The Flag tells its own story

Examining the flag as an artifact would seem to contradict Louis Toomer Moore’s conclusion that this flag was at a meeting on February 1, 1861. 

Counting Stars

The official U.S. flag had 33 stars when South Carolina seceded from the United States on December 20, 1860.  

On February 8, 1861, six states signed a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America, and by February 18, 1861 Jefferson Davis was President of the Confederate States of America.  By the time the Confederate States created a flag, a seventh state had joined the confederacy, so the flag had seven stars, one to represent each state.

National flag of the Southern Confederacy; Detail from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 30, 1861, p. 292

National flag of the Southern Confederacy; Detail from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 30, 1861, p. 292

The stars for those 7 states remained on the U.S. flag, reflecting the Union position that states could not secede.

And yet, Cape Fear Museum's U.S. flag has 34 stars.

On January 29, 1861, Kansas became the 34^th state of the Union. The Wilmington Daily Herald noted on that day that the Senate had passed the Kansas Bill and reported two days later, on January 31, that the president signed it.

So the Union was made up of 34 states on February 1, 1861.  But the 34 star flag became the official U.S. flag on July 4, 1861, months after North Carolina seceded from the Union.  (It remained the official flag until July 4, 1863, until West Virginia became a state.)

It therefore seems unlikely (although I guess technically possible) that Mr. Covell would have had a 34 star flag for sale in his store on February 1, 1861, the day after Kansas became a state.  

And our flag's construction suggest that even if it were feasible to add a star to an existing flag over night, our flag was not modified.  The the position of the stars on the flag as well as the condition of the material of the stars suggest that they were all made and attached at the same time.   The fact that the row with 6 stars are evenly spaced, and so are the other rows seems to provide additional proof that they were all sewn on at the same time.  The state of the color and fabric of the stars does as well.

That said, since the CFM flag is handmade, it could easily have been produced between January 29^th and April/May when it seems Covell left Wilmington.  And even though the flag was not official until months after North Carolina succeeded from the United States, 34 star flags did fly before that official date. 

Still, there was no mention of Covell or his flag in the two local papers, so it cannot be independently placed in town. 

And, as the 34 star flag was the flag of the U.S. until July 4, 1863, it is technically possible (albeit rather unlikely) that Covell purchased the flag in Rhode Island and misremembered having it with him in North Carolina.  

Even though it is not possible to definitively confirm that Covell flag was in Wilmington in the run up to North Carolina’s exit from the United States, the circumstantial evidence seems to strongly suggest that it was.  

There is no obvious reason that Mr. Covell would have made up the story – a Northern Civil War era U.S. flag surely would have been as valuable a family memento to a Rhode Island merchant as one with a Southern history.  (Although as a counter argument, maybe it makes a more exciting family story to have him spiriting the flag off north….)    

Much of the circumstantial evidence fits the family lore– William K. Covell, Jr. was a ship’s chandler, and flags were very much a part of the maritime world so he would have had flags at his shop, or had access to a flag maker who could provide them to him. Newspaper accounts show pro Union members of the community did fly U.S. flags at meetings, so it seems reasonable that someone could have asked Covell to bring one to a meeting. 

By the time he left Wilmington, flags were freighted with symbolic meaning on both sides of the divide.  These sheet music covers give you a sense of  how flags had become to mean more than the sum of their stitches. (and you can look at my older blog for more on that, too....Civil War Redux). 

Courtesy of Library of Congress

Courtesy of Library of Congress

Image of sheet music courtesy of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University

Image of sheet music courtesy of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University

 And since William K. Covell identified with the North, he would likely have taken a flag back North to “protect” it from the Secessionists.  

Taking all this together, it’s not hard to believe that this flag was in Wilmington in the Spring of 1861, and that perhaps it made an appearance at an election rally as the vote for secession (end of February, 1861) was taking place.  Perhaps it came out at a later meeting to discuss the Peace Conference (early March).  Or perhaps it was just a part of Covell’s shop stock.  In the absence of definitive evidence, we will never really know. 

One Hundred years later, the flag returns to Wilmington

FLAG STORY TWO

On February 1, 1961, a little less than one hundred years after the start of the Civil War, the Covell flag officially returned to Wilmington.

According to the January 13, 1960 City Council minutes, “The Manager advised Council for information that he has written Mr. Covell, who recently informally presented to Council through Mr. Louis T. Moore, an 1861 America Flag, and had received reply to same; also a letter from Mr. Moore making suggestions to further handling of the formal flag presentation.  He further advised that the flag had been properly wrapped and had been placed in the city’s vault for safe-keeping.”  

