From the article:
Whilst the visit of the Shenandoah had increased the importance of naval defence, there is no suggestion that the design of the Confederate flag had any influence on the design of the Victorian flag. It was a coincidence that both flags were described as the “Southern Cross Flag” for the saltire on the Confederate flag is referring to “the South” and not to the constellation, which is not visible in southern USA.
Kelley's suggestion that, because the Southern Cross constellation was not visible from the southern U.S. states, it had no particular significance for the Confederacy, is not correct. It was mentioned a number of times in literature that promoted the idea of expansion of slaveholding through the Caribbean and into South America, either through annexation or the creation of regimes friendly to the expansion of slaveholding and the plantation culture through filibustering. It's the Golden Circle business.
William Porcher Miles, who designed the Confederate Battle Flag in conjunction with General Beauregard,
started with a South Carolina secessionist flag, but turned the cross on it diagonally to make it “more
Heraldric [sic] than
Ecclesiastical, it being the ‘saltire’ of Heraldry, and significant of
strength and
progress (from the Latin
salto, to leap).” In other words, to make a little distance in the design from obvious Christian symbolism. “It avoided the
religious objection about the cross (from the Jews & many Protestant sects)," Miles wrote, "because it did not stand out so
conspicuously as if the cross had been placed upright thus.”
However, for patriotic Southerners like George Bagby, editor of the
Southern Literary Messenger, it was the constellation — usually invisible below the southern horizon to those in the northern hemisphere — that was a symbol of the Confederacy’s future greatness. Channeling the imperialistic ambitions shared by groups like the Knights of the Golden Circle, Bagby saw in the constellation the destiny of the Confederacy (
Southern Literary Messenger, January 1862, p. 68. Emphasis added):
The “Southern Cross” holds its place steadily in the Southern heart. It was in every mouth long before the war began; it remains in spite of all arguments against it. These arguments are ridiculous. First, we don’t see the Southern Cross in the heavens. Indeed! Do the British see the lion and the unicorn on the land or in the sea? Do the Austrians behold the double headed eagle anywhere in nature or out of it? What has seeing got to do with it? The truth is, we shall see the Southern Cross ere the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave is accomplished. That destiny does not stop short of the banks of the Amazon. The world of wonders in the animal and vegetable kingdom, of riches incalculable in the vast domain, watered by that gigantic stream, is the natural heritage of the Southron and his domestic slave. They alone can achieve its conquest and lay its untold wealth a tribute at the feet of commerce, the Queen consort of King Cotton.
So for a good many southerners, particularly those inclined to look for symbolism and inspiration, the constellation of the Southern Cross absolutely did have meaning for them, and so it was almost inevitable that the name was soon applied to the Confederate Battle Flag, with its diagonal arrangement of stars.