The Confederate Flag has become a heated topic this election year. As George W. Bush and John McCain battled in South Carolina for the Republican presidential nomination, the New York Young Republican Club invited Richard Lowry, the editor of National Review, to discuss the Republican Party’s prospects for November.

In the question-and-answer session that followed, Mr. Robert Hornak, the club’s president, asked Mr. Lowry why the Republican Party did not condemn the Confederate Battle Flag. Alleging the flag was a symbol of treason, sedition, and slavery, Mr. Hornak maintained that, by not condemning it, the GOP alienates black voters, ensuring that they vote Democratic. Mr. Lowry agreed, adding that Republicans don’t condemn the Confederate flag because they want the “redneck” vote.

In attacking the flag, both gentlemen unintentionally aid their political opponents. For a more compelling case can be made against the “Stars and Stripes” as a symbol of slavery, treason, and sedition than against the Confederate Battle Flag.

There was no legal right under British law for a colony to secede from the British Empire. The actions of the American revolutionaries, therefore, were treasonous and seditious; their flag was a symbol of treason and sedition.

The Stars and Stripes also symbolizes a country established as a slaveholding republic. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, the institution of slavery was legally sanctioned in all 13 colonics. There were twice as many slaves in New York as in Georgia. One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence was London’s policy of freeing slaves—euphemistically phrased as “excit[ing] domestic insurrection.” In 1783, when the British army withdrew from an independent United States, at least 18,000 slaves freed by the Crown joined the British exodus.

The Stars and Stripes remained a symbol of sedition after the country achieved independence. Six years later, the first republic under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was overthrown by the Constitutional Convention.

The United States recognized the right of secession even after 1789. The right of secession from the second republic was explicitly reserved by the states of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island in their documents ratifying the Constitution.

It was the Stars and Stripes, not the Confederate Battle Flag, that became the symbol of sedition in 1861. Lincoln overthrew the second republic established by the U.S. Constitution when he launched his war against the South. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the “Prize Cases” (December 1862): “[Congress] cannot declare war against a State or any number of States by virtue of any clause in the Constitution . . . [The President] has no power to initiate or declare war against a foreign nation or a domestic State . . . “

The Stars and Stripes became a symbol of total war against the innocent: Food and medicine were contraband; women, children, the sick, and the elderly became legitimate targets. The Emancipation Proclamation was a call not for liberty, but for a race war. As Lincoln stated: “I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South.”

In addition, many ex-slaves were forced to work on plantations loyal to Lincoln. They could suffer a loss of pay or rations for acts of laziness, disobedience, or insolence. They were often required to obtain a pass if they wished to leave the plantation. And they were subject to provost marshals employed to ensure the “freed” slaves displayed “faithful service, respectful deportment, correct discipline and perfect subordination.”

Northern whites should not dismiss the idea that the Stars and Stripes could be banned. The American flag was temporarily removed from two schoolrooms—one in California, the other in Michigan—in response to the demand of Third World militants who claimed that the flag was a symbol of “racism” and “oppression.” As Third World immigration transforms the United States from a European-American majority nation into a European-American minority nation, the demand to ban the Stars and Stripes will only grow.

If the Stars and Stripes is banned, Northern whites will have no one to blame but themselves. For in attacking the Confederate Battle Flag, they have provided the very arguments that most effectively undermine the legitimacy of our national flag.