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CONFEDERATE BIBLE FLAG IN AN INTERESTING VARIANT OF THE 1ST NATIONAL DESIGN THAT CURIOSLY RESEMBLES THE 3RD NATIONAL PATTERN; Ca MAY AND JULY OF 1861, 10 WHIMSICALLY EMBROIDERED STARS, FOUND w/ A BOOK OF SIGNATURES PRESENTED TO A BALTIMORE WOMAN WHO TENDED TO CONFEDERATE OFFICERS IN THE UNION PRISON |
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| Available: |
Sold |
| Frame Size (H x L): |
7" x 9" |
| Flag Size (H x L): |
2 "x 3.75" |
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| Description....: |
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Caroline C. Morfit (b. abt. 1845) of Baltimore, Marlyand, was approximately 16 years of age when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April, 1861, igniting the American Civil War. Carrie, as she was called, was the daughter of Henry Mason Morfit* (b. Jan. 1st, 1793, Norfolk, VA, d. Dec. 1, 1865), a member of the Maryland State Legislature, and his wife Catherine Campbell Morfit (b. about 1802, Pennsylvania, d. Aug. 2, 1893). One of 16 children, Carrie had become a regular visitor to the Union Army prison camp at Lookout Point, Maryland by 1864, where she tended to the needs of Confederate soldiers, held in frightfully squalid conditions. As a result of her contributions to their well being, Lieut. H. J. Cartwright of the 9th Alabama Volunteers, Company F, presented her with an extraordinary 82-page journal, which she received on June 15th of that year. (The 9th Ala. had been admitted to the camp on March 12th.) Measuring about 6 x 3.25 inches, the book [SEPARATED FROM THE FLAG] contained the signatures of approximately 157 company grade Confederate officers.
Accompanying the book was a silk Bible flag in a very peculiar style. Made of blue and red silk ribbon, with a decorative edge, and a length of plain weave white silk, the design consists of a blue canton with 10 especially whimsical, embroidered stars, set upon a field of 3 vertical bars in red, white, red. This is a variation of the First National Confederate Flag, the design of which was effectively the same, except with the bars turned horizontal.
Bible flags were made for a soldier by a loved one, to be presented as a token of pride and affection when he went away to war. They received this name because they were typically carried in a Bible, both because this was the safest place that a soldier might keep a flat, treasured object on his person, with limited places to do so, and because it sometimes doubled as a bookmark.
Bible flags were most often made of ladies’ dress silk or dress ribbon. A woman might use new fabric, but if the maker was a girlfriend or fiancée, as opposed to a mother or sister, then she might use fabric clipped from her own dress a way to further personalize the gift. Bible flags are found in all shapes and sizes, and with every star configuration imaginable, but most are small enough to fit in a small Bible. Some, like the example that is the object of this narrative, were small enough to fit in a Civil War cover (a small 19th century envelope) and were mailed to a loved one in the field.
From a collector's standpoint, several things are great about Bible flags. One is that they are as different--or perhaps even more different--as one person is from another. They appear not only in a surprising array of star counts, but in a myriad of interpretations of various designs and with a beautiful variety of fabrics, colors, and materials. Stars might be embroidered, sewn, glued, executed with simple needlework, or applied using foil or sequins. Stripes might be pink instead of red, reflecting the availability of ladies fabrics in a household. Sometimes there was fringe. Always there was personality.
The decision of the maker of this particular flag to flip the bars to a vertical position may have occurred for a number of reasons. It may have been that the amount of available ribbon was so small that horizontal bars were not possible. Another likelihood is that it may have been designed by a child, or some other individual who was simply unfamiliar with the specifics of the pattern. It might also be that the maker was confused by the successive change of national designs. The First National Confederate Flag was so similar to the Stars & Stripes that it led to confusion on battlefields laden with the smoke of black powder. For this reason, the Second National Confederate design was adopted on May 26th, 1863. Nicknamed the “Stainless Banner,” this was white in color, with the Southern Cross* serving as the canton in place of the blue field with stars. Soldiers and officers disliked this design, because it looked too much like a surrender flag, and, if given the opportunity--so the story goes--would dip the end in blood. 36 days before the war’s end a red vertical bar was added at the fly end to create a third national pattern. Officially this paid homage to the French, who lent aid to the South during the war, noting that if one were to take the Third National design and add a blue vertical bar at the fly end, replacing the Southern Cross and the white field below it, the result would be the national flag of France.
