Amongst the pile of refuse that comes through my office daily, often I find a few jewels mingled in.

One such item of vast interest was an informational booklet from the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It is a group that works to preserve monuments, gravestones and battlefields and to honor the fallen soldiers of a country that no longer exists.

While most people now think that the war between the states was over slavery, that actually had very little to do with it. But that's not an issue that I wanted to write about.

The reason I thought I would write about this group today was because of the Southern flag. The booklet that was sent to me included pictures of several of the South's flags, and there were several. We have all heard much ado about the flag, but how many people really know what the first national flag of the Confederate States of America really looked like? Could you pick it out of a row of state flags? I bet most of you could not.

The Confederate battle flag, a red field with a blue "X" covered with stars emblazoned on it, was not the national flag. It was only used on battle fields because the original Confederate flag was too easily confused with the American, or Union, flag. It never was a national flag of any nation. The battle flag was designed to incorporate the Cross of St. Andrew, a religious symbol, with the colors of the Confederate National Flag, which I will describe a little later.

The first flag associated with succession was known as the Bonnie Blue flag. It was a blue flag with a big white star in the middle that simulated a state being plucked from the union. It was mainly flown in Texas and Louisiana.

Often troops fought under the flag of their own state. Most of the Southerners in the war were fighting for a simple cause indeed, to protect their homes and families.

That flag was a square flag, not a rectangular form like those seen today as symbols of the Confederacy. The rectangular battle flag was mostly used on ships as a naval jack.

The rectangular banner later turned up flying over some units fighting in the western United States as a battle flag.

The North Carolina flag, with its red and white bar pattern with a field of blue and the state symbol upon it, is very similar to the first national Confederate flag.

The first Confederate national flag was designed by Orren Randolph Smith of Louisburg, N.C. It was known as the "Stars and Bars" and incorporated a white bar sandwiched between two red bars and a square of blue in the upper left corner with seven stars within it - one for each state in the Confederacy. As I said before, it looked so much like the Union flag that the two were often confused in battle.

Later in the war, the Confederates decided to change their flag to incorporate the battle flag. In it, they inserted the battle flag symbol in the place where the stars are on the American flag and left the rest of the flag white. The problem, they discovered, was that when there was no wind, it looked like a white flag of surrender. With the war going poorly, the last thing the Confederates wanted their citizens to see was a flag of surrender. Incidentally, that flag flew from 1863 to early 1865.

To fix the problem, they added a red stripe on the far side of the flag, running up and down, and dubbed it the third national flag. However, it only flew for about a month before Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.

So a country that lasted four years had three flags and no one living in it can recognize any of them 135 years later. Too bad they won't teach this stuff in history class. You know, I don't think I ever saw a Southern flag in history class.

To many Southerners, like Granny Clampett on the Beverly Hillbillies, the war will always be "The war of Northern aggression."

To others, it is just a little remnant of bygone history that has no more significance than the American Revolution or the War of 1812. Then again, there are some people who couldn't tell you who Jefferson Davis was, unless he was that fat man on the Dukes of Hazzard. On a more serious front, the only thing that we should remember about the war is the brave soldiers of all nationalities, Americans one and all, that fought and died for both sides.

Perhaps the next time you see the flag that most people call the Confederate flag, you'll know better. If not, it's your own fault for not looking it up.

Did you know that more North Carolinians fought and died in the Civil War than soldiers from any other state? Those men's legacy is definitely something we should be proud of, one and all.

Also, it is worthy of note that it really wasn't a civil war, since the Southern states withdrew from the Union before any hostilities began. Therefore, it really was just a war between the states, or the war of Northern aggression, depending on how you look at it.

These days it's all just history.

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