"Contaminating" Cockades!
For instance, a Pennsylvania editor who was evidently of a Democratic persuasion viewed churchly Republican patriotism with great disgust.
"According to the statements that come to us from New York, Philadelphia, and other places at the North, we learn that the flag of the United States, the Stars and the Stripes, has become the sign or mark by which loyalty to the Lincoln Government is known. Its mob goes about compelling all, to show their colors or, in other words, to display the United States flag.
So it floats in the breeze, from church steeples and church windows; from public buildings and private dwellings; from omnibuses and railway cars from private carriages and drays; from the ladies' bonnets and gentlemen's coats in the shape of cockades and rosettes of tricolored ribbon; nay, more, it is used to adorn the pulpits of their churches. Unless this conspicuous sign is displayed, neither property nor persons are safe. - Even the worship of the great Jehovah is contaminated with this worship of the flag; so that frequently the services of the sanctuary are concluded with the "Star Spangled Banner."
"Surely piety must be at a low ebb when neither editors of religious papers nor the ambassadors of Christ Jesus utter a rebuke to this worship of the Stars and Stripes. Perhaps the mob rules, and hence, under the reign of infidel Black Republicanism and terror, Christian liberty as well as civil liberty is suppressed."
Clearly, he considered such dastardly patriotism unseemly! Off with those Republican cockades in church!
