Miles' saltire design (he never called in a St. Andrews cross and there is NO Scottish connection whatsoever with this flag design - Miles was French Hugenot) came about after the rush of flag submissions to his committee with St. George's crosses on them.

These flags, denoting English heritage by the way, brought complaints from two religious groups; Charleston's powerful Jewish community who wrote and stated that a "Christian" flag would not do, and some fundamentalist Christian sects who looked at the use of their cross on a flag as improper (even if it was not a true Latin cross).

So Miles took these designs and basically tilted it on an angle and used the saltire of heraldry for his flag, and, as Tom stated, with only seven stars available, it did not look right. As the officers met in Fairfax, VA to discuss the "war flag" for the army there, the competing design was a St. George's cross flag from Louisiana and Miles no doubt told the officers that he had been down that road already and of the complaints he received and so offered his design instead.

The good thing about the Louisiana design was that it was planned to include each state's coat of arms in the upper left quadrant which certainly would have helped ID the flag as to what state unit carried it if nothing else.

Greg Biggs