The Visible Confederacy

Images and Objects in the Civil War South

Ross A. Brooks

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780807173701
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Featuring 92 images and line drawings The Visible Confederacy is a comprehensive analysis of the commercially and government-generated visual and material culture of the Confederate States of America. While historians have mainly studied Confederate identity through printed texts, this book shows that Confederates also built and shared a sense of who they were through other media: theatrical performances, military clothing, manufactured goods, and an assortment of other material. Examining previously understudied and often unpublished visual and documentary sources, Ross A. Brooks provides new perspectives on Confederates' sense of identity and ideas about race, gender, and independence, as well as how those conceptions united and divided them. Brooks's work complements the historiography surrounding the Confederate nation by revealing how imagery and objects offer new windows on southern society and a richer understanding of Confederate citizens. Brooks builds substantially upon previous studies of the iconology and iconography of Confederate imagery and material culture by adding a broader range of government and commercially generated images and objects. He examines not only popular or high art and government-produced imagery, but also lowbrow art, transitory theatrical productions, and ephemeral artifacts generated by southerners. Collectively, these materials provide a variety of lenses through which to explore and assay the various priorities, ideological fault lines, and worldviews of Confederate citizens. Brooks's study is one of the first extensive academic works to use imagery and objects as the basis for studying the Confederate South. His work provides fresh avenues for examining Confederate ideas about race, slavery, gender, independence, and the war, and it offers insight into the intentions and factors that contributed to the creation of Confederate nationalism. The Visible Confederacy furthers our understanding of what the Confederacy was, what Confederates fought for, and why their vision has persisted in memory and imagination for so long beyond the Confederacy's existence. Visual and material culture captured not only the tensions, but also the illusions and delusions that Confederates shared.

CHAPTER 1

Iconography of the Confederate Government

At last we are,

A nation among nations; and the world,

Shall soon behold in many a distant port,

Another flag unfurled!

—HENRY TIMROD, “Ethnogenesis”

The instruments and structures of a government help build a sense of national unity. These systems and articles capture not only a nation’s laws, borders, economy, and duties but also its shared myths, oppositional models, and things of public culture that suggest a people’s commonality.¹ By 1861 many nation-states and their institutions used iconography such as a national flag, military uniform, stamps, seals, and currency to brand, express, and legitimize their authority. In its attempt to establish political authority, the Confederate government developed and used a variety of these forms.² Examining each of these visual representations provides insight not only into how the Confederate government presented ideas current within their developing republic but also about the nation’s tensions and weaknesses.

The creation of the Confederate States’ official iconography began as Southerners, disillusioned by Washington politics, fearful of the impact of antislavery Republicans and President Abraham Lincoln, and steeped in decades of Southern Nationalist rhetoric, sought the sanctuary of their own government.³ In early February 1861, within three months of Lincoln’s election, seven slave states across the South seceded, and their representatives met in Montgomery, Alabama. From secessionists’ initial efforts to constitute a permanent national government, Confederate politicians and officials enlisted imagery to make their nation appear more substantial. The development, final form, and usage of these markers contained intentional and implied meanings about the nation.

The actions of the state representatives who assembled at Montgomery suggested that the fledging nation’s politicians grasped the role imagery could play in nation building. A week before they adopted a constitution, they had already agreed upon a national flag. Over the next months, distinctive Treasury bonds and notes, military fashion, seals for arms of the government, and postage stamps joined the national colors to mark the presence and authority of the Confederate nation. The resulting imagery and iconography contained American themes of progress, republican values, and a mythic present. The subsequent history of the government’s attempt to represent itself showed not only these ideas transformed into distinctly Confederate iconography, but also the complexity of the task.

A NATIONAL FLAG

The effort and intricacies involved in the Confederate government creating lasting iconography are evident in the story of their three successive national flags. The most constructed and considered of all the Confederacy’s official imagery, each successive design derived from a degree of collaboration between the people and their politicians (fig. 1.1). Their development and the use of these national colors in the Civil War South captured the differences between sections, the people, their representatives, and the various imaginings of their nation.⁴

The range of ways Southerners conceived the Confederacy became clear as the Provisional Congress met in early February 1861. There representatives tabled and discussed a steady stream of flag proposals. Attachment to what they called the “Old Union” came to the fore in Mississippi representative Walker Brooke’s call to adopt a flag “as similar as possible to the flag of the United States.”⁵ His speech stirred the emotions of some present. As one representative wrote, “I felt for a while like some few people used to feel at a Fourth of July celebration after the champagne had freely circulated.”⁶ However, straightaway William Porcher Miles, the chair of the Flag and Seal Committee, “chased away” Brooke’s “Yankee Doodleism.” He did so by recollecting the shift in loyalties from England to America that the Revolution’s generation had experienced. He also reminded members of the greater attachment he felt to his state than to the United States.⁷ Whereas men like Miles steered Congress away from the United States flag, references to it continued to recur in flag designs and discussions. They indicate that Brooke expressed a connection shared by many Southerners.⁸ Although in the flag committee’s official report Miles stated that they had rejected any designs like the “Stars and Stripes,” this was not the case. Later he admitted its similarity and the difficulty in tearing “people away from some reminiscence of the ‘old flag.’”⁹ Although similar, the chosen design, as Robert Bonner has explained, used the positive associations of the United States flag to refocus Southern passions on their new government rather than express a loyalty to the former Union.¹⁰

FIG. 1.1. Flags of the Confederates States of America. Left to right: First national flag, March 6, 1861–May 1, 1863; second national flag, May 1, 1863–March 4, 1865; third national flag, March 4, 1865. Drawings created by the author.

