Greg Biggs
Alabama flags in Chicago - etc.
Thu Jun 21 00:21:34 2001


Hayes,

You have been dealing with Ken Legendre, easily one of the very finest CS flag historians in this nation! He has taught me a great deal over the years we have been friends and I would stake anything he says to a tree as the truth! He knows his stuff, believe me! No one alive knows more about Louisiana unit colors (not even Howard Madaus)and his standing on all CS flags is impeccable.

Ken and I both belong to an online chat list with Madaus, Devereaux Cannon, Bob Bradley and other flags historians and we discuss CS flags all the time. The man that is working on the CS flags in the Illionois State Collection, John Schmale, belongs to our list. BTW - the Georgia unit flag they have is from Stevens' Brigade captured in the Battle of Atlanta. It is most likely the 25th Georgia, not the 66th (if my memory serves).

All of us have contributed to the website Flags Of The Confederacy (www.confederateflags.org), which is the Internet's best and most accurate source for CS flags history.

Also - there are a decent amount of mistakes and omitted flags in the recent Alabama flags book. Don't take that as gospel by any means. Same for the recent SC flags book. They useful as primers mainly - and hopefully they'll turn up some new flags.

Now here's one to chew on: over 30 CS flags were captured at the Battle of Corinth in October, 1862. None of them made it to the War Department and most have disappeared completely. The Vicksburg garrison surrendered 87 flags - and none of those made it to the War Department either. Only one of those has since turned up.

Factor in the missing early war presentation colors, other CS flags taken in battle that went into private hands right away, etc. and there's probably over 200 plus missing CS flags still out there to be found!

Greg Biggs