Marked by blood and bullets, flags record Michigan's Civil War sacrifice

Charles T. Foster was among hundreds of people who rallied at the Capitol in Lansing on April 13, 1861, the day after Confederate secessionists attacked Fort Sumpter to begin the long, bloody Civil War.

Foster, a dry goods store clerk and son of an outspoken abolitionist, was the first of 31 Lansing-area men to sign up that day to serve with the Union Army.

He died carrying the flag of the Third Michigan Infantry during the battle of Fair Oaks in Virginia in May of 1862. Shot in the neck, witnesses said he drove the flag into the ground and called out “Don’t let the colors go down!”

“His last thoughts and actions on earth were for the flag,” said Matthew VanAcker, the Capitol's tour and information service director. He's one of the leaders of a 25-year effort to preserve and restore Michigan battle flags.

The Third Regiment’s flags are among 240 battle flags kept in a temperature-and-humidity-controlled room at the Michigan History Center. Of those, 160 date to the Civil War, and 80 more are from the Spanish American War in 1898 or World War I. Some are intact, or nearly so. Others are torn or stained. Some have deteriorated into shreds.

Most of Michigan’s Civil War regiments returned their flags to the state with plenty of pomp and ceremony at Campus Martius in Detroit on July 4, 1866, with a crowd of more than 70,000 people looking on. Gov. Henry Crapo accepted the flags on behalf of the state and promised they would not be forgotten.

In the 15 decades since the war, the flags weren't exactly forgotten. But without special care, they physically deteriorated, and subsequent generations of Michiganders lost sight of their importance.

“People did not appreciate them, they didn’t know what they were,” VanAcker said.

The flags first were kept in a room at the Capitol that was designated as a Civil War museum. Later, they were moved to the Rotunda. That’s a prominent spot, but light faded the flags’ colors, and they sagged under their own weight.

“We’d find bits and pieces of the flags lying in the bottom of the cases,” VanAcker said. Even worse: “We’d find red, white and blue powder.”

During the restoration of the Capitol from 1989 to 1992, the Capitol Battle Flags Task Force set out to change that. The flags in the Rotunda were moved to the Historical Center and replaced by durable modern copies. The preservation of the originals continues today, flag by flag.

More than ceremonial

Although military flags today serve a ceremonial purpose, at the time of the Civil War they were an important communication tool. Troops followed their regiment’s flag forward to advance and back in retreat. A flag planted in place was a call for troops to hold their ground no matter how fierce the battle.

Men were chosen to carry the flag for their size – they had to be strong enough to heft the flag and tall enough to be seen – but also for their moral character, VanAcker said. Each regiment of 1,000 men would be divided into 10 units of 100 men each, and one would be designated as the color guard, passing critical information to and from the command to the flag bearer.

About 6 by 6-1/2 feet, the flags were often hand-painted or embroidered and carried into battle on 10-foot staffs decorated with finials such as spear points, balls or finely-crafted eagles.

Inside a dedicated storage room at the Michigan History Center, the Civil War flags are stored flat on acid-free sliding trays, each covered with tissue paper and protected by curtains from light and dust.

Some of the flags were preserved in the 1960s with a damaging process that is no longer used. The remains of the flags were sandwiched between layers of netting in corresponding colors, then firmly stitched into place using a zig-zag pattern. That left hundreds or even thousands of needle holes in the remains of the fragile flags.

Modern practices are more conservative and painstaking, and the process can cost $10,000 per flag. No state money is used in the preservation effort. Flags are preserved one by one as money is raised.

Not all the flags are in state hands. Some regiments refused to surrender them in 1866, and VanAcker said they occasionally appear on auction sites. Some families have donated flags back to the state. Others are lost to history.

“We have a feeling that some of them were buried with the last member of the regiment,” he said.

'Splendid, heavy silk'

The Ninth Regiment was sent off from Detroit on Oct. 23, 1861, with a flag donated by the Rev. George Duffield whose son, Col. W.W. Duffield, commanded it.

“It is made of the most splendid heavy silk, and is attached to a finely polished flag-staff, mounted by a golden Eagle with outstretched wings,” read a description of the event from the Detroit Free Press. The inscription on the staff included two Bible verses and the date the flag was presented to the regiment.

The Twenty-Fourth Michigan Infantry joined the famed Iron Brigade - also known as the black hats for their non-standard uniform - in the fall of 1862, carrying a silk flag made by Tiffany Co. in New York and adorned with gold-bullion fringe. It suffered severe casualties during the Battle of Gettysburg the following summer including flag bearer Abel Peck and other members of the color guard.

Col. Henry Morrow recalled: "I now took the flag from the ground, where it had fallen, and was rallying the remnant of my regiment, when Private William Kelly, of Company E, took the colors from my hands, remarking, as he did so, 'The colonel of the Twenty-fourth shall never carry the flag while I am alive.' He was killed instantly. Private Lilburn A. Spaulding, of Company K, seized the colors and bore them for a time. Subsequently I took them from him to rally the men, and kept them until I was wounded."

The Twenty-Fourth's flags are worn and stained, perhaps with blood.

Symbols of those who died 

The staffs are kept in the same room, lying in layers in wheeled carts, each tagged with the corresponding flag and regiment.

The workmanship on the finials is often fine, but some of them are also seriously battered and dented, the result of coming under fire during battle.

“Some of them I am betting, hit people,” said Emily Ernst of Rives Junction, a lifelong Civil War re-enactor who has personally raised $1,000 three separate times to pay for conservation efforts on flags in the collection. She has just finished a fund-raising effort to restore the flag of First Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, mustered out of Marshall in 1861.

“One of the Engineers and Mechanics flags has a leather patch sewn onto it where a hole would have been,” Ernst said. “The way the sewing is around the leather patch, it looks like a quick stitch while they were in battle.”

The Engineers and Mechanics supports infantry troops by repairing bridges so Union troops could use them and destroying railroad tracks so Confederate troops could not. They were known for heating and twisting railroad rails into unusable knots known as “Sherman’s neckties.”

Ernst’s family, including her parents, Butch and Kathy Miller, husband, Tim Ernst, and others, conduct re-enactments as the Fourth Michigan Company G out of Tecumseh.

Sadly, her ancestor with the Engineers and Mechanics, Ira Wilson, died of disease in Kentucky before Sherman’s March to the Sea.

Of 90,000 Michigan men who served -- half of those eligible -- about 15,000 died on the battlefield or due to disease.

That’s probably the most important reason to make sure the flags are in good shape for the future, VanAcker said.

“A big part of it is preserving the memory of the boys who fought beneath them and died beneath them,” he said.

Contact Kathleen Lavey at 377-1251 orklavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @kathleenlavey. Her great-grandfather, George M. Black, was a member of Company B of the Ninth Michigan Infantry from Dec. 23, 1863 until Sept. 15, 1865.

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Flag celebration

State officials, Civil War re-enactors and others will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the return of Michigan’s Civil War battle flags with a celebration July 9 at the Capitol.

Events include an 11 a.m. demonstration and firing by the First Michigan Light Artillery, Battery D of Civil War re-enactors; an 11:30 a.m. performance by the Fifth Michigan Regiment Band, a noon battery demonstration and an infantry demonstration and musket firing at 12:30 p.m.

A 1 p.m. ceremony includes troops marching in, posting of the colors, stacking of arms and an artillery and a musket volley. Several re-enactor flags and a Grand Army of the Republic flag will be donated to the Save The Flags organization. Save The Flags founder Kerry Chartkoff will be presented with the Milliken/Adams/Kelley 2016 award for Michigan Historic Preservation. Emily Ernst will be honored for her third flag adoption.

At 2:30 p.m., the 126th Michigan National Guard marching band will perform.

The Capitol will be open for guided tours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and there will be exhibits and demonstrations on the Capitol grounds from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The public is welcome; admission is free. 

Learn more at http://capitol.michigan.gov/battleflags