Ben,

Sorry to hear that you really do not want to engage in a healthy debate, in the words on an earlier post from you. Also sorry to hear that some people, some known to me, concur with your belief about this flag. One of them emailed me about it some months ago and I told him the same thing that I have been saying here - there is NO proof that your flag was taken at Nashville on December 16th, 1864. NONE! As any good Missourian would say, "show me!"

I have clearly stated that I am willing to change my mind on things - and indeed have - but only when concrete proof was presented to me by whoever (and sometimes that was further information I discovered on my own). You keep saying that I am wrong about your flag ID but cannot accept that you also could be wrong. This cuts both ways. Show me the proof that your flag was taken at Nashville; irrefutable proof, and I will sing your flag's praises! You seem to keep skipping over that aspect of our conversations.

As I have stated here, one would think that the unique style of this flag would have warranted a nice description in a Union OR report. Such OR reports exist for other unique or descriptive flags, and even more can be found in period newspapers. One reporter, for example, wrote a story on the surrender at Vicksburg and noted the Bowen pattern battle flags that were being surrendered as a type he had never seen before. One OR report that I can think of offhand described a South Carolina company flag (Pickens Sentinels of SC) and what the slogan was on the flag. Why not an OR report that describes your flag when it was taken at Nashville as you claim? That is also contemporary evidence Ben.

Yes, you have years of collecting under your belt and own/have owned a lot of very nice things (gorgeous AS Johnston sword by the way). That, in its own way, contributes to our knowledge of these artifacts and you have a lot of that to share here which I think benefits us all. But you seem not to respect people like me who have never owned such things but have spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours in libraries, the National Archives, historical societies, state archives, etc. and have amassed years of knowledge as well. I do not have five filing cabinets of four drawers each full of notes on Confederate flags for nothing! This is what some 23 years of research gets you. Guys like Ken have much more and he is very respected for his long years of work.

But I would think that part of owning a nice artifact would be to correctly establish its history. I have a few items from the Atlanta Campaign and I know a lot about them, mostly from the dealers that sold them to me but even more on my own. So what I take from your previous note is that you are not interested in trying to find out the truth about your flag which is what our debate would move us both close to I would think. If I have that wrong please enlighten me.

If you change your mind then I am more than happy to engage in this debate and again, let the chips fall where they may.

Greg Biggs