>>>I'm going to be upfront here, so please be nice to me. I am the one that originally saw the flag on the Iowa website and started contacting some of the people that contacted other people, which got all this started. So, when I say I'm glad it's coming home, trust me, those Citadel boys can dance all they want in those grass skirts and I'm still going to be smiling.>>>

I am always nice to anyone who is reasonable and if they cannot prove something so long as they are intellectually honest then I am fine with that - as I have been there myself more than once and will be again no doubt.

The trouble is the CHC report is junk - and they totally ignored a number of people here two years ago as well as an online flags group to which I belong which happens to include three noted SC flag experts of REAL expertise. They took the word of a guy that even asked me here for flags made by Vincent and all I gave him that could be proven was the FN flag at Ft. Sumter. Everything else was basically go fish!

>>>>Last time I posted on here about this flag I was skewered because I took offense to the "finding" being attributed to a Citadel alumnus. My blood runs garnet and black, baby! I'm hoping to see it when it gets home, but if I don't, I already saw it in Iowa, so there, you grass-skirted Citadel alumni taking credit for a Gamecock's find =).>>>>

Well, based on how they have done this report and their historical research my opinion of them is not much higher than the grass in my yard currently.

>>>>With that being said, I worked with several people (who may have been Citadel alumns)before it got to their historian (whose name I can't recall). Basically, the tie was through the men who were at Fort Blakely. I've studied the maps of Fort Blakely and read and reread the donor's words on his finding it. I've spent hours searching for any diaries, letters - anything - for the Iowa regiment of the man who found it. You never know what will turn up. I read some of my ancestor's Civil War letters for the first time last year and was able to send to a childhood friend a copy of a letter which mentioned his ancestor making out like a bandit in a union camp after a rout. I found the letters referenced in a book (I had no idea they existed).>>>>

The Ft. Blakely part can be, in my opinion, discarded. The guy that got the two flags - this SC flag and the large FN flag - came from, according to him, Mobile. His regiment was in and around that city for over two months and no one can disprove at all that he did not find the flags where he said he found them! Heck - it is even more logical that he got them there than at Blakely for that would have been a combat capture of flags and I can tell you that even if I am 100, and I took flags in battle, I would recall that to a "T" at that age! Yet his own statement to the Iowa Historical Society states "Mobile."

Case closed.

>>>I had not realized they had tied it to the Hugh Vincent flags. I know its style is similar to the one at the SC Historical Society, which is thought to be a Hugh Vincent flag I believe. Who is their flag expert?>><

Yep - and it even comes down to the inverted crescents being cited as proof of Vincent made flags. Huh? So what rabbit hole did this come from? Where is the proof????? There are several existing flags with crescents that are either inverted or aimed differently to the normal upturned crescents and we have no clue who made these flags at all - including the double palmetto flag from Ft. Walker.

I cited two other large flag makers from Charleston - Bee & Silcox and Charles West - and I have no proof that these two makers made any of the existing palmetto flags either so I do not run around and state that these large flags were made by them. But I have proof that they made flags both from period SC newspapers and invoices from their C & B files in the National Archives. Yet the CHC report and their expert, Ben Hudson, ignored them completely. I have asked Mr. Hudson several times for his Vincent report and he will not supply it nor email me back.

I now have to ask what he is hiding? I think that he knows we would carve up his report like a Christmas turkey as he has nothing for proof that Vincent made the flag in Iowa or any other flag of the palmetto design that exists today. I know because he asked for such information of me on this very board!

Another thing the CHC conveniently ignored was the period report that the flag on Morris Island flew for at least three weeks and the flag in Iowa shows NO wear and tear for a flag that would have flown in a sea breeze for anything close to that time frame. You and the CHC guys have only seen the pictures of it - I have seen the actual flag when I was in Iowa a couple years ago looking over their CS flags collection. There is NO such wear and tear from flying in any sea breezes!

They also ignored the fact that a period observer stated that the flag on Morris Island was red with a palmetto - no mention of any crescent (as happened on some of these flags) and that there were two "similar" flags he noted flying from other forts and posts!

>>>>As I said, please don't skewer me, again. I'm not saying the flag is or isn't "the" Citadel flag. All I know is that it's red, it's a Palmetto, and it's coming home!>>>>>

No skewering of you by me. You seem very rational about this unlike the CHC people. That is simply embarrassing.

Greg Biggs