The Confederate States of America, also referred to as the Confederacy, was a republic that
declared independence from the United States of America in 1861, leading to the American
Civil War.
At the end of the war in 1865, the states that had seceded from the Union were incorporated
back into the U.S.
The Bonnie Blue Flag was the unofficial flag of the Confederacy during the early months
of 1861, which included a blue field with a single white star.
The first official national flag of the Confederacy included three horizontal bars of red and
white, with a blue canton containing seven white stars as representations of the initial
seven states that seceded from the Union.
This soon increased to nine, then eleven, and finally to thirteen stars as more states
joined the Confederacy.
Two of the thirteen stars reflected the Confederacy’s claims to Kentucky and Missouri.
Because of the flag’s similarity to the U.S. flag, confusion occurred on the battlefield
and ideological criticisms also surfaced.
Beginning in December 1861, a battle flag was employed by Confederate troops.
This flag included a red field with a blue cross outlined in white.
Thirteen white stars appeared within the cross.
The battle flag was a square versus the rectangular navy jack that used a lighter blue in its
coloration.
Over time the battle flag became, and remains, the popular symbol associated with the Confederacy.
A new national flag for the CSA came into being in 1863 when the battle flag was incorporated
onto a field of white.
While the white coloration never had an official meaning attached to it by the government of
the Confederacy, many southerners associated it with the commonly held Confederate ideology
of white racial supremacy.
In a short time after its adoption, however, this flag was criticized as being too white
as it could be confused as a flag of truce when there was no wind and the flag lay limp,
hiding the flag’s Southern Cross canton.
To remedy this, a vertical red bar was added to the national flag in 1865, just two months
prior to the end of the war.
This flag has been nicknamed the blood stained banner.
Since the end of the Civil War, the Confederacy’s national and battle flags continue to appear
in some way on a number of official southern state flags.
The battle flag of the Confederacy has also been adopted by many for personal or unofficial
use, especially in the states that made up the former CSA.
The modern use and display of the Confederate flag for various purposes remains a highly
controversial topic because of the different associations that have become attached to
it.
There have been varying perceptions of the flag in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
Some support it as a symbol of the unique cultural traditions and heritage of the southern
states, while others have used it to invoke Confederate racial ideology, such as when
the flag was used by protesters against desegregation in the 1950s.
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