Adopted on March 4, 1861, the first national flag, or “Stars and Bars,” became but one of many flags the Southerners used. Over the previous months, the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida all instituted individual state flags, and by the end of 1861, each Confederate state had its own flag.¹¹ These flags not only flew in each respective state but also appeared across the Confederacy as troops carried them outside their borders. Furthermore, North Carolina and Virginia’s initial decision to issue regimental flags aided the visibility of some states’ flags until at least the middle of 1862. Carried across the South, these flags visually reminded Confederates of their people’s multiple loyalties.

Other flags came into use that further provided visual evidence of Southerners’ diverse allegiances. Besides national and state colors, other designs appeared in late 1861 as Confederate armies adopted distinctive “battle flags.”¹² In November 1861, the earliest appeared as generals in both the Eastern and Western armies worried that the similarity of Union and Rebel flags made it difficult to differentiate each side’s troops on the battlefield. In the West, General William Hardee adopted a blue flag edged in white that bore a white disc in its center for his corps. Meanwhile, in the East, the chair of the Flag and Seal Committee, W. Porcher Miles, and Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and J. E. Johnston worked to introduce their own: a red flag crossed with diagonal blue bars and white edge and stars that soon became known as the Battle Flag. Miles developed the basic design in early 1861. Although Congress rejected it, Miles stayed alert for another opportunity to see it used in the Confederacy.¹³ During the July 21, 1861, battle of First Manassas, Confederates experienced problems distinguishing their flag from that of the enemy. Miles brought his design to Confederate generals Beauregard and Johnston. But the flag committee rejected their attempt to have it adopted as a “war-flag.” In the fall of 1861, the thwarted generals bypassed all official channels and instead arranged for 120 of the flags to be made and issued independent of any government body.¹⁴ In similar fashion, generals in other Confederate armies instituted distinctive divisional and corps flags that bore little similarity to the national flag. The red battle flag supplanted many of these as Johnston and Beauregard took the design with them as they transferred to Western commands. As a result, by 1863, most Confederate army units carried banners based on Miles’s design. On balance, Southerners developed affections for many flags: state, army, and national. They represented visibly the complex intersecting and contending loyalties that make up a nation. In the Confederacy, these attachments proved fluid.

Newspaper accounts indicated that war loosened Southern attachment to their first national flag. “We believe we speak for three-fourths of the Confederate people,” wrote one critic from Louisiana in late July 1861, “when we state that the Confederate Flag has not only failed to satisfy them but has greatly disappointed them.” It looked, they explained, an amalgam of two despotic national banners, “the Union and three stripes of Lincoln’s abolition banner” and the white and red bars of the Austrian flag.¹⁵ In late August 1861, a group of Fredericksburg, Virginia, women sent a resolution to Congress that stated that the “stars and bars fail to meet the objects of a flag.”¹⁶ Both called on the nation to adopt the “Southern Cross.” This design, while similar in color and motifs to the Battle Flag, featured a perpendicular rather than diagonal cross. Although a variety of contending designs emerged over the following nineteen months, events would show where the majority of Southern opinion about flags lay.¹⁷

As public disfavor with the Stars and Bars grew, the Confederate Congress and its Flag and Seal Committee moved slowly to develop a replacement. While between winter 1861 and spring 1863, Congress devoted time to dealing with pressing matters, such as ensuring that the nation’s armies had enough men and supplies, some politicians also filled days with hours of stump speeches.¹⁸ Amid this activity, the designs tabled over 1862 lacked any momentum in Congress. Despite growing criticism from the press, it took until May 1, 1863, for the nation’s representatives to determine to act. At the end of two days of what one congressman described as a “whirl of business” that was more than he could remember, both houses agreed on and adopted the second national flag—the Battle Flag as the union on a field of white.¹⁹ The design maintained the tricolor palette of the first flag symbolizing valor, truth, and purity. It also reflected the popular wish for a distinctive national color. However, the actions of some Confederates suggested an uncertain grasp of its significance.

The manner in which Congress unfurled this flag over the capitol building said much about politicians’ appreciation of iconography. On May 6, 1863, an “accidentally assembled” group saw a small version of the second flag appear atop the capitol.²⁰ Soon after, Richmond’s Examiner welcomed news that officials had set the Clothing Bureau to preparing a large official flag to fly permanently over the congressional building. To the Examiner, the significance of its unfurling required a “representative of the civil or military power appointed for the purpose.”²¹ The paper predicted that when hoisted above the capitol, the Armory Band and other “demonstrations” would help celebrate the occasion.²² It would be disappointed. On May 14, 1863, ...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 Iconography of the Confederate Government
• CHAPTER 2 Nativism and Depictions of Race
• CHAPTER 3 The Southern Defense of Slavery
• CHAPTER 4 Manufacturing and Southern Autonomy
• CHAPTER 5 The Photographic and Graphic Print Industries
• CHAPTER 6 The Meanings of Confederate Military Clothing
• CHAPTER 7 Visualizing the War for the People
• CHAPTER 8 Representations of Womanhood
• CHAPTER 9 Picturing Hierarchies of Manhood
• EPILOGUE
• APPENDIX: The Origins of Vignettes Used on Confederate Currency
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX