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Reviews in American History 31.2 (2003) 268-274



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Flag Culture and the Confederacy:
Bloodshed and National Identity

Eileen Ka-May Cheng


Robert E. Bonner. Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xiv + 248 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $29.95.

The heated debate over the use of the Confederate flag has revived again recently, playing a prominent role in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial election. The publication of Robert Bonner's Colors and Blood, an original, fascinating, and thought-provoking study of flags in the Confederate South, is thus especially timely. What makes Bonner's work so valuable, however, is not just what it tells us about the origins and meaning of the Confederate flag. Although its focus is flags, the book is about much more than that. Employing the concept of "flag culture," Bonner analyzes a whole range of practices and values associated with Confederate flags. Through this analysis, Bonner makes an important contribution not only to our understanding of flag culture, but also to our understanding of Confederate nationalism, for he persuasively argues that flags played a crucial role in the creation and development of Confederate nationalism.

According to Bonner, flags possessed a unique emotional power that turned them into important unifying symbols for the Confederacy. In explaining how flags both reflected and inspired an intensely emotional form of popular patriotism, Bonner seeks to demonstrate the vitality and depth of Confederate nationalism. Bonner argues that flag culture was so powerful because of its ability to evoke the passions associated with war and bloodshed. For Bonner, then, war was a crucial element in Confederate nationalism, and this quality both contributed to the intensity of Confederate nationalism and limited its breadth. Because of their martial associations, flags were extremely effective in inspiring Confederates to fight during the war. At the same time, however, the martial character of flag culture made it difficult to sustain Confederate nationalism once the war was over. As Bonner sums up, "a flag culture that during wartime nurtured a far richer Confederate patriotism than most have appreciated proved incapable of sustaining southern separatism after 1865" (p. 7). [End Page 268]

In this way, Bonner addresses and makes an important contribution to some of the central debates in Civil War historiography. Most importantly, in emphasizing the depth of Confederate nationalism, he directly challenges those scholars who have argued for the deficiency and artificiality of Confederate nationalism. According to Bonner, the development of a genuine and distinct form of nationalism by the Confederacy did not mean that it completely repudiated its American identity. In particular, Confederates expressed their continuing sense of American identity through their attachment to the American flag, and Bonner uses Jefferson Davis to illustrate the power of this attachment. Even as Davis sought to diminish reverence for the American flag in his arguments for secession, he revealed his own emotional connection to this flag. And so, as he justified secession, he expressed his sorrow at separating from the American flag and used the design of the Stars and Stripes to defend disunion.

Accordingly, while the Confederacy used flags to create an identity distinct from that of the Union, Confederate flag culture was, at the same time, very much shaped by the conventions and practices of American flag culture. Confederates revealed the influence of American flag culture most clearly in deciding to adopt the Stars and Bars as their first national flag. Although Confederates differentiated their flag from the Stars and Stripes by reducing the number of stripes from thirteen to three, which became known as bars, the Stars and Bars design otherwise closely resembled the American flag in its colors and arrangement. While this similarity revealed Confederates' attachment to their American heritage, Bonner argues that this attachment did not take away from their efforts to develop their own national identity. Arguing that "selecting a tricolor flag with stars and wider-than-usual stripes was meant to redirect positive feelings toward a new political future, not to lead Confederates back to the Union," Bonner suggests that Confederates...

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