Civil War Redux

It's been a long time coming, this latest blog post.  I seem to have run out of blogging steam when I came home from Savannah.  It's hard to believe that it will be three years ago this summer since I went to Georgia.  It was a wonderful experience, and it was when I really started really thinking about the meaning of the United State's Civil War.

Although I haven't written anything recently, I have done a number of blog-worthy things since then.  We do boatloads of exhibits at Cape Fear Museum -- I can't tell you how many I've worked on since 2010.  In just in the last year, I've worked on two that were really great experiences. 

The first was a Toys & Games exhibition.  We showcased our wonderful toys and we provided a plethora of interactive activities and experiences for people.

That's me at the top table on opening night....

One of them, Fragments of War, draws on some of the work I did in Georgia.   And so, I thought I'd write a little about it today, so I can get back into the blogging spirit, and move on to my new fun times in the antebellum and 19th century.   

Fragments of War is an interesting exhibit, if I do say so myself.  It draws on the Museum's collection and tries to tease out stories of the conflict, letting visitors see some of the evidence we used to explore the region's past.

the exhibit's main label

Over the course of preparing for that exhibition, I began my part of the work on it by delving into the history of two objects.  They were both flags, and the Museum has had both of them for a long time.  In the 1960s, a 34 Star U.S. flag that was supposed to be at the meeting where the state decided to secede from the US was given to the city.  Decades earlier, in the 1930s, a Confederate 2nd National was given to the city.  It was purported to have hung over Fort Fisher during its last days in the Confederacy.  Both of these stories turn out to be unverifiable. Still, as powerful symbols of an era, they have a resonance and a meaning that transcends the particulars.  Or that's what we told ourselves so we could display them!

Most people would agree that flags are powerful symbols, even if they hold no single universal meaning. .  I'm from a nation where the flag has a whole set of contested connotations -- the Union Jack had been appropriated at times by the extreme right wing of the country and is a deeply discomfiting symbol to me.
Plus, as a person from Wales, I much prefer that nation's dragon-clad flag to the English symbol.   

Welsh flag image courtesy of National Assembly For Wales / Cynulliad Cymru

Although I grew up like many a kid watching the Dukes of Hazard and loving their car, the General Lee (in my defense I mainly liked that they didn't open the doors of the car, and I have a fondness for orange), as an adult you'd have to hide under a rock not to have heard about the debates over the Confederate flag. 

Still, I never actually took that logical step of thinking "what did people think of the US flag during the Civil War and what kind of history does it have?"  I'd never really considered the hows and whens of the Star Spangled banner (even though I used to work at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History which houses a fairly famous version of that symbol!)

Star Spangled Banner, courtesy of National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution


I think I probably didn't think about it much because today, we see U.S. flags everywhere – in schools, churches, buildings, on T-shirts and even on peoples’ underwear. And so, before doing research for Fragments, I'd never really thought about when the U.S. flag became a more visible presence in peoples' lives. 

Bicentennial hanger, 1976, Cape Fear Museum Collection (1996.034.0003)

That's the great thing about doing history at a Museum -- you delve into all sorts of topics and get interested in all kinds of things you'd never really expect to pique your curiosity.  And you find out (in my case, again and again and again) that things have a history and often an unexpectedly interesting one.

Three Cheers For George Washington postcard, about 1900

Cape Fear Museum Collection  (1991.075.0015) 

Anyway, so as I began researching into the Museum's 34-star 1861 flag, I wanted to put the flag in a bigger and broader context.

U.S. Flag, about 1965, Cape Fear Museum Collection (1987.090.0001)

And it turns out that, part of the answer to the question of when did the flag become more visible is:  "The Civil War."

Most people know that Fort Sumter was important in Civil War history. They may not know that the events at the fort are also considered a key moment in the history of the meaning of the U.S. flag.

After South Carolina seceded in December of 1860, six others – Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas – followed in short order. It wasn’t clear what would happen next. One of the many thorny questions that quickly arose as states tried to dissolve ties with the federal government was what would happen to the federal property within the rebelling states?  Since the U.S. federal government did not recognize the right of states to secede, the Union side saw the nation’s forts, even those in South Carolina such as Sumter as federal property.  Seceded states saw things differently.

After South Carolina seceded, the federal troops garrisoned at the forts in the mouth of the river were in an unenviable position. They were few in number, and it wasn’t clear what they should do. Requests to the War Department for additional troops went unanswered. Finally, on December 26, 1860, the recently-appointed commander, Major Robert Anderson, moved the small number of men under his command and the U.S. flag from the less defendable Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter under the cover of darkness. The rear guard spiked the cannons, and cut down the flagpole so that no other flag could be hoisted in place of the garrison flag. The flag that was flying was taken by Major Anderson to Fort Sumter and hoisted there. This flag then flew until April 1861, when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter and took the fort.

These events helped make the U.S. flag into a potent symbol of the Union side of the Civil War conflict. George Henry Preble, writing in 1880 claimed “When the stars and stripes went down at Sumter, they went up in every town and county in the loyal states. Every city, town, and village suddenly blossomed with banners. On forts and ships, from church-spires and flag-staffs, from colleges, hotels, storefronts and private balconies, from public edifices, everywhere the old flag was flung out, and everywhere it was hailed with enthusiasm; for its prose became poetry, and there was seen in it a sacred value which it had never before possessed.”

More recently, historian Adam Goodheart has dated this growth in feeling towards the flag to December 1860 when that U.S. flag was raised over Fort Sumter by troops who moved from Fort Moultrie. Goodheart claims it was then that the flag’s symbolic power was compounded and strengthened: “Before that day, the flag had served mostly as a military ensign or a convenient marking of American territory, flown from forts, embassies, and ships, and displayed on special occasions like the Fourth of July. But in the weeks after Major Anderson’s surprising stand, it became something different. Suddenly the Stars and Stripes flew – as it does today, and especially as it did after September 11 – from houses, from storefronts, from churches; above village greens and college quads…As the long winter of 1861 turned into spring, that old flag meant something new. The abstraction of the Union cause was transfigured into a physical thing: strips of cloth that millions of people would fight for, and many thousands die for.”


It's pretty neat to think about our U.S. flag in this context. 

North Carolina did not rush to secede like South Carolina.  As citizens held public meetings to discuss the politics of the day, and as different people took different sides, conflict did arise over what the right path was for the city and the state to take in these troubled times.

In the early months of 1861 especially, there remained in Wilmington a group of men who hoped that compromise was possible. These men, sometimes called “Conservatives” sometimes called “Unionists” later labeled “watch and wait” Convention candidates, tried to figure out how to bolster the institution of slavery and remain in the Union. For these men, hoisting the U.S. flag may have symbolized their commitment to the Union and their hope for a compromise that would mean secession and war would be avoided. 

U.S flags likely continued to fly in Wilmington over ships and federal buildings until April or even May, 1861. The Museum’s flag, then, can be seen as a symbol of this conflicted and difficult time.


The Museum's flag is supposed to have been present at a public meeting where secession was discussed. It was taken to Rhode Island by its Northern-born owner as North Carolina left the United States.  And it remained there until the 1960s, when, as a part of the commemoration of the Civil War's centennial, it was ceremoniously returned to the City of Wilmington. 

Next time, I'll tell you about what I found when I delved into the history of our flag...