From "Flags in the Dust" to Banners of Defiance: Tales of a Symbol's Transformations

The Confederate flag that is currently, and properly, a subject of controversy will always be bound up for me with memories of childhood--but not the way you might think. William Faulkner once famously wrote, "For every southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances . . . that moment doesn't need even a fourteen year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the gold dome of Washington itself . . ." (Intruder 195). This dream for Faulkner, at least, no doubt would have been accompanied by a vision of the stars and bars too, because if you look at the frontispiece Edward Shenton designed for Faulkner's real Civil War novel (as opposed to Absalom, Absalom!), The Unvanquished, you'll see a valiant rebel soldier leaning on his sword, but holding a huge Confederate flag in the other hand. The act of being "unvanquished" meant holding the flag, rescuing it from "the dust," "unfurling" it again with unfolding, flamboyant narrative (Faulkner's earlier 1929 novel titled Flags in the Dust in fact links legendary tales of Civil War Sartorises with the dead and failed heroes of World War I, connecting wars in which victory was fashioned from defeat, and vice versa). And indeed, the elaborate rituals of Confederate Memorial Day, which used to be a major holiday in the South, always featured the Stars and Bars, and Confederate veterans often had their caskets draped in the flag. Charles Reagan Wilson and others have conclusively demonstrated how these now lapsed commemorative rites re-created the mystical past by employing mourning rituals to convert dead heroes into legendary progenitors (Wilson 29).

Although the Confederate holiday was still in place when I was a child, and a number of my great aunts were active in the Daughters of the Confederacy, I don't remember any special ceremonies on this Memorial Day, nor do I recall having any special knowledge of the war at fourteen or any other age. On the other hand, I had Confederate soldiers in all my ancestral streams (indeed, great granddaddy Samuel Wharton Lowe had been with Lee at Appomattox); even so, it was only my Martin relatives who fascinated me, because growing up in Atlanta, I made many "field trips" during grammar school to the fabled Cyclorama at Grant Park, and the Martins were a part of it. For those unacquainted with Confederate memorial art, this is the place to start; the world's largest painting, the Cyclorama portrays the epic battle of Atlanta, which was fought in July, 1862. Enshrined in a monumental classical building, the Cyclorama has resided in Atlanta since 1897, when it was donated to the city. The painting was conceived, however, by William Wehner, a German immigrant, who saw a lucrative opportunity in the Lost Cause movement; he had been involved in the "panorama" series of monumental historical paintings that had been popular exhibits for some time in Europe. He recruited a talented team of German, Austrian and Polish artists to do a series of scenes for him in his American Panorama Studio in Milwaukee. The...