Ben,

The Yankees would not know what division colors were if it bit them in the ass! Again - James Chalmers had NO division flag at all. There has never been period evidence of one from the Confederate side, which for flags is the side that matters. There is a period account that I have in my files for a distinctive flag for Joe Wheeler but none has ever surfaced for Forrest or his division commanders. The claim of the Chalmers "division" flag is for WD 210 - a Mobile Depot pattern. With the massive volume of writing about anything Forrest that there is both during and after the war, had he adopted ANY distinctive HQ flags there would have been a lot written about them. I live in Tennessee where Forrest is a god practically and have been through mountains of this stuff over 28 plus years and NO mention of such flags has been located.

The Yankees claimed in September 1862 to have captured the "brigade" flag of the Texas Brigade at Antietam. What they described was the Texas state flag of the 1st Texas Infantry. So their capture claim was wrong in terms of what the flag actually was. There is another brigade flag claim for Gettysburg and that flag is a First National from the 21st Virginia Infantry.

The only units of the Army of Tennessee that had specific HQ flags were the three infantry corps. Hood's and Hardee's got them in the spring of 1864 prior to the Atlanta Campaign (retained by their subsequent commanders after this time) and what had been Polk's Corps got them prior to the Tennessee Campaign. These were corps, division and brigade levels flags and some were taken at Franklin and I think one at Nashville (will have to check my files of flag captures). These flags were detailed complete with drawings by an AOT veteran and can be found in the Dr. Samuel Lewis Papers in the Virginia Historical Society and were to have been published in book form along with lots of other flags things by the United Confederate Veterans in the early 20th Century.

So, based on the evidence (actually lack thereof) and the fact that the Yankees were pretty clueless about Confederate flags much of the time, the flag taken from Chalmers was WD 210.

Greg Biggs