You maybe right about the date of the English church flag adaption, but we in the South had a close connection to English royality. (OH, I'm dyslexic so my spelling suffers.) In the English Church in my home town were flags of all the families coat of arms hanging along the walls on both sides. Each flag had a cross on top of the staff. In 1917, and 1941 this country was not ready for war and the same can be said in 1861. There were units already established, with company flags but there were so many new units formed that the need out stripped the supply. The need for cannon in the South removed the bells from their towers and those bellls were made into cannon. The flag staffs would also be used. And the U.S. flag was in the church in many places. (By the way, I'm 68 this year and have over 30 years study in this era. I have a BA in history, I am a war re-enactor (since 1988), I have a web site: http://rebelyell1.com, and I was one of the vice presidents of the Austin Civil War Roundtable for 3 years in the early 1990's. As a war gamer [handpainted metal figures of troops, I have my own wargame rules and over 70 units of both sides of the ACW.]
There is one diary that I read about 10 years ago that stated they pull flag pole(s) out of the local church. And don't forget that the eagle was on top of the Union flag poles. With that information at hand.....2+2=4 and always has. Now there wasn't a flag pole industry in the South, where did they get their flag staffs? It's 1861 and you have in what will become the Army of North Virginia with 100+ Units which was made up of 5 or 10 companies per unit depending the size of the unit. Each company was and had been given flags made by local ladies. What did they fly that flag from? Where did they get that staff right then and there? The only answer was from local government buildings, and from the church. That has to be the answer...there aren't any other places to find them. And again. The U.S. Flag was in churches even back then. State flags might even have been in the church as well as any other flag that a Christian Church would deem necessary or right.
By the way, San Antonio has two cannon cast in the South out of church bells in 1862. And it just struck me that if your still older them me...your that group that went through the stuff of the 1930's and WWII. You guys saw some stuff, but the problem I have is that many of you have forgotten what your grandparents went through. What they suffered through made what you guys suffered look like a Sunday school party. The stuff of 1860 was right here in our backyard, WWII was in Europe and Aisa. And since the city slicker and country bumpkin (did not have meds like you did) were thrown together where they began to share the different childhood sickness. Chicken pox was exchanged for measles which took lives. All in all over 1.2 million people die in that 4 years of 1861 to 1865, and in the years to come many had their lives shortened due to war effects that were or could not be corrected. A bullet left in the body left some subject to slow blood posion. Some of those who died were not in armies. Who tried to defend homes from people who were trying to burn them down? Or people who died due to the lack of a limb after the war. The Ga. first budget after the war had 60% or more for artificial limbs. My ggg aunt was raped. Her husband would die in Northern Al. riding with Wheeler. Their home was robbed and burned down. My g g grandfather died in '62 at South Mountain. His last letter home is on my website. His home was burned down. His wife, my gggrand mother had her family home saved due to a yankee general staying the night there. According to Bartow County CofC website only about 7 or 8 house were all that was left standing after the yankees left the area. A ggggrandfather had rope burns for the rest of his life because the yankee cavalry tried to get him to tell them where his money was, he had none, but Confederate funds. But his neck showed the brotherly love they had for their southern brother they wanted back in the nation. Yea, right!
After the fire many people had no home, no food, and no place to go but family members homes elsewhere and if you could not get there fast enough you starved, or your baby died. A 11 month old was killed by yankee shell at Vicksburg, a 10 year old boy killed in Atlanta by the same cause. And we (my family) has the family bible found in the attic when my cousin visited my gggrand mothers homesite in the 1980's. It is the only thing that gave many comfort and strength in the years back then. In Vickburg properity taxes went up 13 times in two years. Many lost homes and had to move west. It was the only place they could go to get a fresh start. My gggrand mother with new husband landed west of Waco and she is buried in Eastland County near lake Leon. She may or may have not known what happened to her first husband other then he got killed.
