I’ve been reading and enjoying the alternate history works of Harry Turtledove for many years. Â Specifically, I like his “Timeline-191” series that supposes that the South won the American Civil War (in real history, Special Order 191 from Robert E. Lee was found by the army of the North and they were able to use the information contained therein in a couple of battles, South Mountain and Antietam, in Turtledove’s works, 191 was recovered by the Southerners).
I was thinking about the Confederate States today for whatever reason and I realized that I am only really familiar with the battle flag, which is what is commonly called the rebel flag. Â The drummer in the band I was (briefly) in in high school had one on his kick drum. Â It looks like this:
And most people are reasonably familiar with it. Â The actual rebel national flag went through several iterations, viz.
all images from wikipedia
This last one, the ‘bloodstained banner’ is the one that interests me. Â It was designed this way so that a stainless banner hanging limply would not be confused for a flag of surrender which is a pretty reasonable fear. Â Knowing that this was the common name for this last flag will actually have an impact on my life. Â THANKS, WIKIPEDIA.
There is a campfire song from Camp Omagh that goes as follows and I don’t think I can sing it any more.
there was <name>, he/she was a soldier
put his/her hand to the gospel plow
one day he/she got old and couldn’t fight any more
but he/she stood up and fought any how
we are soldiers in the army
we gotta fight (uh huh) we gotta fight
we gotta hold up the bloodstained banner
hold it up until we die
The south will not rise again on my watch.