| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South. By Robert E. Bonner. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xvi, 223 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-691-09158-7.)
The key word in the title of Robert E. Bonner's book is "passions" because his subject is the emotional dimensions that marked the creation of the various Confederate flags and the emotional legacies that still reverberate around one particular flag at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Given the subject, the book's tone is surprisingly dispassionate. Bonner analyzes the relationship between flags and national identity in the Civil War era with particular attention to what he terms an evolving flag culture or, more accurately, cultures. The result is a clearly organized, carefully written monograph based on wide reading in primary and secondary sources, informed by theoretical studies of nationalism and patriotic symbols but mostly free of cultural history jargon.	1
Once the dust settled from the secession crisis (during which flags and banners were created to promote Southern separatism and the "Bonnie Blue Flag" became a popular rebel air), the first national flag created by the Confederate congress—the stars and bars—closely resembled the old American flag. This design pleased moderates and alarmed some fire-eaters but struck a balance between change and continuity. Yet it also highlighted some dilemmas of the seceding states' oxymoronic conservative revolution.	. . .

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