If the orgy of flag-waving in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks proved anything, it’s that there are still few more potent emblems of outrage and nationalism than an artfully arranged piece of cloth. And lest anyone be surprised by the continued rallying power of Old Glory, remember that the banner for a long-ago secession continues to haunt these United States today. For modern-day defenders of the Confederacy, the Confederate battle flag itself is under siege - for them, it’s not just a symbol, it’s a cause in its own right.

When someone wields that flag today, be it on a pole, bumper sticker, license plate, stock car or t-shirt, just what are they saying? When they burnish the rebel banner, just what are they rebelling against?

Tough questions to answer, because the flag has, through the years, served as a most malleable symbol, representing an array of messages for its many and varied proponents. It would be impossible to interview every Confederate flag-waver, of course, but John M. Coski, chief historian and library director for the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, has done the next best thing in his book. The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Belknap Press, 2005) traces the intricate history of the flag, step by often-painful step, spelling out both the power and the pity of this most incendiary of American symbols.

Coski, who is no apologist for the Confederacy, explains early on that his study “rests on the simple proposition that a symbol’s use determines its meanings and affects the way people perceive it” - and that this symbol’s use has changed many a time. This proposition won’t sit well with either the flag’s most ardent defenders or its staunchest critics. For both groups, the symbol’s meaning is fixed, tied to a particular version of what seems a settled history. But, as Coski explains in his richly detailed chronicle, when the guns fell silent at the end of the Civil War, the flag’s battles had only just begun. Its meaning has changed, just as surely as have its uses. After the war, many Southern whites treated the flag as a hallowed symbol, an icon of a struggle that many were loath, but nonetheless resigned, to give up. For decades, it was most often displayed with a kind of historical reverence, a mark of battles past. Even the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan “did not use Confederate flags in its rituals or in its terrorist acts,” Coski observes.

After World War II, however, in the years leading into the Civil Rights movement, the flag saw expanded use as an “aggressively racist symbol,” he notes. It became a de facto banner for white supremacy, a symbol of opposition to desegregation for both the KKK and more mainstream sectors of the white population. And so it was that, a century after the Confederacy surrendered, the flag found new life defending the racial order that the war was largely precipitated by.

Interestingly, some Southerners with Confederate ancestry rejected the flag’s ubiquitous presence in the battles over integration. The United Daughters of the Confederacy declared that “our flag is not to be used in connection with any political movement - we are not in politics.” The group urged that the flag serve strictly memorial purposes.

But the genie was out of the bottle, and by the late 1960s, the flag was employed for ever-expanding public and commercial causes, from rallying football fans at Southern universities to selling knickknacks and beach towels. As the symbol was mass-marketed, some Southern stalwarts recoiled. For example, Coski notes, five states - Georgia among them - went so far as to enact laws banning the mistreatment of the Confederate flag.

Since that time, the flag has seen even broader uses in marketing, pop culture and politics. To many, it has become simply a generic emblem of rebellion. Others see the flag as a still-potent racist icon, and some continue to considerate it a badge of historical honor. That there’s little agreement over what the flag means today was evident during the debates that recently raged in Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and other states over the flying of Confederate flags on state property. Coski’s extensive and dispassionate account of those flag flaps shows why debate over the banner is far from over.

Even more recently, during the 2004 presidential campaign, Howard Dean, of all people, suggested it was time to bring rebel flag-bearers into his party’s fold. “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” he said. “We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross section of Democrats.” The Vermont politician’s statement won him few fans in either the North or the South, proving again that you can’t invoke a symbol as loaded as this one without summoning debate about the cause over which it originally flew.

“Above all, the Confederate battle flag represents the most contested chapter in American history, and it is destined to remain a contested symbol,” Coski concludes. Contemporary clashes over the flag’s meanings and uses, he suggests, can serve as “an accurate barometer of disagreement over the meaning and proper place of the Confederacy in American history and memory” - a meaning and place that merit debate even now.

Jon Elliston jelliston@mountainx.com