Class Year
2019
Document Type
Blog Post
Publication Date
Spring 2-13-2017
Department 1
Civil War Institute
Abstract
I’m sure that as fans of history, at some point in your pursuit of knowledge, you have either read or heard the phrase “language is key”. This is something my professors have harped on, class after class, explaining that the way we talk about things shapes the way they are viewed. This lesson holds true for the Union perspective of the Confederate flag during the war. In all the documents written by Northerners that I looked over for this post, I did not come across a single mention of the “Confederate flag.” This was because the flag was pretty consistently, and intentionally, known as the “rebel flag.” This term was used for each subsequent version of the flag, showing that each of the flags had the same meaning for Northerners, regardless of the changing design.
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Ortman, Olivia, "Finding Meaning in the Flag: Rebel Flag" (2017). The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History. 251.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/compiler/251
Comments
This blog post originally appeared in The Gettysburg Compiler and was created by students at Gettysburg College.