I love the land of my birth, ...Texas, and I will do anything for her. Even be in the military but you need to remember, we are both citizens of the United States with a bayonets in our backs. This is suppose to be a free country. REALLY? Remove the Bayonet and give me a government of my own. If you look at the Blue and Red states from 1860 to today you find that the electorial college is controled by those states north of the Ohio River, along and east of the Mississippi River, and California/Organ. That is all you need to become president! The population gives them that control and my vote well....my vote in Texas does not count! My grand fathers vote didn't count if he voted for someone other then Willson.
The first Southerner elected, on his own power and stand, without outside pressure or coat tails of a president being killed or resigning, that came from the south and returned to the south since before 1860 was G.W. Bush. LBJ got in due to Kennedy's death, Carter got in due to anyone but a Republican after Nixion, and G.H.W. Bush wasn't from the South. Wilson born in the South was from New Jersey by the time he became president. And Johnson from Tenn. who took over after Lincoln wasn't elected to the office. Otherwise there have been no Southern Presidents since the Virginia streek. The remainer were or so it seems from Ohio. Over smiplfied I'm afraid but non the less somewhat true, an example that we have had no power in this government since before the war.
When this country first started in the 1780's it was "We The People" with a cap "P" and government was little "g". After the war it changed with Government cap "G" and people, little "p". And that government murdered, raped, burned, stole, and starve in name of empire, not liberity. I support the Constitution, but not the government that has betrayed it. It says for example: "The Congress (meaning the government) shall make no laws pretaining to reliegion, or the free exercise thereof, " so that leaves the question, what part of "NO LAWS" does this government not understand? It say freedom of religion, not from religion. So one saying a prayer for the safty of people and good sportsmanship at a football game does not make a state religion, it was custom, not law. And it doesn't hurt anyone! Oh, it takes a few seconds of your life I guess but then we waste so much of our ownself that it isn't even funny. And anyone offended by someone offering you their best wishes in that prayer for your safty is stupid. Why would you be offended by someone wishing you well? Are they a gift to the world that they are so into themselves that they sould rule over everyone else. You could say that is what I am supporting on the otherside, but that is what was right and here before me and was good fors all weather we liked it or not. Morals, ethics, and what is honorable has disapeared since we dropped that prayer in schools. Name one school shooting before 1960 where children murdered so many other kids. And tell me why in 1964 the number one complaint of teachers were kids running in school and chewing gum, now it is drugs and guns. So, we have a government that does not follow the very paper that made it. Words do mean something, but then it all depends "on what your defination of is , is."
I pray for this land and for it's safty, but I do believe we are going to hell in a handbag, and satan is carrying the bag. We have sold out our values for a feel good band aid on problems that we can not fix. We have thrown tons of money after tons of money on problems and we still have them because the government can't fix them. It has been proven that 'Cash for clunkers" cost $6.00 for ever $1.00 saved. We as a people have to make up our minds that some people don't want help, and others want to loaf. Capt. John Smith said it back in 1608, "If you don't work, you don't eat." It is that simple.
If you don't want an education then don't get one but don't ask for a hand out when you can only get a hamburger flipping job. And don't demand that the government force the people who went into business to chase THE DREAM to pay you more then your worth. If you raise the mim. wage you cause inflation, which causes everything else to go up in price. If a labor union gets a pay raise, then the car, or hamburger goes up in price. And millions of people like myself are screwed because I am on fixed income with Social Security. I was sick the last years of my working years and get only $800.00 per month. The Demo's {and I was one once} took SS and pulled out the funds and spent them to get re-elected and didn't care about you or me. They cared for only themselves and they screwed everyone else; everyone even other Democrates. And it all goes back to the flag poles needed so men could try and get a government of their own. And like the Sci-fi writers of the late 1800's (Wells and others) Orwell was right on with 1984, and we have allowed it. Sorry, but you hit a sore spot with me. All I want is to be and have is true Freedom...........
And don't start with the slave thing, no one gets freed without forcing the South back into the union. So the number one war aim of the North was and is to force the South back into the union (Empire). The major part of the South didn't fight to keep slaves, they didn't have them. And you nor I would fight for a cause that someone else got the lions share of the blessings from, that would be stupid and if someone calls me stupid again, I will be less then happy. Don't insult me or my family by saying we are stupid.
