Posted on 11/16/2001 1:22:48 PM PST by mdittmar
An almost perfectly preserved Confederate flag that had been in the family of a Union soldier who seized it during the Civil War sold for $41,000 at auction.
"We'll probably never come across one of these again around here," said Doug Kimball, co-owner of Kimballs Auction and Estate Service, which auctioned off the flag to an anonymous bidder Thursday night.
The flag, commonly known as the Stars and Bars, looks more like today's Stars and Stripes than the better-known Confederate battle flag. It measures about 2 feet wide and 4 feet long, has three broad red and white horizontal stripes, and 11 stars are sewn onto a blue background in the upper left corner.
The flag has some tiny rips, a few stains, and the panels are faded, but it has held up better than other Civil War flags. Collectors and museum curators aren't sure what role it played when it was taken during the 1862 battle of New Berne in North Carolina.
"I would definitely call it a military company flag," said Tom Belton, curator at the North Carolina Museum of History. "Whether it was picked up in a Confederate camp or captured in combat, I don't think anyone will ever know that."
The flag ended up in the possession of Cpl. John F. Russell of Hadley, who enlisted in the 27th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at the age of 22 and died in battle 19 months later.
Miriam Pratt, 85, a distant cousin of Russell's, came across the flag in an attic about a month ago after hiring Kimballs to handle her sister's estate.
Thursday night's bidders included people from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and New York, auctioneers said. The buyer's name and home state were not released.
"I thought it exceeded its value. The buyer had to be someone who is a pretty serious collector," said Alan Hamilton of Cheshire, who owns the Cheshire Auction Gallery. "Am I shocked? Nah. It's an auction."
Hopefully it returned home.A tribute to all those who died, on both sides,fighting for what they believed in.
America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided.
Sam Watkins-1st Tennessee-
Amazing how things have changed. We now have two left coasts where the values are diametrically opposite of those expressed in the consititution and Declaration of Independence. Yes the sun rises and sets the same on them, but it also rises and sets the same in Cuba and North Korea.
Thanks for the ping!
Following is a letter written by former Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee to Lord Acton, the famous British classical liberal statesman/intellectual and pro-Confederate apologist. Although General Lee implies he is willing to accept the results of the late war, he expresses his earnest hope that the states can still retain the rights guaranteed by the original Founding Fathers
**********
Lexington, Virginia
15 Dec., 1866
Sir,
Although your letter of the 4th ulto. has been before me for some days unanswered, I hope you will not attribute it to a want of interest in the subject, but to my inability to keep pace with my correspondence. As a citizen of the South, I feel deeply indebted to you for the sympathy you have evinced in its cause, and am conscious that I owe your kind consideration of myself to my connection with it.
The influence of current opinion in Europe upon the current policies of America must always be salutary; and the importance of the questions now at issue in the United States, involving not only constitutional freedom and constitutional government in this country, but the progress of universal liberty and civilization, invests your proposition with peculiar value, and will add to the obligation which every true American must owe you for your efforts to guide that opinion aright. Amid the conflicting statements and sentiments in both countries, it will be no easy task to discover the truth, or to relieve it from the mass of prejudice and passion, with which it has been covered by party spirit.
I am conscious of the compliment conveyed in your request for my opinion as to the light in which American politics should be viewed, and had I the ability, I have not the time to enter upon a discussion, which was commenced by the founders of the constitution and has been continued to the present day. I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional party of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it a chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the respresentatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.
The New England States, whose citizens are the fiercest opponents of the Southern states, did not always avow the opinions they now advocate. Upon the purchase of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson, they virtually asserted the right of secession through their prominent men; and in the convention which assembled at Hartford in 1814, they threatened the disruption of the Union unless war should be discontinued. The assertion of this right has been repeatedly made by their politicians when their party was weak, and Massachusetts, the leading state in hostility to the South, declares in the preamble to her constitution, that the people of that commonwealth "have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free sovereign and independent state, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, or may hereafter be by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress Assembled." Such has been in substance the language of other State governments, and such the doctrine advocated by the leading men of the country for the last seventy years. Judge Chase, the present Chief Justice of the U.S., as late as 1850, is reported to have stated in the Senate, of which he was a member, that he "knew of no remedy in case of the refusal of a state to perform its stipulations," thereby acknowledging the sovereignty and independence of state action.
But I will not weary you with this unprofitable discussion. Unprofitable because the judgement of reason has been displaced by the arbitrament of war, waged for the purpose as avowed of maintaining the union of the states. If, therefore, the result of the war is to be considered as having decided that the union of the states is inviolable and perpetual under the constitution, it naturally follows that it is as incompetent for the general government to impair its integrity by the exclusion of a state, as for the states to do so by secession; and that the existence and rights of a state by the constitution are as indestructible as the union itself. The legitimate consequence then must be the perfect equality of rights of all the states; the exclusive right of each to regulate its internal affairs under rules established by the Constitution, and the right of each state to prescribe for itself the qualifications of suffrage.
The South has contended only for the supremacy of the Constitution, and the just administration of the laws made in pursuance to it. Virginia to the last made great efforts to save the union, and urged harmony and compromise. Senator Douglas, in his remarks upon the compromise bill recommended by the commitee of thirteen in 1861, stated that every member from the South, including Messrs. Toombs and Davis, expressed their willingness to accept the proposition of Senator Crittenden of Kentucky as a final settlement of the controversy, if sustained by the republican party, and that the only difficulty in the way of an amiable adjustment was with the republican party.
Who then is responsible for the war? Although the South would have preferred any honourable compromise to the fratricidal war which has taken place, she now accepts in good faith its constitutional results, and receives without reserve the amendment which has already been made to the constitution for the extinction of slavery. That is an event that has been long sought, though in a different way, and by none has it been more earnestly desired than by citizens of Virginia. In other respects, I trust that the constitution may undergo no change, but that it may be handed down to succeeding generations in the form we have received it from our forefathers. The desire I feel that the Southern states should possess the good opinion of one whom I esteem as high as yourself, has caused me to extend my remarks farther than I intended, and I fear it has led me to exhaust your patience.
If what I have said should serve to give any information as regards American politics, and enable you to enlighten public opinion as to the true interests of this distracted country, I hope you will pardon its prolixity.
In regard to your inquiry as to my being engaged in preparing a narrative of the campaigns in Virginia, I regret to state that I progress slowly in the collection of the necessary documents for its completion. I particularly feel the loss of the official returns showing the small numbers with which the battles were fought. I have not seen the work by the Prussian officer you mention and therefore cannot speak of his accuracy in this respect.
With sentiments of great respect, I remain your obt. servant.
R.E. Lee
**********
”I saw in States' Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy . . . I deemed that you [i.e., Lee] were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.” -–Lord Acton to General Lee
"Before you, in proud humility, is the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve." --Union General Joshua Chamberlain to his troops at Appomattox, 1865
"Although the Confederacy as an organization may have ceased to exist, the fundamental principles, the eternal truths, uttered when our colonies in 1776 declared their independence, on which the Confederation of 1781 and the Union of 1788 were formed, and which animated and guided the Confederacy of 1861, yet live, and in God’s appointed time and place, will prevail." -–Jefferson Davis
“If tyranny and despotism justified the American Revolution in 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861."--New York Daily Tribune, 17 December 1860 (later silenced by Lincoln?)
You don't like old flags....or any American flags from what I gather.
In addition to the one I have in my window at home.
But if patriotism and the flag is not your thing, it's not your thing. To each his own.
And you seem rather hung on me and my posts and what posters here think of me. Find another hobby.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.