Stars And Bars

I was dismayed to read that Henry Wiencek, a person identified as “writing a book about the legacy of slavery” thinks he sees the Stars and Bars on the grilles of trucks or in the Georgia state flag (“The Road to Modern Atlanta,” April issue). Good grief!

The Stars and Bars was the original national flag of the Confederate States of America. It consisted of a blue field containing seven white stars and three broad “bars” of red and white. In the smoke and dust of battle, it was easily confused with the Stars and Stripes, so, not long after the war began, the Army of Northern Virginia adopted a distinctive battle flag that was gradually taken up by other Confederate armies.

This flag, with its cross of blue and thirteen stars, was eventually incorporated into revised versions of the national flag of the Confederacy, but it was never the Stars and Bars.