The decision to make more than half of the new national flag entirely white returned some Confederates to the question of race. The Savannah Morning News argued that the preponderance of white would make clear to the world that “we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race.” It even predicted that the new banner would be “hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN’S FLAG.” Such expectations proved premature. “Purity” did become the primary association of this banner’s whiteness, and at a time when the Union turned to a war of emancipation, this resonant color could not help but conjure up something of the fears about “amalgamation” that were a part of American culture in both North and South. Yet the sort of overt reference to slavery and race that the Savannah editor expected did not become a major theme in the published record of commentary and verse. The opposition that most Confederates took to African American freedom hardly needed overt expression. Yet the tendency to skirt this theme in patriotic poetry recalled the earlier caution of risking international isolation and the alienation of southern nonslaveholders.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The decision to make more than half of the new national flag entirely white returned some Confederates to the question of race. The Savannah Morning News argued that the preponderance of white would make clear to the world that “we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race.” It even predicted that the new banner would be “hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN’S FLAG.” Such expectations proved premature. “Purity” did become the primary association of this banner’s whiteness, and at a time when the Union turned to a war of emancipation, this resonant color could not help but conjure up something of the fears about “amalgamation” that were a part of American culture in both North and South. Yet the sort of overt reference to slavery and race that the Savannah editor expected did not become a major theme in the published record of commentary and verse. The opposition that most Confederates took to African American freedom hardly needed overt expression. Yet the tendency to skirt this theme in patriotic poetry recalled the earlier caution of risking international isolation and the alienation of southern nonslaveholders." in the context of "Robert Bonner, Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South (2002), Princeton University Press, pp. 115–16." to mean that wisdom is timeless.