Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/271

Rh empire simultaneous with the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States at Washington.

The flag with seven stars in its union was first displayed in public on the 4th of March, 1861, when it was unfurled over the State House at Montgomery, Ala. Coming, as it did, from a committee whose chairman had said in debate, "He had always looked, even from the cradle, upon the Stars and Stripes as an emblem of tyranny and oppression," it is conclusive that there still existed a strong yearning in the popular heart for our old flag, and all the memories and battlefields on which it had been consecrated.

It is reasonable to hope that, with time, its restoration will be as popular to the Southern sentiment as its abandonment was distasteful. The Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham, in a letter written after the war, said: "I have often said to those with whom I was on terms of friendship that I never saw the United States flag, even when approaching it in battle, that I did not feel arising those emotions of regard for it that it had been wont to inspire. I have in like manner said that one of the most painful sights I had even seen was on the night of the first battle of Manassas, when I saw an officer trailing the flag in the dust before a regiment of the line." Many incidents show that the old flag was not surrendered in the people's hearts without a struggle. Even Captain Semmes, the Captain of the Alabama, confessed his regret that the Stars and Stripes had to be abandoned.

The editor of the Savannah Morning News says: "I was present in Montgomery at the organization of the provisional government of the Confederate States, and during the session of the first provisional Congress, my friend and countryman, General F. S. Barlow, was chairman of the committee on the flag and seal, and being much in his room, I had an opportunity of seeing the numerous designs for a flag which were sent from all parts of the South, and often discussed with him and other members of the committee their respective merits. There was a very general desire to depart as little as possible from the old flag, and yet the necessity for distinction was felt by all. The difficulty was to preserve the liberty colors, and yet to have a flag that did not too much resemble that of some other nation.