No. Robert E. Lee did not say “Furl the flag, boys” as is the stuff of Confederate lore. The sentiment, however, is accurate. What Lee did say about flying the battle flag was
“I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife & to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”
Writing to John Letcher, the governor of Virginia during the Civil War, Lee firmly stated that all citizens should put aside bad blood and unite in efforts to forget the effects of war.
In a 2019 article entitled Finding Meaning in the Flag: Furl that Banner, Olivia Ortman wrote
Regardless of whether Lee actually wrote these words (“Fold it up and put it away.”), however, he did ask his children to keep the flag out of his funeral. He was buried in a plain suit, not his Confederate uniform, and other former Confederates in attendance were also asked not to wear their military uniforms. The Confederate flag was nowhere in sight that day.
Given the sentiment of the Confederacy’s greatest hero and statesman, I often wonder how many people really know the history of the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina State House and why?
By a mandate passed by the Democrat legislature in 1962, the Confederate battle flag, not the flag of the Confederacy itself, was flown over the state house dome to mark the centennial of the start of the Civil War and 97 years after its end. However, many saw it really as a defiant reaction to the burgeoning civil-rights movement.
For the next 38 years it waved beneath the banners of the United States and state of South Carolina though not without appreciable controversy. In 1994 state Republicans placed a referendum on the primary ballot contending 3 out of 4 party voters thought it should continue to fly. That same year the NAACP threatened a boycott of the entire state if it did not come down. Business leaders sued to remove the flag and in 1998 Republican Governor David Beasley lost to Democrat Jim Hodges primarily because the incimbent supported removing the flag from atop the dome.
In 2000, a compromise (?) was reached – the battle flag would be taken down and a smaller, square version would be raised at a “less-prominent place” on the state house grounds next to the Confederate monument. It really wasn’t a compromise as the controversy continued for another 15 years primarily because the “less prominent place” was right in front of the Statehouse facing and less than 50 feet from Main Street! Although atop the State House was a location of greater honor, people who have to crane their necks and squint to see it. This “compromise ” now made the flag easily visible to the thousands of cars and pedestrians passing by the peoples’ building every day, whether they wanted to see it or not. It was, bluntly, a middle finger to the entire state.
No changes would happen until 2015 although the controversy was always present. On Wednesday, June 17, 2015 much changed, especially for those of us serving in the South Carolina Senate. It was on that day nine members of the Emanuel AME Church – Mother Emanual – were gunned down by a racist, Confederate flag worshipping monster. Among the dead was State Senator Clementa Pinckney from Charleston.
Suddenly, removing the flag was no longer contentious, at least not in the Senate. One senator did say taking it down was “like removing a tattoo,” which was true, but there no need or will to discuss it. It was an easy vote for the Senate – 37 to 3. I don’t know what happened to the other six members (there are 46 state senators), but there was no question or regret.
It was, however, nasty in the House of Representatives! The (pick your adjective – crazies, buffoons, morons, idiots…) stayed late at night, got drunk and bloviated. One Representative, a Low Country lawyer, actually claimed allegiance to Jefferson Davis! The final vote of 94-20 after 13 hours of debate. There are 124 state representatives. Ten did not register a vote.
There is much to wonder about why those six senators and ten representatives did not vote. Maybe some were (conveniently) absent, but I have no doubt some were more cowardly than indecisive. At least the 23 senators and representatives who voted “nay” had the courage – misguided though it was – to register their convictions and/or those of their constituents.
The Confederate battle flag was evicted altogether on July 15, 2015 – 28 days after the Mother Emanuel massacre and five days after Governor Nikki Haley, who favored keeping the flag but changed her mind after the shootings, signed the bill authorizing its removal.
The honor guard who took the flag down was the same group of men who carried Senator Pinckney’s coffin into the Statehouse less than a month before.
WHILE I BREATHE 