We are asked to stand
as the song is played. Out of courtesy, we do so. While listening to the music
we think of what might have been. Sometimes we see the 3rd National Flag of the
Confederacy in our mind’s eye and know the pride and excitement we would be feeling
if that was the flag being honored and the song was Dixie. These are feelings
we will never have with this flag and this song. We do not cheer when it is
over. We understand that our nation was invaded and defeated on the battlefield
by those waving this flag. We will always be Confederates.
Oh, say, can you see,
by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Our minds imagine
Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. There a people begin the fight
for freedom, freedom promised by what this flag is supposed to represent. A
fight unwanted by those in Charleston, but one precipitated by the treachery of
the President of the United States in sending reinforcements to Fort Sumter. We
see this flag flying over Fort Sumter which was, by all rights, the property of
the Confederate States of America.
Whose broad stripes
and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
We see them streaming
at Manassas where they flew above those who invaded our Confederate States of
America, our country. The fight was indeed perilous for this flag and it was
rightfully sent packing back to Washington. We see it in retreat in the
Shenandoah Valley where General Stonewall Jackson out maneuvered, out smarted
and out fought the yankees under this banner.
And the rockets' red
glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
The flag was there at
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and Chickamauga. It came with troops to our
country at Shiloh. It starved our people at Vicksburg. It was carried by
Sherman as he burned homes and fields to starve the women and children of our
country who were trying to survive a terrible war.
O say, does that star-spangled
banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Yes, it waves. It
waves over a land where our flags are increasingly forbidden to be shown in
public; where children are expelled from school for wearing a Confederate flag;
where universities forbid the presence of the Confederate flag; where streets
named for our Southern heroes have those names changed for political
correctness; where our ancestors are reviled. We wonder what they fear. Arms
were laid down over 130 years ago and yet, they continue an effort to destroy
every vestige of our country. We Confederates stand, but we do so with sadness.
© Jack Kean 1998