Despite the fact that the canton of the Morfit Bible flag has a blue field with stars, as opposed to a Southern Cross, the presence of a white vertical bar in the center, followed by red, appears to purposefully mimic the Third National Confederate pattern. This is probably just coincidence, because the third design was not accepted until 1865 and thus probably didn't exist, save for the desire to dip the 2nd national in blood, but the similarity is worth noting. Since no confederate Bible flag exists, so far as I am aware, in the Third National pattern, the fact that this flag comes closest of any I know to representing it, makes it a particularly desirable example.
Whatever the case may be with regard to its vertical bars, the stars of the flag are especially wonderful. These are embroidered in such a way that they resembles rowels of a spur. 8 of the 10 stars display 6 points and the 2 remaining have 7. The forms are so crude that this almost certainly has no meaning, but it adds to the peculiarity. Note how the stars vary in both size and position. With the star closest to the center being the largest, it seems that the maker may have intended to create a wreath the large star in the middle, but that he/she may have either run out of room for the 10th star, or created it with 9 stars and afterwards added the 10th in the upper, hoist-end corner. The manner of the sewing seems to reflect that it was made by 2 people, probably a mother and her child, or perhaps two daughters of different ages. Note how the bars are hemmed at the top and bottom with great skill. These are joined vertically with the same thread, yet with larger and much more erratic stitches, while the sewing of the stars is especially haphazard. The flag was initially found with a small wooden staff, stitched into a pocket at the hoist end. The stitching of this was fine, more akin to that used in the top and bottom hems.
The count of stars is of particular interest. The original design of the Confederate 1st National flag displayed 7 stars to reflect the 7 states that, on April 7th, 1861, approved the provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America. This was known as the first wave of secession. Included were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
As with the Stars & Stripes, the Stars & Bars received a star for each new state. The order in which the next 4 states followed can be arranged in more than one way. In all cases, there was a date on which representatives to the respective state legislature voted for secession. These took place in the following order:
State Legislatures Voting for Secession
8 April 17th Virginia (88 to 55 in favor of secession)
9 May 6th Arkansas (69 to 1 in favor of secession, 9 delegates were not present)
10 May 6th Tennessee (66 to 25 in favor of secession, the vote coming later in the day, following Arkansas)
11 May 20th North Carolina (Unanimous in favor of secession)
In two of the four, a vote of the legislature was followed by a popular vote of the people:
Popular Vote for Secession
8 [May 6th] Arkansas (state representatives voted 55 to 15 against a popular vote)
9 [May 20th] North Carolina (state legislature declared there would be no popular vote; apparently unanimous)
10 May 23rd Virginia (132,201 to 37,451 in favor of secession, yet the ballots of pro-Union counties were conveniently "lost")
11 June 8th Tennessee (104,471 to 47,183 in favor of secession)
Despite the fact that Virginia doesn't technically consider itself as having seceded until May 23rd, when the popular vote occurred, following Arkansas and North Carolina, practically all literary sources cite Virginia as being the 8th state to secede, with a date of April 17th. Interestingly enough, most of these same sources cite Tennessee as being the 11th state, using the date of the popular vote on June 8th as opposed to the legislative one on May 6th.
A third way to arrange the list would be to use the date on which the Confederate States of America accepted each state:
Dates of Admittance to the Confederacy
8 May 7th Virginia
9 May 18th Arkansas
10 May 20th North Carolina
11 July 2nd Tennessee
This method would be the appropriate way to determine a star count for a First National Confederate Flag produced in an official manner, but when a private individual made a flag at home, a number of other factors were involved. One would be his/her personal understanding of the current count of Confederate States on any given day. Even today, the collected information above is either incompletely represented or else confusing in most sources on the topic, if not just plain wrong in others. Nowhere, in fact, was all of this information on voting of senators and the people within the 8th-11th Confederate States, and their acceptance by the Confederacy, neatly compiled. Though I have studied the topic for years, I found that my own notes and writings were actually just as bad. Access to the information, in a way that it could be readily compared and analyzed, would have been far worse in 1861, especially with the dates so close together and information taking time to disseminate.
