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  CONFEDERATE BIBLE FLAG IN THE FIRST NATIONAL FORMAT WITH 11 STARS IN A SINGLE WREATH, MADE OF SILK, PROBABLY TAKEN BY A UNION NAVY MAN DURING THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG WHILE PILOTING THE U.S.S. LILY, A STEAMER TUG CONSCRIPTED INTO SERVICE BY THE U.S. ARMY, FITTED WITH GUNS, TRANSFERRED TO THE NAVY, AND SUNK AFTER COLLIDING WITH THE U.S.S. CHOCTAW, A UNION, IRONCLAD RAM

Available: Sold
Frame Size (H x L): Approx. 13" x 16.25"
Flag Size (H x L): 4" x 7.25"
Description....:
Bible flags were made for a soldier by a loved one, to be presented as a token of patriotism and/or affection when he went away to war. They were little, homemade flags, sewn by a mother, daughter, wife, or sweetheart, often constructed of ladies’ dress silk or ribbon. A woman might use new or leftover fabric, but if the maker was a girlfriend, fiancée, or wife, she might clip fabric from a favorite dress as a way to romanticize the gift.

The term “Bible flag” comes from the fact that these small textiles, often gifted textiles were regularly carried in a Bible, both because this was the safest place that a soldier might safely keep a flat, treasured object of this sort, with limited places to do so, and because they sometimes doubled as a bookmark. Some incorporated corded tassels expressly for this purpose, and/or decorative fringes. Many were small enough to fit in a pocket Bible, though some would necessitate folding, and though others may have never actually been carried, the term has come to encapsulate all small, hand-made flags of this nature, in variants of Confederate designs, measuring approximately a foot or less on the fly.

In the North, an abundance of small, printed flags appeared during the Civil War era. Professionally-printed on cotton, silk, wool, or sometimes even on paper, these are what modern flag collectors have termed ‘parade flags,’ designed to be waved at parades and political events. Since there were no comparable, commercially-made flags in any of the Confederate national designs, or in variants of Southern Cross style battle flags, at least until the reunion era (which didn’t begin until the latter 1880’s), if anything comparable to the parade flags of the North was going to be waved at events in the South, it had to be homemade.

The Confederate States of America (CSA) adopted three successive national flag designs between 1861-1865. The first of these looked much like the Stars & Stripes. Nicknamed the "Stars & Bars" by Confederate soldiers, as a play on the nickname of the American national flag, this was adopted by the CSA legislature on March 4th, 1861, when in session at the temporary capitol of Montgomery, Alabama. The flag initially consisted of 7 white stars arranged on a blue canton and three linear bars in red-white-red. The star count reflected the initial wave of secession, which occurred approximately one month prior, on February 7th, in conjunction with the adoption of the CSA’s provisional constitution. As more states seceded, more stars were added, with a total of 11 seceding in an official manner, ratified, when required, by popular or legislative vote. The count of 11 was retained from roughly May of 1861 until late November, when the States of Missouri and Kentucky were formally accepted by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the CSA legislature, in spite of being Border States with more divided views and without formal achievement of secession.

Most Bible flags that survive are in the First National Confederate flag design, which most people do not automatically identify as Southern. Use of the Stars & Stripes and the Stars & Bars on the same battlefield led to great confusion, precipitating change to something far easier to distinguish. The Southern Cross battle flag began to be introduced in the late fall of 1861. Though the Confederate legislature refused to sanction the new format, it was approved at the field level by Confederate General Joe Johnston, who refused to permit his men to continue to be killed by friendly fire, mistaking their own flags for Union Army banners. The design, while poor on the battlefield, is a good choice for modern collectors—oddly enough, for very similar reasons—who wish to present the Civil War through period objects without inciting controversy.

While Union variants of the Bible flag concept exist, they were primarily a phenomenon of the South. Very few Union examples survive, by comparison, in the strictest sense of the term.

