The Confederate Flag and “The Splendid Valor”

            

Although for some time I have been planning a post on the souvenirs of Southern Civil War veterans,  the current controversy over the display of the Confederate battle flag has impelled me to bring an article forward now.  I spent more than two years transcribing into a computer the hand-written diary of a Confederate infantryman who recorded his thoughts every day for the five years of the war, an activity that has given me a new appreciation of that era in our national history.

Of particular interest to me — and illustrated here — are the artifacts that have been left to posterity by the Confederate veterans organizations from their multiple reunions after the war.   An earlier post here [January 2014] provided images of souvenirs issued by the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the Northern Civil War veterans organization.

Unlike the GAR, a national organization formed almost immediately after the conflict, the Southern veterans initially grouped on a fractionalized basis, locally or on a state level.  For years there was no single national organization representing their interests.   This is understandable, given the low morale that must have followed soldiers home after Appomattox and the state-centered nature of the Confederacy.  One of the earliest Southern veteran’s organization, for example, was the Oglethorpe Light Infantry Association in Savannah, Georgia, formed in 1865.  The 1870s and 1880s saw a proliferation of local units throughout the South.

It was not until June 1889, twenty-four years from the end of hostilities, that efforts succeeded to create an all-Dixie organization.   Founded in New Orleans, the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) sought to unify the many separate veterans’ groups scattered across the former Confederate states into one larger regional body.  It succeeded and grew rapidly throughout the 1890s culminating in its 1898 reunion when 1,555 local “encampments” were recorded at its 1898 reunion.  Eventually 160,000 former Confederate soldiers were organized into 1,885 individual camps.

The UCV, devoted to social, charitable and memorial functions, divided itself into two groups based on the division of the Confederate forces into the Army of Virginia and the Army of Tennessee.  Shown above is a souvenir ribbon from a reunion of the latter’s  Louisiana Division held in New Orleans in April of 1895.  Note that it carries prominently the Confederate battle flag, as do other other souvenir items shown here.  The UCV national hymn, “God Save the South!”  similarly featured the battle flag on its cover.

Not all UCV souvenir items, however, were flag oriented.  Shown below are a ceramic jug from the 15th annual reunion of the UCV in June 1905 and a watch fob from a 1910 reunion in Virginia.  By that year, the membership was dwindling as the veterans aged and died.  The last UCV reunion, its 60th, was in 1950 when only one member, the 98-year-old leader, could attend.  A U.S. postage stamp was issued the next year to commemorate the organization.  Note that the stamp has no flag, just an hourglass indicating the passage of time.

While the Confederate flag was conspicuous in much the UCV did, it is instructive to repeat a statement that appeared in the program for its 1907 reunion, held in Richmond, Virginia:  “Here where once sat its Confederate Congress, stands side by side the Stars and Bars of the “Lost Cause” with the Stars and Stripes, which no section has done more to upbuild and uphold than the South.   Everywhere is seen the American flag side by side with the Confederate, and it is this spirit which prevails among the Veterans and which will pervade the reunion.”  Note the souvenir from a 1897 UCV reunion that displays both flags.

Another signal event was the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion, a June-July gathering of 53,407 veterans.  All honorably discharged veterans of both North and South were invited and many responded from both sides.  Despite concerns that there might be conflict between Blue and Gray, a peaceful reunion was reported to have been “marked by events of Union-Confederate camaraderie.”  President Woodrow Wilson gave the July 4 reunion address that summarized the spirit:  “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten — except that we shall not forget the splendid valor.”

Fast forward to today.  In the present a young man, who in photos wrapped himself in the Confederate flag, murdered nine people in a Charleston church.  Why has the amity shown at the Gettysburg Reunion gone so awry?  The answer lies in the groups that have made it their business to put the Confederate flag in public places, on license plates and in other venues.  As a sign of what?  The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) says it is to elicit Southern pride.  The Southern Poverty Law Center on its website, however, provides a long list of SCV officers at both national and state levels who are, or recently have been, members of what it lists as “hate groups.”  Unfortunately, the haters seem to have captured the flag and made it a symbol of resistance to equal rights.

The soldier mentioned in the first paragraph here was from the 17th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment.  Shown right, its battle flag was dominated by the traditional  “Stars and Bars.”  That flag currently resides in a museum in Alexandria Virginia, the city from whence came many of its men.  That is a good and fitting place for the flag — not flying above city hall or the state capitol, nor displayed on license plates, or featured in other contexts that suggest racial bias.  All memorabilia and souvenirs of the Civil War deserve to be in a location like the 17th Virginia battle flag:  A museum.  That is where they can do the most to inspire respectful memory of those who fought and recognition of their “splendid valor.”

Note:  It is just happenstance that this article is being posted on July 4, Independence Day, 102 years after the Gettysburg Reunion that brought together combatants from both the Union and Confederacy military in apparent harmony. 

