A disgraced banner--the rebel flag

We oft see alternate histories based, one way or another, on the American Civil War. Union wins, rebels win, all sorts of options both with the war and reconstruction.

I'd like to see some way, with a POD later than April 15, 1865 (the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination) for the various symbols of the Confederacy, and its men such as Lee, Jackson, Forrest, etc to be seen almost universally, through the USA, in a bad light, such that no rebel (or traitor) flags are seen, monuments to their generals are rare, Washington and Lee University is still Washington University, etc.

What's it take for those symbols to be almost never displayed in public, and to be seen as bad things throughout the country?

If that's too late a POD, what would work?
 
Keep the Lost Causers from rehabilitating it.

Hard to do with men like Lee and Jackson, they were near legends in their own time due to their accomplishments and even their enemies respected them. Making them villains is probably difficult, but making them more out to be like Rommel (ie a German who wasn't a Nazi) is probably very doable for history.
 
If the CSA had won, it would probably have ended up a failed state, with poisonous three-way conflicts between black slaves, poor whites and plantation owners. Have the country collapse and get re-annexed by the USA, and I can't imagine many people looking back on it fondly.
 
If the CSA had won, it would probably have ended up a failed state, with poisonous three-way conflicts between black slaves, poor whites and plantation owners. Have the country collapse and get re-annexed by the USA, and I can't imagine many people looking back on it fondly.

with a POD later than April 15, 1865


Not going to work.

Perhaps a really bad reconstruction with rebels popping up using the old CSA flag, and then these rebels basically become like the KKK.

You know, in MN the Confederate flag is pretty bad. Not as bad as the swastika, but if someone walked in to some places with a stars and bars tee-shirt they might be asked to leave.
 
Not going to work.

Perhaps a really bad reconstruction with rebels popping up using the old CSA flag, and then these rebels basically become like the KKK.

You know, in MN the Confederate flag is pretty bad. Not as bad as the swastika, but if someone walked in to some places with a stars and bars tee-shirt they might be asked to leave.

I'd say the same thing for here in Massachusetts
 
Hard to do with men like Lee and Jackson, they were near legends in their own time due to their accomplishments and even their enemies respected them. Making them villains is probably difficult, but making them more out to be like Rommel (ie a German who wasn't a Nazi) is probably very doable for history.

Heck, not even that far would be necessary - even just getting them to Kaiser Wilhelm-ine Germany or Czaric Russia levels of "A few good eggs in a rotten, shockingly incompetent and backward basket". Just get people to look on them not even as villains, but losers, and it would help.

As I've said before - the American South is the only place on the planet that celebrates losing a war.
 
To be honest, the actual confederate flag is already very rarely seen, as it was quickly supplanted by the battle flag.
 
A much more aggressive reconstruction:

(a) Redraw the state lines so nobody identifies with rebellious states

(b) Land reform so that poor whites benefit from the breaking of the old order with their own plot.

(c) Immigration to the more egalitarian south

You'll end up with only a small elite missing the Confederacy, and before long they will be marginalised and forgotten.
 

JSmith

Banned
As I've said before - the American South is the only place on the planet that celebrates losing a war.
That's the thing they didn't loose it as completely as they should/could have. If you spoke to a white Southerner in 1875 as opposed to one in 1865 they would likely agree-with the could have part at least :eek:
 
Any Confederate flag--and guerillas might mess it up

I meant any symbol of the CSA, the national flag, the battle flag, etc--anything identified as a symbol of the rebellion.

Would Lee not opposing the idea of going guerrilla perhaps do the trick? A few years of bloody, hateful counterinsurgency might make the civilians in the area disgusted with the rebels...

And I know that, in some places, the symbols of the rebellion are seen as BAD--but I'm looking for a good way to make that the same everywhere.
 

JSmith

Banned
I meant any symbol of the CSA, the national flag, the battle flag, etc--anything identified as a symbol of the rebellion.

Would Lee not opposing the idea of going guerrilla perhaps do the trick? A few years of bloody, hateful counterinsurgency might make the civilians in the area disgusted with the rebels...

And I know that, in some places, the symbols of the rebellion are seen as BAD--but I'm looking for a good way to make that the same everywhere.
I don't see how its possible even with this because the difference is that then as now a majority of the white population in the South didn't think that the cause of the Confederates was that bad.
Whatever the Confederates did the Yankees did worse. I could see what you are talking about happening if the North did a really aggressive type of Reconstruction in a few generations perhaps a large number of white Southerners would feel like this but there would still be a sizable majority who did not. This is a group of people who don't seem to go with the better angels of their nature-unless there is a fair amount of force and coercion involved. Everything from the Civil War battles of the 1860's to the Civil Rights fights of the 1960's tells us that's the case.
 
If the CSA had won, it would probably have ended up a failed state, with poisonous three-way conflicts between black slaves, poor whites and plantation owners. Have the country collapse and get re-annexed by the USA, and I can't imagine many people looking back on it fondly.

If it is bad enough it could work. I have written timelines that would have little CSA nostalgia IMO.
 
Would Lee not opposing the idea of going guerrilla perhaps do the trick? A few years of bloody, hateful counterinsurgency might make the civilians in the area disgusted with the rebels...

That was what happened in the Boer War. It didn't make the Boers see the British victory as a Good Thing.
 
As I've said before - the American South is the only place on the planet that celebrates losing a war.

Aside from Serbia with its Kosovo obsession, and Scotland with its Jacobite sentimentality, and Israel with Masada... And the Légion étrangère with Camerone Day.
 
The need was for the Planter class to not only be discredited but also destroyed as a class. No hangings needed just exile and forfeiture of property
 
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