The Museum’s accession file includes information that suggests that, in the late 1950s, one of Mr. Covell’s descendants contacted the Reverend Mortimer Glover in Wilmington and offered the flag to the city of Wilmington.  The reverend got the City, and the New Hanover Historical Commission, involved in the negotiations.   

At that time Louis T. Moore became involved in the story. 

Louis Toomer Moore, about 1950
1981.013.0003

Chamber of Commerce Letter signed by Moore, 1929
1988.016.0010

A member of a longstanding Wilmington family, Louis Toomer Moore (1885-1961) wore many hats.  He had worked for a newspaper and had been in the paint business for a brief time. 

He was involved in Wilmington's Chamber of Commerce for decades, as this 1929 letter suggests.










 Moore was also an amateur historian and by the time William Covell's family offered the flag to the city, he was Chairman of the New Hanover Historical Commission.   So, when Covell's descendents offered the flag to the city, it's not that surprising to find that Louis T. Moore was involved in the proceedings. 

What is fairly surprising (well it surprised me), is that Moore changed the family's story in significant ways.

The Covells apparently wanted to donate the flag to the city on the centennial of the date of the original meeting where it was supposedly displayed.  But they didn't know when that was, so they asked if that could be found out.  Mr. Moore set about finding the date, but looking in the newspaper.  And what he found led him to state the flag was used on February 1, 1861.

Perhaps based on the fact that the flag in question was a U.S. flag, Moore altered the family’s story so that their story of a flag at the “meeting” where secessionists won out in the state became his story of a flag present at a “Union meeting” on February 1, 1861.  Then his story became the official story.

Moore was quite right that there was a Union meeting in the city on that date. A few years ago, I did the very same thing that Mr. Moore did.  I went to the library, and looked at the newspapers.  And I found the meeting he did: in both the pages of the Wilmington Daily Journal and in the pages of the Wilmington Daily Herald.


The  Herald even spoke about the United States flag: declaring that local businessment Oscar G. Parsley "..made a few remarks declaratory of his attachment to the flag of his country, his unwillingness to surrender it, and his hope that it would continue to wave in triumph through all time."




 But it didn't mention that there was a flag at the "union" meeting, and it wasn't by any stretch the last time that townspeople got together and talked about what the state of North Carolina should do in the run-up to the Civil War.

Since North Carolina didn't secede until May 1861, it seems highly unlikely that this was the last time a U.S. flag was flown at a meeting in town.

Moore's story seems, to me at least, to be less believable than the original family story.

And I believe that, as a historian, if you're going to change someone's story you need some evidence to do so.  Evidence corroborating Moore's switch from secession meeting to union meeting is in short supply. 


Quite why Louis T. Moore decided to reinterpret the family story may always be unknown.   

A document in the Museum's accession file does, however, hint at an intriguing albeit unverifiable possibility.

According to an undated mimeographed piece in the Museum accession file, “The flag to be presented by Mr. Covell will illustrate the fact that the War Between the States really started at Wilmington with the capture of Fort Caswell by military companies of New Hanover and Brunswick counties on January 10, 1861 – (three weeks prior to the Union meeting on February 1, 1861 in the Wilmington court house), and the one given by Mr. and Mrs. Lathrop is emblematic of the fact that the War Between the States really ended at Wilmington, since closure of the port as an avenue of supply for General Lee’s armies, January 15, 1865, was followed in about three months with Lee’s surrender to Grant in Virginia.”

This characterization of start of the war is misleading:  it is true that Fort Caswell was seized in January 1861, but it was also almost immediately returned to federal control on the order of North Carolina Governor Ellis.  And the idea that the war "really ended at Wilmington" is something that it seems fair to say is a bit of an overstatement.

Still, this story of the wartime events does, perhaps, suggest a motivation for Moore's decision to change the Covell's original story.

We can never really know why a person does something.  Still, to me, Louis T. Moore’s characterization of the U.S. flag and the events surrounding its return to the City seem to suggest that his desire to promote Wilmington trumped his desire to tell an historically accurate story.  Chamber of Commerce Moore beat out Historian Moore.

Regardless of whether he was conscious of how he moulded the story despite the evidence, events in 1861 pretty clearly don't line up with his version of how the flag was used, or how it came to leave town. 

Instead, the 1961 story seems best thought of as a booster's tale. 