The Origin and Uses of the Ceramic Canteen

A definition of a “fool’s errand”  may be trying to find out if soldiers in the Civil War used  ceramic canteens to hold drinking water.   But it is a task I once undertook, at the request of a collector friend who believed it to be so.  I read Civil War reference books and inquired of experts, but to no avail.  Common sense should have told me that  during the conflict canteens must have been made of wood or metal or a combination of the two.  Ceramic or glass containers clearly would have been too fragile for such use.  BUT, after the war ceramic canteens abounded.

They were part of a postwar phenomenon known as the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), shown here in 1892, 80,000 strong, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.  After the end of the Civil War, organizations were formed for veterans to network and maintain connections with each other. Veterans joined first for camaraderie and later for political power. Most influential among those organizations was the G.A.R., founded in 1866 in Illinois.  The Grand Army called its  national and state meetings “encampments,” because its members often literally camped out in tents on local open areas.

Washington had been the site of the organization’s Fourth Encampment in May 1872 as group was getting started. The next time the Nation's Capitol was chosen for the event was 22 years later in 1892. By that time the G.A.R had grown to almost 400,000 members and were accounted the most powerful political and social organization in America.  

In the decades after the conflict the canteen became a powerful symbol of the bonds of comradeship forged in battle.  The G.A.R. motto, repeated often, was “We Drank from the Same Canteen.” As a result the canteen became a familiar souvenir at such gatherings, with ceramics being a major format.  Shown here, for example, is a stoneware canteen commemorating the 1892 national encampment in Washington.  These would be taken home by delegates and cherished as their proof of attendance.

Although the canteen that follows is a more generic item,  it likely was sold by vendors at  encampments.  The design shows a wartime camp with a Union soldier on duty front and center, a musket in his hand.  This canteen is large enough to hold a reasonable amount of liquid.   Rumor has it that a fair amount of hard drinking went on at these encampments as the participants swapped stories about their wartime experiences.

By 1905 when a “Grand Reunion “ of the G.A.R. was held in Trenton New Jersey, the membership of the organization was beginning to shrink significantly, to just over 230,000. The Civil War had been over for 40 years and many veterans had died in the interim.  The National Encampment was held that year in Denver, a far off destination for many.  That may have triggered regional meetings such as the one in Trenton.   This canteen is a miniature and while it features a stopper, it would hold at most only a swallow or two.

The next canteen, shown front and back, is a relic of a state rather than a national encampment.  It commemorates the a G.A.R. gathering in Davenport,Iowa, in June of 1900, the twentieth time that Iowa veterans had come together.  This ceramic is attributed to Shafer & Vader, a German pottery noted for creating whiskey “nips,” small figural containers that could hold limited quantities of liquor.  (See my post on Shafter & Vader,  February 2010.)

The canteen following is also the product of a state gathering,  this time not from the G.A.R. but from an affiliated California organization of Civil War veterans calling itself the California Volunteer Veteran’s Association. Dated 1894, the seal of California is depicted on the back. This organization met annually in conjunction with the G.A.R. and included veterans from around the U.S. who had served in the Western Army.

Another souvenir demonstrates the iconic status that the canteen had achieved among Civil War veterans.   Created for the 1891 Encampment of the Ohio Department of the G.A.R. in Steubenville, Ohio, it is in actuality a medallion to be worn on a coat or jacket.  The reverse side of the tiny canteen featured the likeness of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War in the Lincoln Administration.  Stanton, credited with much of the success of the Union Armies, had been born in Steubenville.

The next canteen also is a miniature, created for the reunion of a single unit, Battery D of the West Virginia Light Artillery. Organized in August 1862,  that outfit initially was stationed at Winchester Virginia and forced to retreat quickly when the Confederates attacked the town in force.  After that humiliating defeat the Battery D saw action both in West Virginia and Virginia.  It spent the end of the war doing garrison duty in Parkersburg until mustered out in June of 1865.  This unusual souvenir marks the veteran’s encampment of October 1890.

Some ceramic canteens were personalized.   Shown here is a vessel with painted markings designating it as the property of John Cherry of Company F in the First Regiment of Hancock’s Veterans.   In 1864 Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock had been empowered by the War Department to raise an Army Corp of 20,000 troops from among “that class of discharged soldiers who have served two years in the army.”   Calling themselves “Hancock’s Veterans,” this corp subsequently saw action near the end of the conflict.  John Cherry, who already had served one tour, was among them and apparently proud to be identified as such.

The final artifact shown here is a generic souvenir called a “bullseye canteen” because of the concentric circles on the surface growing smaller and smaller toward the center.  These ceramics were often painted with wartime scenes.   Shown on this item is a line of tents pitched at the edge of a tree line.  The opposite painting is of Union troops charging through a woods.  This container also would have been a sale item at a G.A.R. or similar gathering.

While it was a “fool’s errand” for me to look for ceramic canteens being used during the Civil War, it can be worthwhile to seek them out in a postwar context.  Today those symbolic vessels presented in ceramic evoke two important chapters in our Nation’s history, the Civil War and the period of social and political activity that followed the conflict.