By Erik J. Chaput Erik J. Chaput, Ph.D., teaches American history at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and in the School of Continuing Education at Providence College. He is the author of "The People’s Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebellion" (2013) and the editor of multiple digital letter collections on the Dorr Rebellion Project site (library.providence.edu/dorr). Though Southern secessionists threatened to invade Washington, D.C., at numerous times during the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag did not fly in the nation’s capital at any point between 1861 and 1865. On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump did what 19th-century Confederates could not. There were scores of Confederate flags around the Capitol building on Jan. 6, but the photos of a man inside the building waving the battle flag were truly shocking.