The Confederate Battle Flag

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, if there is any doubt in the mind of any person as to what this Confederate battle flag stands for, I urge people not to listen to me. I urge you to listen to the secessionists themselves.

Here is a quote from the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.

It reads:

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens, and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy hostile to the South and the destruction of its beliefs and safety.

Those persons were Black people. That new policy that was hostile to the South was ending the enslavement of the millions of people based on their race.

Here is a quote from the Vice President of the Confederacy. I think he can speak authoritatively as to what other Confederate flags mean. Vice President Alexander Stephens said:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite of the American idea. Its foundations are laid--its cornerstone rests--upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the White man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

That is what the Vice President of the Confederate States said under banners like this one as they were fighting and offering the lives of their own children to maintain slavery.

This is what the flag represents.

I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

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