CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY SERVICE WAS HELD SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2008

Sons of Confederate Veterans- Appling Grays- Camp #918

Commander: Bill Bowers welcomed everyone that attended.

Posting of the Colors:

American Flag-------------Boy Scout Ricky Platt

Georgia Flag-----------Appling Grays Color Guard

Confederate Flag____   Appling Grays Color Guard

 

Invocation---- Camp Chaplain Max Newham

“Gone but not forgotten--- Martha Eason

Speaker----- Mary Ann Ellis-- Speech below

 

Recognition of Ancestors:

Laying of Wreath_____ Cmdr. Bill Bowers

Salute_____ Appling Grays Color Guard

“TAPS”___ Boy Scout Ricky Platt

Benediction____ Camp Chaplain Max Newham

Refreshments provided by United Daughters of Confederacies

Guest Speaker:   Rev. B.H. Claxton

Sorting out the Flags of the Confederacy

“Many people have mistaken concepts of the Confederate Flag.  The Flag that comes to most minds when people think of the Confederacy is the Confederate Navy Jack, which was used at sea from 1863 onward.  Actually there were Three “Official Flags adopted by the Confederate Congress”, but the battle flag was not one of them.   They were:

·        Stars and Bars

·        Stainless Banner

·        Third National Flag

During the secession convention, the state of South Carolina used a flag with a blue field with a single star in the middle of the flag, which came to be known as the “Bonnie Blue Flag.”  It was never an official flag of the CSA. It was used during the Secession Conventions in the Southern States and carried by some of the CSA Army troops on the field of battle during the war.  One of the witnesses to the raising of this flag, an Irish born actor named Harry McCarthy, he was so inspired that he wrote a song entitled “ The Bonnie Blue,” which was destined to be the second most popular patriotic song in the Confederacy.

   The Stars and Bars was the official flag of the confederacy from March 1861 to May 1863.  Problems arose quickly though for the Stars and Bars. Despite the official pattern and numbers, individuals’ examples of the Stars and Bars varied greatly, with numbers of stars ranging from 1 to 17, and stars patterns varying beyond the officially sanctioned circle.  That was a minor problem compared to its fatal flaw.  Through the smoke and haze at the battle of Manassas, it was more than once mistaken for a United States flag, creating much confusion.  Thinking the flag was the flag of Union troops, Confederate troops fired on other confederate troops.  Obviously, something had to be done immediately.

After the battle of Manassas, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, Commander of part of the Confederate forces in Northern Virginia, proposed a new flag for the troops.  This flag consisted of a blue St. Andrew’s cross emblazoned with thirteen white stars resting on a red background. The flag was entirely symmetrical, perfect square, and bordered by a narrow band of white.

The first actual flags were made by three of Richmond’s leading Belles.  The flags were formally accepted by Generals Beauregard, Johnston, and Van Dorn in ceremonies before massed troops in Centreville, Virginia.  The date was October 1861.

Although the battle flag was introduced to the different armies of the CSA and was very popular with the citizens of the Southern States, the official flag of the government was the Stars and Bars.  It flew over the Capitol, and other government buildings throughout the Confederacy.

The second flag was a solid white flag, with a small battle flag design appearing in the top left-hand corner.  It was called the “Stainless Banner.”  The first duty of the stainless banner flag was to drape the coffin of General Stonewall Jackson as he lay in state at the Confederate Capitol in Richmond, Virginia.  However, this flag was seriously flawed for battle use.   When carried on the battle field or draped on a flag pole, the flag resembled a flag of truce.  Therefore, it was not used on the battle field. The Stainless Banner was official from May 1, 1863, until the Confederate Congress corrected its “flag of truce” appearance on March 4, 1865, by adding a red bar across the end of the “Stainless Banner” design.  This flag was called the “Third National Flag.”  By April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee began the first of much surrender for the Southern Armies.  The “third National” Flag did not see many days of service.  It never made it to the battle field to be tested.  Nonetheless, it was officially adopted by the CSA congress and was one of the three national flags of confederacy.

The best known symbol of the South remains the battle flag, the flag that was carried by the confederate troops onto the battlefield.  Most were made by the ladies of the soldiers’ home communities and were mostly made from those ladies’ dress material.  Hence, the battle flag had a personal connection to home and loved ones.

Two versions of the battle flag existed: the square version was the flag of R.E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.  The rectangular version was the flag for General Joe Johnston’s Army of Tennessee.  The eleven stars in the St. Andrews cross represent the eleven states that made up the confederate States of America plus Kentucky and Missouri.  The St. Andrews cross is the design of the cross that St. Andrew, and apostle of Christ, requested to be crucified upon, for he felt he did not deserve to be crucified on a cross designed like that of his Savior Jesus Christ.

When the Confederate soldiers yelled that REBEL yell on the battle fields, they ran under the battle flag.  All the other flags were official ones to fly over courthouses and other government buildings.  The BATTLE FLAG saw the real action.

http://www.confederateflags.org/national/FOTCs_b7.htm

http://americancivilwar.com/south/conflag/southflg.html

 

 

Written by                           Mary Ann Ellis

 

Confederate Memorial Day

 

When my cousin Max Newham invited me to attend a Sons of the Confederate Veterans meeting with him, even bribed me with dinner, I was curious.  So I went.  I admit it was my first all male meeting, but they say your never too old to try new things.  Max and I share a great grandfather, George Washington Nichols, who marched off to war in confederate gray back in 1861 and amazingly enough survived to write a book about it called A Soldier’s Story of his Regiment.  The brother, A.J. Nichols who had marched beside him for eight months, wrote no words in the book.  He met his death in Virginia only a few days after worshipping God in a forest setting with Stonewall Jackson himself.  For four long, long years, battles raged and soldiers died.  Such is war. We expect that scenario on battle fields. It is not a pleasant fact, but it is a fact nonetheless.

