Abstract

Confederate semiotics

Last Thanksgiving South Carolina Governor David Beasley shocked his fellow South Carolinians during his first televised address by announcing that he'd had a religious experience. This might not seem so out of character, since Beasley was the Christian Coalition candidate who in 1994 muscled past the party regular to get his name on the Republican line and then trounced his Democratic opponent. What surprised his listeners was that his epiphany meant reversing himself on a campaign pledge announcing that it was only meet and right to take down the Confederate flag from the capitol dome in Columbia and supporting a bill to do so. The news went national, too, in part because few could believe that there remained a state and South Carolina is the only one where the Confederacy's inflammatory battle flag commonly called the Stars and Bars, actually snaps on the same pole as Old Glory, and rather paradoxically just beneath the soothing state flag with its midnight-blue field overlaid with emblems of a swaying palmetto tree and a sliver of crescent moon.