From the late Professor William D. Taylor’s “A Fit Representation of Pandemonium, East Tennessee Confederate Soldiers in the Campaign for Vicksburg,” Mercer U. Press, 2008, pp. 462/3

“Also included in the surrender were the regimental flags. The 43rd Tennessee’s magnificent first national banner (referred popularly as the ‘stars and bars’) made from silk presented to Colonel Gillespie and the boys by the ladies of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, during Bragg and Kirby-Smith’s invasion. . . . . The surrendered battle flag of the 59th Tennessee was also a first national Confederate flag with thirteen white stars arranged in a circle. On its white bar (left side) was painted the legend ‘Liberty or Death.’”[39]

[39] Carl Jenkins, interview by William D. Taylor. Jenkins is ‘commander’ of the 59th Tennessee reenactment unit and has done a lot of research on the regiment . . . All the regimental flags carried by Lynch’s Battery and Vaughn’s and Reynolds’s East Tennessee Brigades were of the first national design.