Wilmington News, page 1, February 1, 1961

 

Efforts to promote Wilmington seem to have been second nature for Moore.  And in February 1961, he successfully persuaded folks around him that his version of the flag's story was the right one. He worked with a local centennial commission and city leaders, helping organize an event, and they even persuaded the North Carolina Confederate Centennial Commission to recognize Wilmington's flag ceremony as "...the first event to be commemorated in North Carolina during the Civil War Centennial."

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The Covell Flag -- Three Stories

The Museum has a Civil War era 34 star U.S. flag.

CFM 1982.021.0001

Its history is shrouded in a bit of mystery.  When we decided we'd exhibit it in Fragments of War,  I went looking for the "definitive" story.  If any of you have done historical research -- and this is especially true of artifact research -- you'll likely see the fatal flaw in that statement right away!  When you start digging, things almost always get more complicated, not less. And so, it turns out, there is no definitive story of our flag.  Or at least nothing that can be verified.


Story 1: The Covell Family Story

This Civil War era flag came back to Wilmington in 1961.

Its 19th century owner was one William King Covell, II (1833-1919).  Covell was born in Newport, Rhode Island.  Covell arrived in Wilmington North Carolina in 1848 when he was fifteen, and he went to work in a mercantile business (a ship’s chandlery, i.e. a shop selling nautical supplies). After 7 years, he left Wilmington, went briefly to New York, and then in December 1855, he returned to Wilmington, having bought the chandlery business. So in 1861, Covell was in his late 20s, and had spent much of his adult life in North Carolina.  

Elizabeth Bentley Green Covell wrote a book about the family.  And in it, she told the family story of the Museum's flag.  According to her, “One day in the spring of 1861” a “committee” entered business and asked to borrow a flag. This makes sense, since Covell was in the business of equipping ships and so likely had flags on hand in his store. The book continues “The public meeting was held that day; its decision is known. After the meeting was over, William folded the American flag, took it, not back to the store, but to his bedroom, placed it in a clean, linen pillow-case, tied the end with a piece of narrow red, white and blue ribbon (the little old ribbon is still there), and put the parcel in the bottom of his trunk. It went north when he did, and has been cherished through all the years since 1861. (Some day, if Wilmington cares for it, it shall return there.)”  [See The Two Williams:  William King Covell, 1802-1890, William King Covell, 1833 – 1919: A Story of Nineteenth Century Newport, Rhode Island and Wilmington, North Carolina]

If you want to see a picture of Covell's postwar shop in Rhode Island, you can find it on the Newport Historical Society's website  http://newport.pastperfect-online.com/32053cgi/mweb.exe?request=ks

Anyway, this account clearly suggests that the flag was present at a meeting held in the city where the people decided to support secession.

There are some challenges to verifying this story.

First, there is no meeting date involved, so it is hard to narrow down when this meeting was held. The Wilmington Daily Journal reported on at least 18 meetings and flag raisings (with speeches) between January 8 and March 29, 1861. U.S. flags were mentioned in two of those reports, in early January, at anti-secession meetings. But these meetings which were held in early January do not seem to fit with the story that it was “Spring.”

Second, the family story suggests that that there was an actual, definitive, public meeting where New Hanover County decided to secede from the United States. Although there were certainly political meetings of people who supported secession in the spring of 1861, the county could not autonomously secede from the Union. And there is nothing in the local pro-secessionist newspaper to suggest that there was a meeting where the county declared for secession with any of the kind of finality that the family story suggests. Like the rest of the state, New Hanover County officially seceded from the United States on May 20, 1861.

There were a number of political meetings and rallies on the subject of secession in the run up to the state’s final departure from the United States. William Covell seems to have still been in town through these turbulent times so his flag could have been present at one of the many political meeting that took place.

Documents on hand at the Museum suggest that William could have been in town in May, perhaps up through the 25th of May.

There is a receipt that lists William as being “of Wilmington NC” dated May 25, 1861. This is suggestive, but does not definitively prove he was there since his business was still active even after he left town.

CFM 1980.002.0022

Other documents, such as this telegraph, suggest that things started getting a little more tense in April. 

CFM 1980.002.0023

This seems to suggest that William Covell could no longer send mail to Massachusetts.

At the same time, despite these indications of growing sectional tensions, Covell is doing business with organizations such as the local Wilmington Light Infantry that Spring, despite his Northern allegiances.

CFM 1980.002.0049

The family story, therefore, seems to suggest that this flag was at a political meeting at some time between the start of “Spring” and May 20, 1861, but the particulars of their account, don’t hold up to close scrutiny.

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...