South Carolina: the Confederate flag is the most tarnished of banners

Travel, so the theory goes, is supposed to be inspiring. But just over a year ago, I found myself outside the State House in Columbia – the capital of South Carolina – battling feelings that were a sharp mixture of dark curiosity, bleak surprise, and unbridled disgust.

I was gazing at a memorial to the state's Civil War dead – and at the Confederate flag flying brazenly above it, that most tarnished of banners in that most public of spaces. Then a couple more emotions joined the meeting. Consternation. And a meagre amount of relief – the latter in recognition of the caveat that this infamous combination of red, white and blue was at least bellowing its smudged, smeared message from in front of South Carolina's government hub, and not from on top of its dome, as it did from 1962 to 2000.

Last week, I was drawn back to that sweltering afternoon via the news that this small yet intriguing slice of east-coast America has finally expunged this symbol of division from the capitol grounds – state governor Nikki Haley signing its removal into law on 10 July.

Of course, there have been demonstrations, both in South Carolina and in nearby Florida – spittle-flecked statements that this firm legal step is a suppression of Southern tradition and identity. And maybe this is true. But it is also the packing away of an emblem that stands for hatred and fear.

"That flag has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people," said David Stone, who arranged a protest in Ocala, Florida, last weekend. "It doesn't symbolise hate unless you think it's hate – and that's your problem, not mine." Well, I'm (not) sorry David, but it isn't. This is, let's recall, a flag which was brandished by the 11 states that went to war with the rest the Union in 1861 largely to protect the use of slavery as the bloody wheel of their economies. It was waved again with a snarl a century later by those who opposed the de-segregation of schools and the surging tide of civil rights. Why, in 2015, would you want to wrap yourself in such shameful connotations?

The irony is that South Carolina does not need to cling to some out-dated notion of Confederate otherness to be gloriously Southern. I spent a week there, and found a place whose essential Southern-ness sings in many ways, from the grand colonial architecture of oceanside Charleston to the beautiful backwaters of the state's north-west, where the Blue Ridge Mountains rise as forested precursors to the Appalachians – via the inventive, modern cuisine served in the cutting-edge restaurants of Columbia's Congaree Vista district.

It is a splendid corner of a vast country. And while the row over the flag (and the racially motivated shootings in Charleston which prompted its lowering) are proof there is such a thing as bad publicity, those who love to travel in the US should not avoid the state because of these headlines. Especially now the view is not ruined by a sad scrap of cloth.