Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/262

248 our flag having been so insulted by our own people, mentions that a red palmetto flag was flying over the battery where it opened its fire.

These palmetto flags were of various shape, color and material. There is now in the Museum of the Naval Library and Institute at the Boston Navy Yard a large, white flag, made of bunting, which seems to have seen some service. In the centre of the field there is a blue palmetto tree, among the leaves of which are two crescents or half-moons. Surrounding this device is a blue ring, three or four inches in width, on which is wrought, in white silk, a star and the legend, "South Carolina." The history of this flag is unknown.

In the flag museum of the War Department at Washington there is displayed the first flag that waved over Charleston in 1861, and, in fact, the first secession flag raised in the Confederacy. It is a perfect caricature. The material is of dirty white bunting, with a very poor representation of a palmetto tree in the centre. It has eight branches, but no leaves, and looks more like a huge spider than anything else. It is surrounded by eleven red stars and a red moon just rising. It was used at Forts Sumpter and Moultrie, and in the fortifications around Charleston.

On the passage of the Alabama Ordinance of Secession, December, 1860, an immense mass-meeting was held in front of the Capitol at Montgomery, and a secession flag, presented by the women of Montgomery, was raised on the State House; salutes were fired, and in the evening the town was illuminated. At Mobile, on the reception of the news, a crowd assembled at the secession pole at the foot of Government Street, to witness the spreading of the Southern flag, and it was run up amid the shouts of the multitude and the thunder of cannon. The crowd then repaired in procession to the United States Custom House with a band of music playing the Southern Marseillaise, and a lone star flag was waved amid enthusiastic shouts.

In the fireworks and illuminations the ensuing evening the Southern cross gleamed in lines of fire, and competed with the oft-repeated Lone Star.

The constellation of the Southern cross cannot be seen anywhere within the boundaries of the Southern States.