In the commonly pictured ‘Confederate Flag’ was the ‘X’ intended as a link to the ‘X’ that is a possible origin of the name Dixie?
(I don’t have the cite handy but Unca Cecil relates a theory that it arose from a bank that issued 10 dollar bills with a symbol X that referred to as ‘Dixies’ from the French ‘dix’ for ‘10’.)
I’ve been Googling and can only find something like;
"The design was originally made by South Carolina Congressman William Porcher Miles to be the first national flag, but it was rejected by the Confederate government for looking too much like crossed suspenders. It was used by a few army units, including the Army of Tennessee as their battle flag. Today, it is the most universally recognized symbol of the South, where it is commonly called the rebel or Dixie flag. "
I find it hard to believe that such an obvious connection was not an intentional part of the flag’s design, but I can’t find any basis for it.
Hmmm… the reference I provided above seems to say otherwise;
"Sometimes, the saltire is identified as “St. Andrew’s Cross.” But this is incorrect; Miles’s proposals never mention this. “St. Andrew’s cross” refers either to the national Flag of Scotland, a white saltire over a blue field, or the naval jack of Russia both before and after the Soviet Union, a blue saltire on a white field. St. Andrew is said to have been martyred on a diagonal cross and is a patron saint of Russia and the patron saint of Scotland. A legend dating from medieval times held that the cross washed up on Scottish shores. There is no connection with legends of St. Andrew and the South. While most white Southerners at the time of the War traced their ancestry to Great Britain, they tended to identify their heritage as Anglo-Saxon, though it is claimed around three-fourths of all people in the South were either Scots or Scotch-Irish during the 1800s. "
Well, for one thing, the “Stars and Bars” was not the Confederate Battle Flag, but their “national” flag (which looked too much like the US flag in the fog of war, thus leading to the adoption of the Battle Flag to cut down on freindly fire incidents).
Besides, who are you going to believe; me or wikipedia?