Allow me to forward to you this previous lightly edited E-mail I sent to Pete Loeser who has a website on Flags of the World, including some Confederate. It questions his attribution of this flag on his website, ( not to Hart's but to a S.C. unit ) and explains my sources of information; this is rather long and may seem tedious, but please try to bear with it:
...I began Civil War reenacting some 34 years ago by joining a group in Dallas, Tex. that styled themselves "Good's Battery" after a local unit. The ORIGINAL battery was formed of 50 men from Tyler, Tex. under newspaperman James P. Douglas and 50 men from Dallas under Judge John J. Good, who became Captain and unit commander. They were issued fieldpieces from the state arsenal in Austin and went into then Indian Territory and later Arkansas. As Good's Battery or the 1st Texas Light Artillery they were part of the small army under Earl Van Dorn that fought at Pea Ridge, Ark. Mar. 7 & 8, 1862. Later that year, they crossed the Mississippi along with the rest of that "army" which became Van Dorn's Corps of the Army of Mississippi, later called the Army of Tennessee. ( At that time Van Dorn adopted the peculiar red flag with crescent moon and stars to identify the units under his command. ) Capt. Good retired from command of the battery, instead using his legal background in the department of the Confederate Judge Advocate General. Lt. Douglas assumed command and the rank of Captain, the unit then becoming known as Douglas' Texas Battery. It was the only Texas artillery unit to serve on the eastern side of the Mississippi River. Attached mainly to the Division of Gen Pat. Cleburne it fought through all the battles of the Army of Tennessee until the debacle at Nashville, beginning Dec. 15, 1864; in the ensuing rout its guns were captured near Spring Hill, Tenn. thus ending its service as a field artillery battery.
Now this gets sticky - IF the Old Statehouse Museum's flag is what I think, it is the flag of THIS UNIT and NOT what it's purported by them to be! Contacting the Museum of the Civil War in Fort Worth, Tex. which currently houses the collection of the Texas Daughters of the Confederacy reveals that they have a supposed flag belonging to Douglas' Battery; a Second National in design. ( I've never seen a representation of this flag. ) But we know there was some kind of previous banner, presented by "the ladies of Dallas" when the battery originally went off in 1861. The crux of this matter is related in a now-rare book we used as research for our interpretation of the battery for reenacting purposes: Cannon Smoke, the Letters of Captain John J. Good, Good-Douglas Texas Battery, C.S.A. edited by Judge Lester Newton Fitzhugh, Hill Junior College Press, 1971. In a letter to his wife dated Mar. 23, 1862, Capt. Good states:
"P.S. In consequence of neglect or carelessness the beautiful flag presented us by the ladies of Dallas was left on the field on Saturday morning of the fight ( at Pea Ridge/Elkhorn Tavern, Mar. 8, 1862 ) and fell into the hands of the enemy. Our guns, in consequence of sickness and discharges, had to be worked with greatly diminished numbers. The wounded had to be carried from the field by our own men. As soon as ammunition was expended we limbered to the rear. The flag had not been unfurled but laid on the ground. It was forgotten."
In a long footnote I won't repeat Judge Fitzhugh goes on to describe the battery's replacement by Hart's Arkansas Battery which was subsequently overrun by the Union 12th Missouri Inf., members of which also recovered the "forgotten" flag of the Dallas Artillery, thereby setting in train a host of complications! This is almost certainly how Hart's Battery became wrongly known as Dallas Artillery...Of course, the Missourians thought the cannon they'd captured went along with the flag, and compounded the error when they announced they had "captured" the Dallas Artillery! As Judge Fitzhugh continues,
"Compilers of the Official Records, aware that it was Hart's Arkansas Battery which lost its guns but puzzled, apparantly, by the flag, jumped to the conclusion that "Dallas Battery" was Hart's Arkansas Artillery Battery and so cross-indexed it in their records...probably led astray, or confirmed in their own mistake, by the same error made by former Confederate General Marcus J. Wright..."
Several factors need to be clarified to sort this all out now, at a space of nearly 150 years. Firstly, in order to be the flag of the Good/Douglas 1st Texas Light Artillery Battery it MUST somewhere on it bear the legend, Dallas Artillery to have caused the confusion in the first place! From Capt. Good's account, it seems perfectly plain that his flag was abandoned on the field...
Since writing this, I have been apprised of your statement about Hart's Battery originally being raised in Dallas, seat of Polk County, Ark. Also, on a recent trip to Pea Ridge I saw both the standard history of the battle by Dr. William Shea and a book by Glenn Dedmondt called Flags of Civil War Arkansas. Dedmondt's book clearly pictures and describes what are supposedly tiny 1/8" letters across both cannon barrels at the trunions, DALLAS ARTILLERY, therby confirming my suspicions. ( I have not seen the original flag itself, other than in a very poor photo. ) I also had a telephone conversation this morning with Professor Shea, who seemed to agree that my hypothesis is at least reasonable and possible. So as you can see, there may well be more to this apparantly simple tale than meets the eye!
I would like you to mull this over and get back to me when you have sorted it all out, keeping in mind the 8 "facts" as I originally put them to Mr. Biggs. I would also like to ask you, in light of Judge Fitzhugh's opinion, exactly what other contemporary evidence or documentation there is for Hart's Battery as the "Dallas Artillery". There are probably even more aspects to this I haven't covered here; if I can be of any further information, don't hesitate to ask.
I look forward to hearing back from you!
James Neel