By the 1860 count, 8.7% of the South had papers that said they owned slaves. That also includes Blacks who owned slaves. In and around Charleston, S.C. in 1850 there were 266 Blacks that had papers on 1087 slaves. That number would drop by 1860 but that may be because the issiue had raised the point that the Black codes were not being followed. And the Black codes in the North were and had been designed to keep the Blacks out of the state. The North signed on the D. of I in 1776 with each of them having slavery. They also realized they couldn't make money like the South could so they freed their slaves but where they could make money was in the sale of slaves so they stayed in it even when it was against the law. The last northen owned slave ship delievered slaves to Brazil 15 years after Lee had given up the fight in 1865. The first 20 months of the 1860's had 1000 times a slave ship leave New York Harbor going for more slaves. And it was against the law. But banks gave loans, farmers sold food, sail makers and shipwrights, built or sold goods to the owners of said ships, northern men signed on to sail the ships which could not be use for something other then slaves and no one complained. The Lincoln admin. took over 5 ships being built in New York for the slave trade for blockade ships. Before that Lowell, Mass. consumed 300,000 bales of cotton a year without one word about who planted, grew, picked, baled, and put on ships, the cotton for the factories there. Many in the North did not want the Black man there or coming after their jobs if they were freed. Only a small group people believe they were doing good work in their efforts to free the slave. Others either slowly bought in to it, or just gave it lip service. In the yankee army many diary states they would beat up Blacks if they found them alone. One such reports that on one such event an arm was broken of the Black. One yankee writes home in 1863, "I don't care who wins now that I find we are fighting for the Blackman. As soon as my enlistment is up, I'm coming home." This man from Michigan went home in 1864.
Southern newspapers in Arkansas, what there was of them in 1863, reported Yankees in Arkanssas surrendering to Southern patroles and pickets to get sent home and they would not return to arms after that or so it was reported. They reported that the yankess claimed that there was a large division in the yankee army due to the EP. A Northern irovy factory helped keep slavery in Africa alive and well until the 1900's. Kennedy belonged to a Country Club in Mass. that had an invisible sign which read no Jews or Blacks allowed. ( Gracho Marx asked the manager of a Country Club in L.A. if his little girl could go into the swimming pool, up to her hips, "she is only half Jewish, you know." In Mass. in the 1970's when the state was ordered by the Fed Gov. to allow whites and blacks to go to school together, that people with golf clubs attacked the busses while children were still on board. No, the damnyankee have not been truthful and have lied about this conflict from the start. And they only see what they want to see today. Oh, by the way Grant freed his slaves with the passing of the 13th Admendment which freed the slave. That was in December of 1865, which was 8 months after the war.
Yes, the slave got his freedom (which was needed) but it wasn't about them. It was about who was going to run the government and who would be in charge over all. Go to the GAR website and read what they say there in the first few lines. Or you can go to my website and read the quotes. It is there..."they came home and found they were in charge for the next 6 decades"......well they are still in charge in the electroal college. Take the blinders off, and remove the coverings on your eyes and see what is going on. Ruby Ridge, Mt. Carmel in Waco, and other things are showing the true colors of the government. Note how fast they bulldozed Mt. Carmal, and the only thing they kept is a couple of doors. With more bullet hole coming in then going out. Janet Reno told Congress..."we went in to save the children." Those kids they ran over with that tank. And if it was about the kids, why are they using the ATF? That should have been Dept. of Health and Human Services not Booze, smokes, and pistolas. Were you paying attention when they set the place on fire, not those inside, it didn't make sence those inside would burn the only protection they had, but note the black unmarked helio flying overhead, it's on the tape. Look it up. You see all governments take what they need when they need it and flagpoles with crosses on top from churches are not out of the question. And I feel you can't come to that without excepting that the church and state were closer then. It is all connected through the time line of life and flag poles and their tops is the least of the problems as you can see.