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Flags in Battle

friendsville1.homestead.com

Originally aired on December 13, 1996 - In part 120 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that a unit’s flag was the soldiers most visual sign of patriotism and that there was no shortage in battle for men to be standard bearers.

#120 – The Post of Honor (Flags in Battle)

The first un-romanticized novel of the Civil War to gain international fame was Stephen Crane’s 1895 work, The Red Badge of Courage. The central character is Henry Fleming, an Ohio soldier who falls victim to cowardice in battle and bolts from the field. Overcome by conscience and humiliation, young Fleming returns to the action. He jumps out front in the charge and seizes the flag from a fallen compatriot. Fleming then leads his regiment to victory by his inspiration and no longer with any thought of personal safety.

Regimental and national flags were the most visible signs of patriotism in the Civil War. They bonded men’s loyalties to unit, state, nation, and cause. Small wonder that the most consistent record of bravery in that war came from the men who bore those flags. The flag was the symbol around which soldiers congregated in the heat of action. To keep the flag flying was an all-consuming objective.

As a result, flags in battle had a special mystique. They represented a unit’s morale and fighting spirit. Enemy soldiers always delivered their deadliest fire at those holding aloft a flag. Capturing an enemy’s colors was one of the outstanding feats of a Civil War battle. Losing one’s flag to the enemy was a shame second only to cowardice in battle.

A popular phrase in that war was: “the post of danger is the post of honor”. Yet no shortage of volunteers existed for standard-bearers. Good soldiers vied with one another for the honor of being selected to lead an attack with the flag. Hundreds of those accepted as flag-bearers paid for the privilege with their lives.

Official battle reports are full of citations of courageous conduct by the private or sergeant carrying the flag and leading his men into combat. A New York colonel wrote this of his regiment at the battle of Gettysburg: “The color-bearer, Sergeant Michael Cuddy, who established his great and superior courage in the Fredericksburg battle, on this occasion too displayed the most heroic bravery. When he fell, mortally wounded, he rose by convulsive efforts and triumphantly wave in the face of the rebels, not ten yards distant, that flag he loved so dearly of which he was so proud and for which his valuable life, without a murmur, was freely given up.”

One of the proudest moments in the State of Iowa’s participation in the Civil War came in February, 1862, at Fort Donelson, Tennessee. The 2nd Iowa was in the front line of the Union assault. Every member of the color guard save one was killed in action. The survivor, Alexander Twombly, bore the flag to the end and became one of the first recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

On the Confederate side, the same sacrifice existed. At the battle of Seven Pines, Virginia, a South Carolina battalion lost ten of eleven color-bearers. The 1st Texas at Antietam had eight flag-bearers killed in quick succession. A year later at Gettysburg, the 26th North Carolina lost fourteen men who bore a single flag into battle.

The combat performance of a unit was often measured by how many bullet holes were in its flag. In heavy action at Corinth, Mississippi, gunfire literally shredded one unit flag. Members of the regiment last saw their color-bearer “going over the breastworks waving a piece over his head and shouting for the Southern Confederacy”.

Color-bearers and their beloved standards are an honored legacy of the Civil War. Soldiers still sing the lines of one of the war’s most popular songs:

Yes, we’ll rally ‘round the flag, boys,

We’ll rally once again,

Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom.