Ken,

More below:

>>>This is not a report to an auction house; you do not have to pad it.>>>>>>

There was no padding in the report at all. I write these in a contextual basis and list other flags taken in an action or campaign if they are relevant to the flag of discussion. What I did by listing the flags known to have been taken in the Island Number Ten Campaign was to show how many have been identified, where they are (if anywhere today) and do any needed comparisons/contrasting with them and the flag in question. This is NOT padding - it is historical.

>>>>>When speaking of campaigns; yes near-by events do count and do effect near-by events. However, when speaking of specific events which occur in the space
of a few yards....what happened 30 miles away is irrelevant.>>>>>

We have no idea in what part of the Island Number Ten Campaign this flag was taken at a 100 per cent level. The family says that it was. All I did was look at where this could have taken place and with two reports from the 10th Illinois stating they got a flag from Jeff Thompson near Sikeston that seemed the most likely considering the NO other flags were mentioned in these accounts.

So far as the OR report of the 10th Illinois colonel not being specific (although one would think that since he did mention the taking of a flag in this phase of the campaign that it came from the fight with Thompson), I can cite the OR report of Col. William Lowe written after his brigade recaptured Clarksville,TN in September, 1862. It had few details, had the timing of the two battles in the wrong places and offered no deep details as to what happened. It took the discovery of the account written at the time by a Cincinnati newspaper reporter imbedded with Lowe's troops to fill in the huge gaps as to what took place in this little campaign - a FAR better account of what happened than an official one. So I do not look at OR reports to be the be all, end all of what took place anywhere in the Civil War. This is because of what they sometimes do NOT tell us rather than what they DO tell us.

Lastly, I had nothing to do with the headline for the flag. I told the guy that hired me to do the report what my suspicions were and where the evidence was pointing so far and he did it. When I found out what the headline stated I asked him to change it but was told that it was too late to do so. I did also tell him that I had never heard of a Jeff Thompson's Legion and that at the time frame this flag was taken it had to have been a late Missouri State Guard unit or one that had been MSG thatw as transitioning to Confederate service which was confirmed to me by Jim McGhee's email on the topic.

Greg Biggs