Virginia wants to borrow a captured Confederate flag. Minnesota's governor says no, it would be a sacrilege.

 

........Confederate President Jefferson Davis....... according to the Roanoke Times, said that banners belong to the captors, by "all known military precedents."

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Next week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, but it appears, somehow, there is still some bad blood between a pair of Northern and Southern states.

Here's the controversy: The Minnesota Historical Society has a Confederate flag in its possession, captured from a Virginia regiment during the last day of the battle. For the sake of the anniversary, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell asked Minnesota to loan it to them (McDonnell is the governor who had declared April 2010 "Confederate History Month" at the behest of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, but then apologized for not mentioning slavery in the proclamation.) Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton's response to the request was simple: No way.

As he told a crowd of reporters and Civil War reenactors earlier this week:

The governor of Virginia earlier this year requested that the flag be loaned, quote, unquote, to Virginia to commemorate--it doesn't quite strike me as something they would want to commemorate, but we declined that invitation.

It was taken in a battle at the cost of the blood of all these Minnesotans. And I think it would be a sacrilege to return it to them. It was something that was earned through the incredible courage and valor of men who gave their lives and risked their lives to obtain it. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's a closed subject.

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