A chairde, At the battle of 1st Bull Run/Manasses in July 1861, Confederate troops, commanded by Generals PGT Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston, carried their National flag into battle. This flag was the Stars and Bars, consisting of 2 red horizontal bars separated by a white one, with a blue field in the upper corner which included stars to represent the states. But because this flag looked too much like the US flag, there were several instances where both sides made mistakes as to the identity of nearby soldiers. To make sure this didn't happen again, Beauregard requested Congressman Wm P Miles to get the flag changed. Miles said there was no way this was going to happen, and suggested that the army adopt a battle flag to be used in place of the Stars and Bars. He also showed Beauregard a flag he had proposed (unsuccessfully) to be the CSA flag in March 1861. This was to become the best known CS flag pattern - red with a white-bordered blue St. Andrew's cross on which were 13 white stars - and was chosen by Beauregard and Johnston for use by the CS army in Virginia, which later became the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by Robert E Lee. But while Mile's pattern was rectangular, the army's flag was square. Elsewhere in the South, CS commanders designed and issued their own battle flag to their troops - there was nothing official about the flag being used in Virginia. Gen. Hardee, under whom Irish-born Gen. Patrick Cleburne served, selected a blue flag with a white disk in the center; Gen. Polk - blue flag with a star-studded red cross; Gen. Van Dorn's flag was red with a crescent in the upper corner and 13 stars. The list goes on; there's a whole variety of battle flags that were used. As the Army of Tennessee was assembled from various commands, up to the end of 1863 each corps were carrying different flags. As Beauregard and Johnston took different commands, they would direct the adoption of their flag, but the resulting flags were not always exactly as their original. Quite often the flags were rectangular rather than square, the star in the center was omitted or moved up the cross, and some of the rectangular ones were much longer than wide, making for some very different proportions. They weren't always successful in getting this flag used, either - when Johnston took command of the Army of Tennessee in late 1863, Cleburne and his division didn't want to part with their old flags and raised cain. Cleburne soon got permission for his men to keep their "silver moon" flags. For further reading and illustrations: "The Flags of the Confederacy - An Illustrated History" by Devereaux D. Cannon, Jr. "The Battle Flags of the Confederate Army of Tennessee" by Howard Michael Madaus & Robert D. Needham Website: http://www.confederateflags.org/ Slainte, Dennis mailto:fran@ees.eesc.com