WinterLeia
Private
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2024
So, I currently live in Texas, although I'm not native to the state. We moved here about fifteen years ago, and as Californians, we had some preconceived notions of what it would be like. We imagined that men wore cowboy boots and ten gallon hats to church, and Confederate flags flew from every flagpole and was displayed in the bed of every pickup truck. The reality is that, at least at the church we go to, only one man even remotely looks like a cowboy when attending church, and that's only when he's running too late to change, because he's kind of an…actual cowboy. And the only Confederate flag I've seen was on the door of a condemned house in our town that looked like it was hung up in the 1860s and never taken down. Recently, I went by the place, and someone had removed the flag and hung up a brand new American flag…on a house that no one lives in, which is going to need to be torn down because it'a been ruled unfit for human habitation. But that is the way the town is. It looks like the 4th of July every day of the year. The entire city square is ringed by a border of American flags spaced three feet apart, so bright that I think the reason the police must go out in force on the interstate on the last day of the month to give speeding tickets to any hapless travelers who don't know our town is a speed trap is because the town spends 30% of it's monthly budget on new American flags to replace any that, Heaven Forbid, start to fade or get the least bit bedraggled. I saw more Confederate flags in California. We thought of them more as country music symbols, even though we obviously knew the history.
So, maybe, it's just where I live, on the outskirts of the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolis. But I decided to go on a hunt for Confederate flags. And I immediately figured one place I was sure to find one is the Six Flags over Texas amusement park in Arlington, only about 50 miles to the south of where I live. After all, that's what the park is named for, the six flags that have flown over Texas soil in the last two hundred something years.
Surprisingly, at least to me, the political turmoil in 2017 caused them to remove all the ones from the park. But I did find an image of the six flags that used to fly at the entrance. And, here, I got another surprise. Because it's wasn't the popular one that is displayed most of the time, which what I had heard is the battle flag. So, as I'm not used to the idea of a battle flag that looks so totally different from the official flag, I'm somewhat confused about the evolution of the Confederate flag, and what exactly is the official one. Admittedly, I haven't gotten much farther in my research than the Wikipedia page. However, regarding the Wikipedia page, it identifies the so-called battle flag as the "Stainless Banner" and indicates it was the national flag and not just the battle flag, although it was not adopted until 1863 and was replaced in 1865. So I'm guessing that was the one that would have been displayed at the Battle of Gettysburg, but not at the first Battie of Bull Run or carried by Lee's forces when he surrendered. The one that use to fly at the park entrance appears to be the first national flag, "the Stars and Bars". But both it and the Stainless Banner were replaced in 1865. So do I have this right? And why has everyone been flying a Confederate flag design that was replaced shortly before the war ended?
So, maybe, it's just where I live, on the outskirts of the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolis. But I decided to go on a hunt for Confederate flags. And I immediately figured one place I was sure to find one is the Six Flags over Texas amusement park in Arlington, only about 50 miles to the south of where I live. After all, that's what the park is named for, the six flags that have flown over Texas soil in the last two hundred something years.
Surprisingly, at least to me, the political turmoil in 2017 caused them to remove all the ones from the park. But I did find an image of the six flags that used to fly at the entrance. And, here, I got another surprise. Because it's wasn't the popular one that is displayed most of the time, which what I had heard is the battle flag. So, as I'm not used to the idea of a battle flag that looks so totally different from the official flag, I'm somewhat confused about the evolution of the Confederate flag, and what exactly is the official one. Admittedly, I haven't gotten much farther in my research than the Wikipedia page. However, regarding the Wikipedia page, it identifies the so-called battle flag as the "Stainless Banner" and indicates it was the national flag and not just the battle flag, although it was not adopted until 1863 and was replaced in 1865. So I'm guessing that was the one that would have been displayed at the Battle of Gettysburg, but not at the first Battie of Bull Run or carried by Lee's forces when he surrendered. The one that use to fly at the park entrance appears to be the first national flag, "the Stars and Bars". But both it and the Stainless Banner were replaced in 1865. So do I have this right? And why has everyone been flying a Confederate flag design that was replaced shortly before the war ended?
Bringing the