Colors & Blood. Flag Passions of the Confederate South - Robert E. Bonner

"Colors and Blood" depicts a pervasive flag culture that set the emotional tone of the Civil War in the Union as well as the Confederacy. At the heart of this story is the tremendous capacity of bloodshed to infuse symbols with emotional power. Confederate fleg culture, black southerners' charged relationship to the Stars and Stripes, contemporary efforts to banish the Southern Cross, and arguments over burning the Star Spangled Banner have this in common: all demonstrate Americans' passionate relationship with symbols that have been imaginatively soaked in blood.