HISTORIC FLAG RECOVERED
Stolen Confederate battle flag recovered in Caroline.
By Chelyen Davis
Date published: 10/6/2011

RICHMOND
--A stolen Confederate battle flag, recovered in Caroline County, is on its way back to its home in New Orleans.

Agents from the Fredericksburg office of the FBI handed the flag over to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond yesterday. The museum will take the delicate flag out of its frame and return it to Louisiana's Civil War Museum at Confederate Memorial Hall in New Orleans.

The flag went into battle with the 14th Louisiana Infantry Regiment Infantry, a volunteer unit made up largely of Polish immigrants.

Now darkened by age, with holes in the middle and one side, the flag had Virginia connections even before it turned up in Caroline.

According to Rebecca Cumins, a historian with the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, the 14th Louisiana Regiment was in numerous battles in the Civil War, including many in Virginia.

The flag flew at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania Courthouse, North Anna and Winchester to name a few sites.

At Gaines Mill, two flag-bearers were killed and others wounded. Finally, at Gettysburg, the soldier carrying the flag was captured. He hid the flag under his shirt.

The regiment got a new flag, but the old one was returned to the regiment in 1889. It was draped over the casket of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and is said to be the last Confederate flag he ever touched.

The regiment used the flag in parades and other events for years, but eventually it became too fragile and tattered for use, and was given to the Confederate Memorial Hall.

That's where a volunteer stole it in the 1980s. FBI agents said that person has since died, and no one is being charged in the theft.

About 2004, the flag was purchased by a Caroline County collector, who didn't know it had been stolen.

And there it remained, until the FBI's Art Crime Team in Miami got a tip about the flag's whereabouts.

Last week, local agents went to the collector's home in Caroline County and determined he did in fact have the missing flag. He'd paid "quite a bit" for it, said Special Agent Brad Gregor.

"Once he realized it was stolen, he fully cooperated," Gregor said.

Special Agent in Charge Michael Morehart of the Richmond Division called the flag "a piece of art history.

"It's always a pleasure when we can return something that's been [taken] unlawfully," Morehart added.

Cumins said she was pleased to be able to return the flag to New Orleans.

"I know that the men are smiling down from heaven that carried this flag," she said.

Gregor, Supervisor Agent Robert Hilland and Cumins all said the flag is quite valuable but declined to put a dollar figure on it.

"I'd like to get it home safe to New Orleans before you know the value," Cumins said. "It's extremely high."

The FBI's national Art Crime Team was begun in 2005, and has since recovered more than 2,600 items, valued at more than $142 million.