This is the second essay in an occasional series. Part 1 is here.

Requiem for a Culture

Part 2: The Battle Flag

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

— William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun, Act I, Scene III (page 80 in the Vintage paperback edition)

In Part 1 I wrote about the statue of the Confederate rifleman that was removed from a public park in Farmville, Virginia during the George Floyd hysteria of 2020. It was eventually relocated to the Confederate Cemetery, which is in an out-of-the-way location across the river in Cumberland County. The sentinel now guards his fallen comrades in their unmarked graves under the oak trees on a shady hillside.

The statue was just the beginning of controversy over Confederate issues in Farmville and the surrounding counties.

Back in 2011, in response to the mania for pulling down statues and erasing Confederate symbols, a group known as the Virginia Flaggers was formed. Their mission was to put up flagpoles and fly the Confederate battle flag in as many places as possible, on private property but visible from public thoroughfares. Their most famous success was to erect an enormous flag in Northern Virginia that was visible from I-95.

[Rather than a regular website, the Flaggers have a Facebook page, which I haven’t looked at, because I don’t do Facebook. I’m surprised it hasn’t been taken down. However, they also have a blog — it’s on Blogspot, and for some reason Google hasn’t yet taken it down.]

After the long hot summer of 2020, the Flaggers intensified their efforts to put up more flags. Travelers on major highways all across the Commonwealth can now see them. Last year a patriotic Virginia property owner donated space for a flag just outside Farmville, on a hillside next to US 460 adjacent to the Third Street exit into Farmville. The Flaggers went through the necessary legal steps before they raised the flag, acquiring the permits from Prince Edward County and jumping through all the zoning hoops. Early this year the flag went up on a sixty-foot pole (see the photo at the top of this post), and a predictable uproar ensued.

In the public discussion about the issue, there seems to be widespread confusion about what the flag actually is. It is not a national flag. It is a battle flag. It was carried into battle by Confederate troops between 1861 and 1865. Each unit had its own version of the flag. It was an important symbol for the soldiers who fought under it, and if the bearer fell, it was the urgent duty of any man nearby to pick up the flag and raise it again.

My great-great-grandfather Daniel Weisiger fought in the 4th Virginia Cavalry. I haven’t been able to find a photo of his battle flag, but this is the flag for the 4th Virginia Infantry:

As you can see, it was very specific to the group that carried it. By the time this particular flag was sewn, the 4th Virginia Infantry had seen combat at all the battlefields listed on the flag.

All the brouhaha about the flag raised outside of Farmville was, of course, based on the fact that it was deeply offensive to all right-minded citizens. However, the flag’s detractors were well aware that lip service had to be paid to the First Amendment, and that opposing the battle flag based on its symbolic meaning could never succeed. The preferred strategy was, as it often is, to use zoning ordinances to force the removal of the offending flag.

In this case, however, the anti-racist bien-pensants had a problem: Prince Edward County didn’t regulate flagpoles with its zoning ordinances. The county hurriedly passed a new one, and then appealed to the zoning board to force the removal of the flag.

The Farmville Herald, which is getting more woke with every issue, was fairly salivating over the prospect of sticking it to the nasty Confederate racists by bringing down the flag. Numerous articles appeared in advance of the June meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Unfortunately for its opponents, forcing the removal of the flag was not the slam-dunk they had hoped for. Not only had the permit for the flag been issued before the zoning change went into effect, but the flag had already been flying for longer than the statutory 60-day period during which a building permit could be revoked.

The issue was obviously a hot potato that the board was anxious to get out of its hands. The Herald and Longwood University may be modern and progressive, but the surrounding rural areas most certainly aren’t. Country people have a fierce respect for custom and tradition, even the black folks among them. If a referendum had ever been held about the issue, the Confederate Battle Flag would have won by a large margin.

In the end, three members of the board voted to reject the appeal, and two members abstained. The flag stayed up.

The Farmville Herald was so dejected by the decision that it waited more than two weeks to report on it. The full article is below:

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