Actually it is my experience that very few Confederate units has special occassion flags or parade flags. The series of 12 star Second Nationals made in Mobile for Gibson's LA Brigade is an anomaly rather than the norm, for example. The shortage of flag making cloth like wool bunting prohibited the use for fancy parade flags when regular battle flags sometimes ran short due to lack of imported English wool bunting. The Confederates got very good at making do with what they had and fancy parade flags were very few indeed for this reason. By mid-war, silk was about gone for much of anything in the south other than taking silk dresses and redoing them into flags.

As for what Rucker carried in 1864, as part of Forrest's Cavalry Corps, after July, 1864, they carried the rectangular 12 star battle flags made in Mobile by Sarah Belknap. These were red wool fields, blue wool crosses and 12 white stars. A few of these flags can be seen in museums: WD 210 from Bell's TN Brigade (taken at Richland Creek in Nashville, 1864) at the MOC and at the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis is the flag of the 22nd TN Cavalry among others. I maintain that the flag lost in the Battle of Nashville from Rucker was one of those flags. The Yankees called it a "brigade flag" but it is also my experience that they had no clue what a brigade flag for the CS Army was. A couple of actual HQ flags made for that purpose were taken at Franklin and Nashville and these were from the flag system created in the Army of Tennessee in the Spring of 1864 for Harde's and Hood's Corps and the Fall of 1864 for SD Lee's Corps.

Two other examples suffice - one of the flags taken at Gettysburg at Culp's Hill on July 2, 1863 was described as a "brigade flag." It was, in actuality, the First National flag of the 21st Virginia Infantry. At Sharpsburg, the 1st Texas lost its state flag and ANV wool/cotton ANV flag in Miller's cornfield, and one of these was described by the Federals as a "brigade flag." It was also a regimental flag.

The Federals were pretty much clueless as to what the Confederates were indeed using as brigade flags during the war.

Greg Biggs