The National tribune., 1910-08-18

ing to garrison Forts Morgan and Halls
Mill in 1861. Then he went home on
furlough and hired substitute for Is
months. on the call fos more volun-
teers Mr.. Marschall again enlisted with
the I'd Ala. Engineers, and, as stated,
served until the close of the war So
it will be seen that the designer of the
rebel flag was Prussian and his ideas
were Austrian.
The whole endeavor of the Southern
ers in designing flag was to get away
from the stars and stripes, and the very
first flag they adopted was exactly like
the Betsy Ross flag. excepting that
there were not 13 stripes. 1t was ar
gued by some at the Confederate Con-
gfess that nobody cared for the stars
and stripes, anyhow. Mr.. Brook, of
Mississippi, who evidently had some
love for the flag of Washington, offered
a resolution in the Confederate Con-
gress to instruct the committee to re-
port a design for a flag as similar as
possible to that Of the United States,
making only such changes as should
give them distinction. He then pro-
ceeded to eulogiZe the old flag, and ex-
pressed so much Union sentiment that
it was regarded as treason, and Brook
was severely censured by Miles, of
South Carolina. The Chairman Of the
committee protested against the reso-
he gloried more a thousand times in
the palmetto flag of his State; that he
had regarded from youth the stars
and stripes as the emblem of oppres-
sion and tyranny"
Some of the 141 designs that were
submitted for new flag We're simply
awful One was a square flag, cut
across diagonally, the upper half being
black and the lower half of the dag
onal white. Another design suggested
phenix rising from a bed of flame.
with this motto, I'VE rise again." an
other suggested a flag one-quarter blue
and one-quarter white, diagonally di-
vided from corner to corner, and the
other half of the field a red perpen-
dicular bar. Another suggestion was
that the stars and stripes be divided
diagona1ly thru the field and the white
stripe just below the field, andthe low
er half of the flag with the diagonal
part of the field be white. The upper
portion of this mongrel thing to belong
to the North and the other and larger
half to be the Southern flag. Still an
other design was a white field with
peiican's nest and a pelican crouched
in the center. feeding her young. 1t is
a mystery that anyone could ever sug-
gest SO ineXpressibly filthy a design as
this as the pelican is one of the filthiest
birds known. There were other flags,
one suggested by South Carolina being
a white field with IL red stars separat-
ed by q crescent moon which circled
over a palmetto. South Carolina also
suggested a blue field with a crescent
moon in the upper corner. In the GEN.
ter a large white oval bearing a pal
metto tree in yellow. and so we might
go on enlarging on the 141 designs,
which are to-day pasted in a great book
in a museum in Richmond. 1t is stated
that no people since the world began
fought under such variety of banners
as did the Confederate soldiers. Most
of them had never even seen the rebel
battle flag until the war was over.
1t will be seen by the foregoing that.
after all. the Southern Confederacy has
no real flag. as the stars and bars
adopted on March 4. 1861, the day that
Lincoln took the oath of office, was