Even in commercially-made flags of the mid-19th century, it would be fair to say that anything was possible with regard to flag features. Suffice to say that access to information, human error, and personal opinion at a time of high emotion--probably the greatest factor of all--would have significantly influenced the star count of a homemade Confederate flag.
If the star count was not selected with regard to the number of Confederate States at the time of the flag's making, an alternative would be to select a count that somehow glorified a particular state, or perhaps a group of them. A Texas bible flag, for example, might feature just one star to represent the single star on the flag of the Republic of Texas, which later became the state flag. A flag with 15 stars would probably include the entire complement of Slave States, regardless of secession. There may even have been an element of anticipation in the selection of a star count, to include a state that the maker felt should be represented. A pro-Confederate Virginian, for example, may have displayed a 8-star First National flag at a patriotic event that occurred before any votes took place, as a way of promoting his/her cause.
The flag that is the subject of this narrative displays 10 stars. As you can see from the above lists, this could theoretically represent Virginia, North Carolina, or Tennessee, depending on the score card used to determine the order. Virginia is unlikely, as its legislators voted first, following the initial wave of 7, and it was accepted as the 8th Confederate State by Jefferson Davis. A pro-North Carolina or Tennessee message seems much more likely, or else simply a date of manufacture during the period when there were 10 Confederate States. Depending upon the analysis of the maker, this could mean anywhere between May 6th and July 2nd of 1861.
I have had the great privilege to own Bible flags with not only the most common counts of 7, 11, and 13 stars (to reflect the Confederate acceptance of Kentucky and Missouri), but 1, 8, 12, 14, and 15 stars. Beyond this 10 star example, the first that I have acquired, I am aware of just two others that share this count. One of these is among the holdings of the Georgia Historical Society and is said to have been made by Eleanora Margaret Snyder (later Mrs. George Alexander Boisfeuillet, b. 1832, d. 1871), of Savannah, Georgia,"from a flag brought home by her brother, Henry E. Snyder, from the war." Because the flag is made of pink grosgrain ribbon, the story that it was made from another flag is probably false. It's more likely that Eleanora made the flag for her brother when he enlisted on May 31st, 1861 as a corporal, and mustered into the Georgia 2nd Republican Blues Infantry. The date of his enlistment coincides with the window for a count of 10 stars. Another 10 star 1st National pattern Confederate Bible flag survives with verbal provenance to one Aaron Deal of North Carolina. Three North Carolina men who served in the Confederate Army share this name. The enlistment of one post-dates the 10-star window, while the enlistment dates of the others are unknown. The state was, however, the 10th accepted into the Confederacy by Jefferson Davis.
The end paper of the book of signatures presented to Carrie Morfit is boldly inscribed with the following notation:
Carrie C. Morfit
Baltimore, June, 1864
Souvenirs of the Confederates
Autographs of Officers, now Prisoners of War at Point Lookout, Md.
Sent by Lieut. H.J. Cartwright of Co. F 9th Alabama Volunteers
Rec. June 15th 1864.
The date in which the flag was placed in the book is unknown. H. J. Cartwright enlisted in the Confederate Army as a 3rd Lieutenant, mustering into Co. F of the 9th Alabama Infantry, but neither his residence or the date of his enlistment are known. One source lists the year as 1862, and while this would be well outside the date window for a 10 star, 1st National pattern Confederate flag, it's somewhat odd to find record of a year without a specific month or date. This could be inaccurate, or Cartwright may have obtained the flag from one of the 150+ signers, or the flag may have come into the possession of Carrie Morfit from another source all-together. An envelope (cover) addressed from Cartwright to Morfit in May of 1861, located in another source during my research, is of the scale necessary to have contained the flag, but it is just as likely to have been gifted to her by a prisoner from his meager possessions. Whatever the case may be, it is of interest to note that the 9th Alabama Infantry mustered in on June 20th, 1861, during the time in which the Confederate States of America had 10 states.
