Flags are different

Dear editor:

Please let me, once again, remind your readers that there is a difference between the Confederate flag and the Confederate battle flag. If you can find Mote Street and drive past the Hollywood Cemetery, you will see the Confederate memorial there and the Confederate flag flying proudly. It is the Stars and Bars, the flag which represented the Confederate States of America (CSA).

The Confederate battle flag was designed and used to prevent confusion between the Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes. Soldiers were being killed by friendly fire, and that is a sad story to have to deliver to an aggrieved family. It was a good purpose and a good flag, but it has been distorted by various hate groups and is now seen as a symbol of hate.

Diana Hampo (May 24, 2017) described a group of men and women “waving Confederate flags.” I was not there, but I am reasonably sure that the flags seen there were Confederate battle flags. If people who are proud of our Southern heritage would learn the difference and display the Confederate flag (the Stars and Bars) more often, it might serve to refute the bad reputation the Confederate battle flag has brought down on the CSA.

I have read in what I consider to be reliable sources that both Gen. Robert E. Lee and CSA President Jefferson Davis were anti-slavery. I believe strongly that slavery would have been abolished in the CSA as soon as machinery was developed to harvest the crops grown there. But history is what it is and some people just don’t care.

M. Wayne Spencer Hot Springs