The Actual Confederate Flag

Most racists who for some reason love to celebrate their history of embarassing defeat will do so with this flag:

You may have just gone, "ah, the Stars and Bars!" Well, you're wrong. You may also have said "hey, I'm not a racist! I just love the South and this flag shows it!" That flag represents the racist institution of slavery. Don't believe me? Go read the actual Articles of Secession or this speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens and then try to tell me the Civil War was about state's rights.

That flag up there isn't the flag of the Confederacy. In fact they changed flags so often it nearly rivaled the frequency of iTunes updates. Here's the last one they used:

That's pretty terrible-looking in my opinion. I wouldn't want to use it either.

Some have said that the Confederate flag is a Naval jack. First of all you're close, but still wrong. The Naval jack in question was colored slightly differently:

And furthermore, why is saying that the Confederate flag on the back of your truck is a Naval jack supposed to make it okay? The vast majority of the battles were on land! The Confederate Navy didn't do all that much aside from dying! And besides, who goes around saying they love the United States by whipping out this thing:

So where did the popular (and incorrect) version of the Confederate flag come from? Some may say it was the Battle Flag, then spew some lies about how even slaves fought for the Confederacy to pretend they're not racist. The Confederate Battle Flag was square. There were some (read: very few) Confederate Army units that used the rectangularized version. Yet somehow, that's the one that gained popularity.

Interesting side note: Town Line, NY actually flew this incorrect Confederate flag on purpose because they couldn't find a real one. This tiny chunk of western NY state held a town meeting in 1861 and decided to seceed from the Union for a variety of half-baked reasons. As the war pressed on and the townsfolk sobered up, they pretty much forgot about that whole secession thing. Then in 1946, like an alcoholic going through Step 9, they rejoined the Union. They flew the incorrect Confederate Flag prior to rejoining, despite the fact that those in Town Line who fought for the Confederacy did so under yet another version of the Confederate flag:

Morons.