This particular Confederate Bible flag, in the 1st National design, incorporates 11 stars in a circular wreath. At approx. 4” x 7.25”, the size is on the mid to larger side among examples of flags in this category, which translates to nice visual impact. The stitching is remarkable, as tiny and as finely executed as can be encountered on any American textile. The canton is made of blue, plain weave silk, hemmed by hand stitching and joined in the same fashion to the bars, which are constructed of three lengths of silk ribbon. Ribbon was a popular choice for Bible flags because the finished edges could be stitched directly together without hemming. The stars are hand-embroidered, each comprised of 5 lines that intersect like rowels of a spur. This was a common method of star construction on flags of this type in the Civil War era.

The flag was once a part of the collection of the Star Spangled Banner Flag House in Baltimore, a museum in the former home of Mary Pickersgill, maker of the namesake flag from which Francis Scott Key wrote what would become the national anthem, and that would become the most famous of all American national flags. The museum houses exhibits on the War of 1812 and the Battle of Baltimore. Though it took in many interesting flags for safekeeping, some, with no direct connection to its mission, were later sold to a leading collector, who inspired to include them in a museum of his own, but passed before being able to accomplish that goal. Like others that were deaccessioned, this Civil War period Confederate flag fell beyond its focus.

The flag was accompanied by an Oct. 18th, 1864 decree of the Provost Marshall’s Office for Maryland’s 2nd District, issued Richard Henry Smith (1826-1913) of Baltimore, who captained the U.S.S. Lily, as the boat’s acting ensign, under Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, during the Vicksburg Campaign in 1863. Christened the Jessie Benton [named after the spitfire daughter of the powerful Missouri Democrat, U.S. Senator, Thomas Hart Benton, who married the newly formed Republican Party’s first presidential candidate, John Fremont], the boat—a steamer tug—was conscribed into service by the War Department (U.S. Army) on May 5th, 1862, transferred to the U.S. Navy on September 30th, and renamed the U.S.S. Lily on October 19th of that same year. Assigned to Porter's Mississippi Squadron, the Lily primarily patrolled navigable waterways of the south to disrupt foreign trade and cut off the primary arteries by which the Confederacy obtained and distributed supplies. Smith, who appears to have gone by his middle name, Henry, seems to have selected to pilot the tug, as part of a 3-man crew with 2 engineers, on October 1st, the day after it was transferred to Navy service.

It seems likely that Henry acquired the flag near the beginning of the Union’s month-and-a-half campaign to harness control of Vicksburg, that would eventually sever the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas from the remainder of the Confederacy. Pinned in place by Union forces on all sides, Vicksburg became a veritable prison for not only 4,000 civilians, but 30,000 Confederate troops, who could not advance. Having begun on May 18th, 1863, squeezed into submission by the Union major general who earned the nickname “Unconditional Surrender Grant,” the Confederate Army of Vicksburg, under the command of John C. Pemberton, submitted to defeat on the 4th of July. The removal of Confederate-related possessions from those detained probably occurred with relative ease.

Henry’s own participation appears to have ended abruptly, on May 28th, just 10 days into the operation, after the Lily collided with the U.S.S. Choctaw, a Union Navy ironclad ram, and sunk in the Yazoo River near Chickasaw Bayou. Presumably intoxicated, it would appear that Henry fled Mississippi, returning home, where he enlisted with the Army, perhaps in attempt to keep a step ahead of his forthcoming fate with the Navy and earn a bounty in the process. Whatever the case may be, he was back in Baltimore by July 23rd, 1863, when he enrolled in the Army, mustering in on August 13th at Lafayette Barracks, where he was assigned to Co. H of the 9th Maryland Regiment of Volunteer Infantry.

Henry’s elder brother, George, who had been drafted into the 3rd Maryland Infantry at Baltimore, back on January 14th of that year for a 9-month term of service, was reported as having deserted from the ordinance train at Staffard Church, Virginia on June 5th, 1863, eight days after Henry sunk the U.S.S. Lily.