Many of the names in the book of autographs belong to officers captured at Cheshire, Ohio, while serving in General John Hunt Morgan’s division. During his fruitless “raid,” that occurred between July 2nd and July 26th, 1863, most of Morgan’ s force was captured, killed, or reported missing. This was the turning point, beyond which Morgan was never again as useful to the Confederate Army. Other names include officers captured at Shiloh in 1862, as well as Gettysburg, Spotsylvania Court House, Petersburg, and places in-between. In spite of their horrific conditions of their imprisonment, the remarkable spirit of the men is reflected in their salutations. A few notable entries follow:
Lieutenant Bills of the 32nd Miss. Vol. Regt. Wrote:
“…was captured near Lafayette, Ga on the 10th of Sept / ’63 while on picket – Have been a beneficiary of the generous kindness of the many lady friends of Confed. [sic] Prisoners and feel truly grateful.”
Benj. J. Lancaster, Lieut., Co. K, 8th Ky Cav. From Lebanon, Kentucky:
“…When the war is o’er
And not before
Will I go home
Base cowards shrink
Fools stop to think
Till Freedom is gone”
John D. Boyan, 1st Lieut., Co. A, 6th Regt. Ky Cav. From Danville, Boyle Co. Ky.
“…I am twenty six years at age unmarried, but hope soon to see the independence of my country recognized, peace established when I can ask some fair one to accompany me along the remaining portion of life’s journey.”
Francis A Boyle, 1st Lt & Adjt, 32 N.C. I. From Plymouth, N.C.
“There are three things that I desire with an exceeding longing – a Sword, a Wife, and my Freedom
W. Kendall, 1st Lieut., Co.A, 3rd Ky Cav. From Pilot Point, Denton County, Texas had a wife and 3 children “…from whom I have not heard since the 18th of Jan 1863: but am content knowing that they are in the hands of Him by whose aid we expect eventually to succeed in the present struggle for independence…”
* It is of interest to note that Carrie's father, Henry Morfit, an attorney who was born in and studied law in Virginis, before practicing in Missouri, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, was selected by Andrew Jackson During the summer of 1836 as an emissary to Texas. Asked to investigate the condition of the new Republic of Texas, his report, written in a series of ten letters that date between August 13th - September 14th, 1836, and submitted by Jackson to Congress on December 21st of that same year, was favorable to Texas, but advised against immediate recognition of the republic therof, chiefly because of the threat of a new Mexican invasion. Morfit, who probably had no shortage of feelings for the South, having lived below the Mason-Dixon all his life, was elected to the Maryland legislature in 1861. He passed in 1865 and is buried in Washington.
* The Southern Cross battle flag, the Confederate flag design that most people are so familiar with today, was put into use more quickly than the adoption of the Second National Confederate Flag. General Joe Johnston became the first Confederate officer to approve the Southern Cross, in the fall of 1861, following the suggestion of his second in command, General P.G.T. Beauregard. Many units carried variations of it for the remainder of the war. The reason for doing so was that it was a better signal, being distinctly different than the Stars & Stripes. Many people are surprised to learn that the Southern Cross was not a national flag of the Confederate States of America. Officially, in rectangular format, it served as the Confederate Navy Jack. In square format it came to be called “the battle flag”, partly because it was carried in this format, for that purpose, by Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, as well as by Beauregard’s Army and others. It received widespread love in the South because it was Lee's flag, and because the second and third national designs were not particularly admired by Confederate soldiers (the Second National for reasons previously stated in this narrative and the Third National because the design was so short-lived).
Mounting: The flag was mounted and framed within our own conservation department, which is led by expert staff. We take great care in the mounting and preservation of flags and have framed thousands of examples. The gilded American molding dates to the period between 1830 and the 1850's. This is a pressure mount. The background is 100% cotton, black in color, that has been washed and treated for color fastness. The glazing is U.V. protective acrylic.
Condition: There is significant splitting in the white silk of the center bar. The fragment of wooden staff was removed. |
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| Collector Level: |
Flags for the truest Patriots. My best offerings |
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| Flag Type: |
Sewn flag |
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| Star Count: |
Other |
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| Earliest Date of Origin: |
1861 |
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| Latest Date of Origin: |
1861 |
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| State/Affiliation: |
Maryland |
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| War Association: |
1861-1865 Civil War |
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| Price: |
SOLD |
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Views: 701 |
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