On the American Tapestry

The modern United States is a tapestry.

We honor Geronimo, Red Cloud, Chief Joseph, and Sitting Bull as great Americans with statues and monuments even though they took up arms against the United States.

We honor King Kamehameha and Queen Liliuokalani even though they were royalty of a foreign country. Moreover, the flag of Hawaii includes the British Union Jack.

We honor the Texans at the Alamo even though they were not part of the United States at the time.

We honor my state’s French and Spanish heritage, as we were a foreign colony when the US was established.

When the Constitution went into effect, Rhode Island and North Carolina were foreign countries.

The flags of New Mexico and Oklahoma honor the era in their histories when they were not part of the United States, but were Indian lands.

The flag of California honors its period of independence as the Bear Republic.

Rest areas on the Gulf Coast still fly the Republic of West Florida flags (they look like the Bonnie Blue Flag) along with the federal and state banners.

The Confederate States of America included 11 of our current United States (13 counting the two states that had dual state governments competing for legitimacy) in addition to West Virginia (carved out of Virginia), Maryland (who supplied troops but were prevented from seceding), and Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico - which were territories allied with the CSA.

After the war, US presidents including Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Donald Trump acknowledged the Confederate States as part of our American heritage, many of whom unveiled monuments to the Confederate veterans.

Eisenhower had a bust of Robert E. Lee in the Oval Office.

Confederate widows were eventually awarded federal pensions from the government of the re-United States.

Veterans of both the blue and the gray came together for reunions and monument dedications.

All of the former Confederate States were readmitted to the United States, and confederate citizens were restored to federal citizenship in the years following the war. Thirteen of the stars on Old Glory are confederate stars from the Southern National Period.