LANSING — Matt VanAcker dims the lights of the temperature-controlled storage room off a display area of the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing. We don white gloves and only then slide open one of the dozens of special-made storage drawers to unveil a silk flag that brings the Civil War into focus in a particularly powerful way.

Nine men, one after another, died or were critically wounded while carrying this particular flag on July 1, 1863 at Gettysburg — determined not to let it fall into enemy hands, said VanAcker, Capitol tour and information service director and a Civil War buff. Abel Peck, the first to die, had written his daughter a few months earlier, saying, “If I fall, you must not mourn, for I think I am doing my duty ....”

This flag was never surrendered. Yet even without the story behind it, the flag makes the war real. Like others in the valuable collection of 230 flags stored in this room, 160 from the Civil War, it is stained with the blood of soldiers who carried it.

Bearing the flag was particularly dangerous, VanAcker said, because it was a rallying point and also a means of organizing a unit. One beautiful silk flag, engraved with gold lettering for the 8th Michigan Cavalry by the “ladies of Mount Clemens,” was ordered off a battlefield by an officer because it afforded such a visible target for the rebels and unnecessarily risked too many lives.

The flags were presented at war’s end to then-Gov. Henry Crapo. At a dedication ceremony, he pledged they would not be forgotten and would remain not just the state’s proudest possession, but also: “a revered incentive to liberty and patriotism, and a constant rebuke and terror to oppression and treason.”

FlagsMatt VanAcker, Michigan's Capitol Tour and Information Services Director, displays one of the many fragile original Michigan Civil War flags in storage at the Michigan Historical Museum currently out in a rare public display.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The battle of Bull Run was fought on July 21, 2861 and was considered the first major battle of the four-year war. As just one of many events taking place in Michigan and nationwide this year, the Michigan Historical Society is hosting the current exhibit “Plowshares into Swords,” Running through February 2012, the exhibit features a display of the battle flags, which are being brought out of storage on a rotating basis.

The exhibit shares the story of those who fought in the war and their families. It shares tales of regiments, such as the First Michigan Colored Infantry, which began training in 1963, shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation allowed blacks to serve. The flag of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry Regiment bears 40 battle honors; Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, surrendered to the Fourth under this flag after unsuccessfully trying to flee the country.

Michigan was first

Michigan was the first western state to answer Lincoln’s call for volunteers following the April 12, 1861 attack on Fort Sumter. Lincoln greeted the First Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment as it marched into Washington, D.C., and glanced up at the country’s Capitol dome for inspiration.

Michigan’s Capitol was later built with the same dome-style architecture as homage to the role the dome played in inspiring soldiers, launching a trend among many northern Capitols. A tour of the building, offered several times daily, shares this and other Civil War trivia. The fire-proof building also was constructed in part to store treasures such as the flags, now stored in their temperature- and humidity-controlled vault at the Michigan Historical Museum. At any time, private tours can be arranged, with special consideration going to families of those who fought in one of the represented regiments.

Until 1990, the collection of original flags was displayed in the Capitol Rotunda. Concern that the flags were deteriorating led to their replacement with the current replica flags. The battle flags were repaired by a professional textile conservator, Fonda Thomsen, as part of a Save the Flags program that placed flags out for symbolic “adoption.”

Other must-see Civil War sites on Capitol Square include the statue of Austin Blair, one of the nation’s most beloved “war” governors and the monument to the all Native American, Company K.

The Michigan Historical Museum is at 702 W. Kalamazoo St. in Lansing. For museum hours and events, go to Michigan.gov/museum or call 517-373-3559. Guided tours of the Capitol are offered 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.