Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South.

Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South. By Robert E. Bonner. (Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, c. 2002. Pp. xvi, 223. $29.95, ISBN 0-691-09158-7.)

Almost 150 years after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Confederate symbols continue to evoke powerful responses. In recent years, heated debates over the display of the Southern Cross and other Confederate icons have proliferated nationwide. In Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South, Robert E. Bonner demonstrates that the emotional furor over Confederate symbols is not new but instead reflects the evolution of a flag culture that first emerged in nineteenth-century America. In a thorough examination of the religious, emotional, and national connotations of Confederate symbols, Bonner specifically highlights how the new southern nation searched for and ultimately utilized a national banner to help focus citizens' patriotism around a common symbol. The Civil War-era emotion, tied to what some considered "treason's banner" and others saw as "colors of loyalty," helps explain why Confederate images remain potent emotional symbols so long after the death of southern independence.

Bonner insightfully details how the evolution of a national flag occurred alongside the creation of other forms of wartime popular culture. The emergence of patriotic songs, poetry, stationery, and banners helped develop a language of symbols that united white southerners around the fight for independence. It also helped forge a sense of Confederate nationalism. Using drawings of proposed designs, personal and public letters, newspaper accounts, and official documents, Bonner carefully chronicles the development of the Confederate flag and flag culture. First, as individual states renounced their membership in the Union, each created a resistance banner of its own to replace the Stars and Stripes. As Bonner notes, some states "'plucked' their stars" from the American flag while others used state symbols to demonstrate their independence and defiance (p. 28). The new Confederate government then searched for a national banner to help bring together all of the states of the Confederacy. After debating countless options proposed by politicians as well as citizens of both sexes, the government settled on the Stars and Bars. With its resemblance to the American flag, this option allowed the new nation to demonstrate its independence as well as its dedication to its Revolutionary heritage. Yet, the Stars and Bars proved problematic on the battlefield as well as in the political arena. As politicians searched for a national flag, Confederate soldiers found their own colors. Bonner shows how individual company banners fit into the larger flag culture. They helped keep units together in the heat of battle and focused soldiers on ideas of home, especially the women who made and presented the regimental flags. More importantly to present-day debates over Confederate symbols, these military colors helped shift the focus of Confederate flags from political issues to emotional ones. Flags carried into battle seemed sanctified by the lives and deaths of the soldiers who fought under them. The final development of the Confederate flag came with the creation of the Southern Cross, the flag that people today most commonly associate with the Confederacy.

Colors and Blood meticulously catalogs the ways in which Confederate symbols evoked multiple and complex meanings during the American Civil War. Although Bonner provides a few insights into post-Civil War and contemporary issues, his focused approach leaves these controversies to be analyzed by others. Those interested in the debate about southern identity and symbols, whether in the past or the present, will be well served to start with this work.

LISA TENDRICH FRANK

Florida Atlantic University