R.D. posts:

>>>>>So what your saying the 17/23th Tenn and the 25/44th Tenn Reenactment units can only bring their Hardee Flags to the reenactments of Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Drewry's Bluff, Petersburg, and the Appomattox Campaign. Or they would need a new correct Flag, now I see. >>>>

If they were interested in carrying the right flags for the right events - yes. An ANV Third Bunting flag attributed to the 25th/44th Tennessee (now in private hands) was captured at Drewry's Bluff and the Hardee flags lost in June 1864 at Petersburg were replaced by Richmond Depot ANV flags. So flag patterns can change.

Western CS units changed flag patterns more than their eastern counterparts did. The ANV began to standardize their flags in late November 1861 and based on the supply of imported wool bunting, were able over the next year and a half, pretty much succeed. The Western and Trans-Miss Confederate armies made lesser attempts to do so and initially it was on a corps by corps basis (and in at least one case down to brigade level with even one or two divisions thrown in). Often, as units changed corps due to reorganization, their flag patterns changed.

Polk's Corps in January 1862 received silk Polk flags made in Memphis. When Beauregard arrived in the West he tried to bring the ANV flag with him and had only some success getting it adopted by the Army of the Mississippi. Bragg's troops arrived from the Gulf coast with several flags and Beauregard had them adopt ANV-style flags made in New Orleans by Henry Cassidy. These were 12 star flags (with six points) and they were ordered for Bragg's and Polk's corps. Polk's got lost before Shiloh and had to use their silk Polk flags for that fight but they arrived not long afterward. The 21st Tennessee, of this corps, has flags for both types surviving, the Bragg flag being in private hands.

So if there was a 21st Tennessee reenactment unit they would properly use a silk Polk flag for a Shiloh event (not the later ones that showed up in August 1862 that were made of wool bunting and were smaller with two less stars) and a Bragg Corps flag at least through the summer of 1862 until the KY Campaign when the new Polk flags were issued (based on a diary account).

Hardee flags also changed during the war from their inception at Bowling Green, KY in January 1862 until war's end. The late Howard Madaus has identified at least six variants. Cleburne's Division got one of those in February/March 1864 and new replacement flags with different "moons" in October 1864 before the Tennessee Campaign. Madaus documented these changes in his book on AOT flags and we have built on that, with his help, on the Flags of the Confederacy web site (www.confederate-flags.org).

So units have sources to check and this board to ask questions. None of us has ever told one "no - we will not help."

The question that I have is why would you let a unit carry an ANV flag at Shiloh, for example? Do standards not apply for authenticity for some events?

Greg Biggs