Are you seriously claiming that Confederate armies were not involved in human rights violations and atrocities?
Lee's army was involved in kidnapping hundreds of Americans and selling them into slavery during its Gettysburg campaign: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2020/05/06 ... -campaign/
Fort Pillow Massacre where hundreds of surrendering American troops were massacred by Nathan Bedford Forest's troops (who went on to found the KKK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of ... w#Massacre
During the course of the war it was the policy of Confederate armies to sell captured Black troops into slavery or execute them: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_ ... /sec19.htm
This is a little far astray from the subject of the thread. But my actual point is that the Confederate flag was the flag of racism when it was first raised by the Confederate armies, and it continued to be the flag of racism when it was brought back from obscurity as the banner of segregation and opposition to civil rights during the mid-20th Century.Late in 1862, Confederate president Jefferson Davis attempted to strike a fatal blow to the prospects of Union recruitment of African Americans. He ordered government forces to turn over any captured black troops to state authorities. The white officers would be tried according to state law for inciting servile insurrection; the runaways would return to slavery or suffer the death penalty, like their white officers. No proviso covered the capture of free blacks in Union uniform. As reinforcement, in late April and early May, the Confederate Congress passed a joint resolution, also calling for the death of white officers for inciting servile insurrection and the reenslavement of black soldiers.
Although this position may have comforted Southern whites, from a practical standpoint it was unworkable. Europeans, whom the Davis administration was courting for military assistance, found the policy offensive. And international law, as the Lincoln administration quickly pointed out, supported the position that these were legitimate soldiers and must receive the same rights as white prisoners of war. Lincoln vowed to retaliate man for man for executed Yankees, and for each black soldier the Confederacy returned to slavery, he would place a Rebel soldier at hard labor. Since there were more Confederate than Federal prisoners of war, Lincoln could ultimately outlast Davis.
In the end, the Davis administration backed down, but Confederate officers on the scene sometimes established their own policy. Either they refused to take black soldiers as prisoners or fought under the black flag, which indicated that they would take no prisoners, nor would they expect the Yankees to take any.
As a result, wartime atrocities against the USCT were commonplace, as Confederates hoped to discourage black enlistment and sought revenge for their contributions to the Union army. The first killings were isolated incidents. But as the war dragged on and Confederates became more and more frustrated, atrocities in battle escalated. In 1864, at Poison Springs. Arkansas, the Federals abandoned the field, leaving behind wounded soldiers, many of them from a black regiment. Eyewitnesses assured a Union colonel that Confederate troops murdered them on the spot. During the Battle of Saltville, Confederates executed numerous black troops who fell into their hands. Over the next two days, two separate parties of Confederate troops entered Rebel hospitals and executed seven wounded black soldiers in their beds.
. . .
On April 18, 1864, approximately 3,600 Confederate cavalry overran a forage train guarded by 1,170 Union troops at an obscure spot in southern Arkansas called Poison Springs. The 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, the largest unit in the Union escort, bore the brunt of the Rebel assault and suffered heavily. Out of 438 officers and men engaged, the regiment lost 117 slain and 65 wounded. Several Federal survivors claimed they saw their victorious foes killing black prisoners, including men too badly injured to get away, which accounted for the fact that the 1st Kansas had nearly twice as many personnel killed as wounded—an unusual occurrence in Civil War combat.
Confederate participants confirmed these atrocity stories. "The havoc among the negroes had been tremendous," a Texas officer confided to his journal. "Over a small portion of the field we saw at least 40 dead bodies. . ., some scalped & nearly all stripped. . . . No black prisoners were taken." The editor of the Washington Telegraph, the mouthpiece of Confederate Arkansas, justified such merciless behavior in these terms: "We cannot treat negroes . . . as prisoners of war without a destruction of the social system for which we contend. . . . We must claim the full control of all negroes who may fall into our hands, to punish with death, or any other penalty."