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>>>>I don't want to keep beating a dead horse but I am still trying to get a better understand of who exactly came up with the first national CS flag design. In Devereaux Cannon's book he clearly states that "...a recently discovered letter dated March 2, 1861 seems definitely to etablish Marschall's claim". And in his book he gives three illustrations of those designs that were submitted by Mr. Marschall. I assume they were submitted to the Flag and Seal committee which William Porcher Miles chaired. Yet Miles and others contend that the Committee did not find any of the design submissions acceptable and therefore set forth their own design which became the Stars and Bars. Can you or someone clarify this apperent contradiction? Were Marschall's designs ever actually submitted to the Committee and if not where did Mr. Cannon get the his designs? >>>>>

The discovery of the Miles claim that the flag committee designed the First National came after Devereaux did his book. He was planning a revised edition when he passed away - we discussed the new version several times (he lived about 90 minutes from me).

Both the Nicola Marschall and Orren R. Smith claims as designers of the FN flag came after the Civil War (as did the claim that Betsy Ross designed the Stars and Stripes by her grandson). Neither name appear in the scrapbook on the CS Committee on Flag & Seal in the National Archives either in letter form or submission form. Whereas, the Miles notes were run in period newspapers within a day of the choosing of the flag on March 4, 1861 - words to the effect of, "none of the designs being suitable, the flag was designed by the committee." Deveraux felt that a similar submission by a Mrs. Ladd was the basis and wrote an article on this. It does strongly resemble the FN flag with different colors and an added crescent in the canton.

So neither Miles nor Smith designed the flag.

>>>>Has anyone seen this letter (dated March 2, 1861) that he spoke of in his book?

Without digging into my files, this letter was from a lady in Marion, Alabama describing a flag that Marschall did paint for an Alabama company at this time. The way the letter is written it does sound like the First National but Bob Bradley of Alabama did the digging and found that this was for the company flag for a Marion unit.

Greg Biggs