possible.  Bonner argues, probably
accurately, that
Confederate political leadership never gave serious
consideration to
these designs, largely because of the concern that a
proslavery flag
would hinder diplomatic initiatives in Europe (p.
106). [...] "





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