When I walked into the meeting that Monday night, I realized quickly that I was among serious historians. They spoke of battle flags, of government flags, and which ones flew over which state and where exactly in that state.  I admit I was dumbfounded, but fascinated. As I listened, I learned things that I’d never heard explained before.  When their talk turned to plans for the upcoming Confederate Memorial Day, I listened with one ear and let my mind slip away to the days of the war.

Most conceptions of this era come directly from Gone With the Wind or Uncle Tom’s Cabin and both are greatly romanticized.  If we’re in Gone with the Wind mode, we imagine the rolling cotton fields filled with happy slaves singing and picking cotton.  The dashing Rhett Butler courts Scarlet on a wide veranda of Tara. Caring masters and mistresses take care of their slaves, treat them almost like family. 

If we’re thinking of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, we see Simon Legree with a whip in his hand as he stands over his miserable slaves, driving them beyond endurance, even to death.  The picture is dark and dreary.  Neither of these pictures is truly accurate though.  Both are figments of some author’s imagination with some truth stirred in.

Actually three-fourths of the people living in the south owned no slaves.  They were normal, hard-working people who struggled to make a living from the land and to raise their families. Just like people today, they wanted better lives for their children.  They were not poor white trash just because they couldn’t afford to own slaves, As a matter of fact; they seethed with anger at their wealthy neighbors who’d started this war. 

Granted, genteel wealthy southern women had been protected all their lives from field work and any work outside the house. Poor women’s roles included very hard work though, but men had been there to help them until the war came along.  That’s when feminine roles changed so drastically. Suddenly what had been a man’s world had only old and infirm men incapable of running it; all too suddenly the women were in charge.  For a while they trembled under the load and nearly fell, but then they stood up and took charge.

Confederate women deserve much credit for their contributions to the war effort and to the men who fought it.  When the winds of war created a whirlwind, all the people landed upside down.

Dr. Emily Wright of Berry College says that another book, Lamb in His Bosom, written by Baxley’s own Caroline Miller, corrected the impression that white southerners were either rich plantation owners or poor white trash. The people of this story were poor but of noble character and strong faith.  This book provides an accurate picture of how people actually lived here in this area before and during the Civil War.  There are no Scarlet’s and no Simon Legree’s in this Pulitzer Prize winner.  No, there are just hard working family people willing to do whatever was necessary to eke out a living from black South Georgia dirt.

Imagine if you can a woman plodding along behind a mule and plowing long furrows to plant food for her children.  Her hands might have been soft and white once, but probably not.  As a girl, she would have been taught to work and to endure with dignity whatever life threw at her. She could milk her own cow, churn her own butter, and bandage a wound. She would have washed her butter crocks and set them in the sun to dry so they’d smell clean.  She was in the business of raising strong children, teaching them to work, and to fear God. To preserve a home and family until her men came home—if they came home, was just another obstacle she had to overcome.

The only choice of the woman was to assume the role of head of household. Cean, the main character in Lamb in His Bosom, says that she could not cry now, not with all the children gathered about her, afraid of something which they could not understand.  Solemn-mouthed, still-tongued, they stood about their mother, waiting to see how they must act in each new emergency. The children and the elderly looked to her to nurse the sick, to feed them all, to bury the dead, and to keep the morale high through doubt and fear.  She had to pretend she knew everything would be all right when it probably would not. The patience and courage and faith of Southern women helped to shape one of the darkest eras in American history. These women demonstrated human character at its finest.

Great Grandfather Nichols writes poignantly of his long stay in understaffed hospitals.  He and all the men suffered terribly.  Primarily they ate boiled beef and broth, with some bread if they had it.  Many soldiers died of dysentery instead of battle wounds.  They lacked sufficient medicine.  Fevers raged, people died every day of gangrene, and pneumonia was common. 

( missing speech) Prayer and faith in God kept the men going. Great grandpa Nichols speaks very highly of the hundreds of good women of Richmond and the country around who came in every day about 9 am and about 4 pm with the finest nourishment and sweet milk for the poor sick and wounded soldiers. With such motherly treatment they would revive the wounded soldiers. They would bring in clean underclothing and wash the faces, hands and necks of some of the works cases. These were the women close to battle fields and hospitals who came to help. 

Back at home the same faith that the men had maintained the women.  If crops did not make, people starved, especially the very old and the very young.  Women died in childbirth, and no doctors attended them.  They too died from poor food, from pneumonia, and myriad other diseases.  Even if there had been doctors in the area before the war, they had gone off to take care of soldiers.  And so the women prayed and held tightly to their faith as they struggled every day, promising themselves that everything would be fine when the men came home. 

I have much admiration for the women of the Confederacy.  They were the women behind the men in gray.  As we stand here today remembering the Confederate soldiers who sacrificed their lives to fight for what they believed in, I think it fitting to remember the women of the Confederacy also.  Their role too was most honorable.