Perhaps getting cold feet, from fear of discovery, Henry followed his elder brother’s lead in August, deserting on the 18th at Baltimore, just 5 days following the point of muster. 13 days later, on August 31st, he was court-marshalled by the U.S. Navy at Cairo, Illinois. This appears not to have been reported on locally until October 20th of that year, when notice of the incident appeared in the Baltimore Sun in the following fashion: “Richard H. Smith, acting ensign, guilty of an attempt at desertion and betrayal of trust, drunkenness, & c, to be confined at hard labor for the term of five years, and at the expiration of the term, to be cashiered, and forfeit all pay.”

The Smiths were grocers. After the war, and presumably after his term of indentured service, Henry seems to have returned to the straight-and-narrow. Having developed an interest in canning, he established a lucrative canning business that brought him great wealth. He spent the majority of the remainder of his life in Baltimore, fathering 5 or more children. Still in Baltimore as of the 1910 census, he passed while in the care of a daughter in Pittsburgh, in 1913, at the age of 87.

Though Maryland was a Slave State, it did not secede from the Union. With sympathies decidedly split, residents of the state, in the face of the forced draft of men into Union service, would have placed those in support of the South in obvious conflict with their own loyalties, that may have led to a greater probability of desertion. Because George Arthur Z. Smith (1782-1866) and Ann Elizabeth Withers (1789-1880), the parents of the Henry & George, were born in Charleston, South Carolina, the epicenter of the nation’s slave auctions and the first state to secede, the Smiths may have held significant Southern sympathies. Relocating to Dorchester, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore sometime between the years of 1820 and 1822, an agricultural region between the Slave State of Delaware and the Chesapeake Bay, their new home would have been likewise aligned with Southern interests, at least with respect to other parts of state.

Although the possibility of Henry’s mother having made the flag was considered, the absence of stars to represent the Border States of Missouri and Kentucky (numbers 12 and 13), much less their own state of Maryland and/or Delaware (numbers 14 and 15), provides fairly strong evidence that its origin was elsewhere. The same is true of his wife, Sarah J. Snyder (b. around 1827 in Virginia, d. 1896), daughter of a Baltimore physician, whom he married in 1850. Although these 4 states did not formally secede, stars to represent them were often included, subject to the political and geographic affiliations of the maker. The same scenario is applicable to his wife, Sarah J. Snyder (b. around 1827 in Virginia, d. 1896), of Baltimore’s 4th Ward, daughter of a Baltimore physician, whom he married in 1850.

Whatever the case may be, the flag survives as a wonderful example of the Civil War period, likely made between May and November of 1861, when the Confederacy would have been represented by 11 states on a Stars & Bars pattern flag in the first national design.

Mounting: For 25 years we have maintained our own textile conservation department, led by a master’s degree level graduate from one of the nation’s top programs. We take great care in the mounting and preservation of flags and related textiles and have preserved thousands of examples.

The gilded, American, ripple profile molding dates to the period between 1830 and 1850. To this a wonderful, reddish-brown painted, early surface molding of the same era was added as a liner. This is a pressure mount between 100% cotton twill, black in color, that was washed and treated for colorfastness, and U.V. protective, crystal clear, Museum acrylic (Plexiglas).

Condition: There are tiny spots of staining in the bars, accompanied by a few, tiny, pinprick-sized holes and a tiny year along the lower edge of the last bar, near the center. There is very minor water staining in the last bar. There is a triangular-shaped area of loss at the end of the top bar. A small length of silk fabric of similar coloration was placed behind this for masking purposes. The flag presents beautifully.
Collector Level: Advanced Collectors and the Person with Everything
Flag Type: Sewn flag
Star Count: 11
Earliest Date of Origin: 1861
Latest Date of Origin: 1861
State/Affiliation: The Confederacy
War Association: 1861-1865 Civil War
Price: SOLD
 

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