Daily Advocate
Baton Rouge
June 2, 1861
We see very much in Northern prints about the flag of the Union. The speeches of Northern orators are full of allusions to the starry banner, says the Montgomery Advertiser, and the people are appealed to by all the sacred memories which cluster about that banner, to stand by and defend it to the last. Ignorant people are deluded with the idea that the flag is the same as that which floated over the battle fields of the Revolution, and their
remembrance of the many glorious victories achieved under its folds is called upon to arouse their patriotism. This uproar about the sacredness of the flag is all gammon. There is no peculiar interest attaching to the Star Spangled Banner. It is not the flag under which our fathers fought the battles of the Revolution; neither is it the same as the one that floated over the field of battle in the war of 1812. The present flag of the United States was adopted in 1818—less than fifty years ago—from a design by Capt. Samuel C. Reid. There was nothing in its adoption to render it sacred in the eyes of any one, and there has been nothing in its history since to make it so.
This professed devotion to the flag of the Union is pure bunkum.