[Destroyer]

The flag was based on the saltire, a common flag symbol sometimes called the Southern cross. As historian John Coski writes in The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem, Southerners weren't shy about enlisting the design in the cause of white supremacy. In 1863, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger wrote that the flag's Southern cross pointed to "the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave" — the Confederacy's hoped-for expansion of slavery into Latin America.
The Confederacy itself was founded to preserve slavery and promote white supremacy (see, for example, Mississippi's declaration of secession: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world," or the speech from the Confederacy's vice president that declared the Confederacy's cornerstone "rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition").