Period Artifacts

Confederate Flags

The Confederate Battle Flag
(The Southern Cross)>

Before the adoption of the Stainless Banner, soldiers began to complain that they could not tell the difference between the Stars and Bars and the Union's Stars and Stripes. To address the issue, South Carolina congressman William Porcher Miles submitted a flag design based on the South Carolina secession banner. At the time, Congress rejected his proposal since the Confederacy had only 7 states, and the stars would have looked unbalanced. However, northern Virginia and Confederate generals Beauregard, Johnston and Smith decided to adopt it as their battle flag since Congress had not responded to their request to change the Stars and Bars.

Congressman Miles' design included a state coat of arms in the upper left corner. When Virginia adopted the design, they produced square flags, a shape that Johnston liked because of the ease of reproduction. However, the battle flag that Johnston carried after November 1861 not only inspired complaints from the Confederate officers, who disliked the background color of pink, they were also rectangular in design, quite different from Johnston's request for square flags. Since the Confederacy consisted of 12 states by that time, the problem of the stars' unevenness had been solved. Later designs of the flag also changed the background color from pink to the familiar deep red.

Although the Confederate Battle Flag never became an official flag of the Confederacy, its design survived until the next century. In 1905 the flag became the official "battleflag" of the Confederacy and has become the formal icon of the southern cause.

Source: www.researchonline.net

North Carolina's State Flag

When North Carolina seceded on May 20, 1861, the secession convention voted to design a new flag. With Colonel John D. Whitford as chairman, the convention officially adopted the first state flag on June 22, 1861. The design included two dates: May 20, 1775 to indicate the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and May 20, 1861 to indicate the date the state left the Union. North Carolina would not officially change the flag design until 1885, when the present state flag design became official.

Source: www.confederateflags.org

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