After a South Carolina honor guard took down the Confederate flag from the statehouse, troopers rolled the flag — a furling method that mirrored how Confederate soldiers surrendered to Union troops in 1865.
On Friday, the Highway Patrol troopers took down the controversial flag, folded it into a long rectangle, rolled it and tied it with a ribbon.
When Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered following the Battle of Appomattox, his troops rolled the rebel flag around a pole as a sign of surrender. The submissive move was documented in historical paintings and is featured in Civil War re-enactments today, 150 years after the Union’s victory.
For some Confederate flag fans, the rolling wasn’t done with enough reverence.
“They zip tied it after rolling it up. Looks like they wanted to show as much disrespect as they thought they could get away with,” one commenter posted on a firearm advocacy message board.
But rolling the removed Confederate flag instead of folding it “echoes” one of the most popular poems of the post-Civil War Confederate poems, Robert Bonner, history professor at Dartmouth College, told the Daily News.
In “The Conquered Banner,” Confederate Army chaplain Abram Joseph Ryan described how the flag was furled — or rolled — after the troop’s surrender.
“Furl that banner, softly, slowly! Treat it gently — it is holy,” the 1865 poem reads.
“It’s a classic image of flag surrender — not the folding of a flag of an existing government that etiquette of flag code calls for,” Bonner said of paintings documenting the roll.
The rebel flag does not fall under current American flag codes, meaning there is no federal rules on how it should be folded or rolled, Bonner said.
“The Confederate flag represents a government that no longer exists. It doesn’t have a relationship to a country that exists,” he said.
Still, Confederate flag supporters were furious that South Carolina didn’t give the flag the traditional American flag fold.
President Lincoln sent General Lee & his soldiers home with honor after the surrender. Too bad todays burial of flag was done w disrespect,” @blueskies6123 tweeted.
Meanwhile, some people who supported the removal thought the formal honor guard treatment was too reverential.
“I’ve seen Honor Guards fold too many funerary flags. The confederate flag did NOT deserve that level of respect or reverence, IMHO,” @RiverCityPauly tweeted.
“When they removed the confederate flag like why did they have to fold it up all nice couldn’t they have just burned it with a raging fire,” @Bridget__Foley added.
The South Carolina Confederate flag — which first flew on state grounds in 1961 — will be housed on a multimillion-dollar shrine in the Confederate relic room at the State’s Military History Museum.
While calls to take down the flag began shortly after it first flew 54 years ago, those demands intensified 22 days ago, when nine worshipers — including state Sen. Clementa Pinckney — were killed during a racially-motive gun rampage inside a historic black church in Charleston, S.C.
With News Wire Services.
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