AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Fragment of a Confederate flag, proudly sent by a 15-year-old Union recruit as "the first Secession Flag" captured in the war. A relic of one of the earliest captured Confederate flags, taken in May 1861 and sent home by a young Union musician to his family."Dear father, Enclosed find a small piece of a real Secession Flag. It was torn down from a boat by our men. It is a real flag. When it was brought in camp, we took it to the colonel's quarters. He made a short speech and trampled it in the dirt and the whole regiment tore it in shreds". On the verso he notes, "Company A has the honor of tearing down the first Secession Flag".The letter was written by Christian Edmund Cotton (1846-1910), a musician in Company A, 11th Illinois Infantry. The regiment was organized at Springfield, mustered in on 30 April 1861, and ordered to Villa Ridge, Illinois; Cotton was remustered on 30 July as principal musician and discharged in November 1863. He was 15 when he wrote this letter, which has some crude spelling.The opening shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861. Though there are are reports of captured flags as early as April, this is certainly an exceptionally early example from the first weeks of the rebellion. It is also from the earliest form of the Confederate flag: the initial "Stars and Bars" design had seven stars and three bars and was in use from 4 March to 18 May 1861, when a nine-star design was adopted.

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