From 1861 to 1863 the official flag of the Confederacy apparently resembled the U.S. flag so closely that it caused confusion on the battlefield. Hmmm. I don't think, other than the colors, that they look so very much alike...
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| 34 stars |
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| Seven stars |
but then, I'm not looking at them through the smoke, dusk, dawn, cloudy, rainy, snowy, horror of battle either! So, they came up with other official flags.
The first flag had seven stars representing the original Confederate states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
The second flag was BASED on the square Battle Flag, or "Southern Cross," which had 13 stars representing all eleven states of the Confederacy, including Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina, plus Kentucky and Missouri (though votes to secede failed in those two states.)
They put the Southern Cross on a rectangular field of white.
Oops. Too much white. It was often taken as a white flag of surrender! or was that wishful thinking? (The colors were especially hidden on a calm day when the flag hung limp.) So, back to the drawing board.
In March, 1865, just before the collapse, the third official flag was adpoted:
I guess the red bar on the end, when the flag was hanging limp, would show and therefore decrease the chances of it's being mistaken for a flag of surrender.
What I think is really odd? None of the above flags are the one everyone thinks of as the Confederate flag. That honor goes to the Union Jack, the flag of the Confederate navy:
And, no, it in no way now or ever before was a part of neo-Nazi, red-neck, skin heads. Those groups highjacked the image. Shame on them. Not being smart enough to come up with a flag of their own! (But I guess you see from this post that it's not as easy as it looks to come up with a flag that works, huh?)
Thanks to this website for help in finding images and information on the Confederate flags:
http://www.usflag.org/confederate.stars.and.bars.html
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