r
Last Saturday after the Race for the Cure, Tall & Handsome and I spent some time taking in some local color.
By happenstance we discovered Fort Pulaski. The fort had been built in 1847 and held by the Union, but once South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860 Georgia followed and then Georgia governor Joseph E Brown sent troops from Georgia to take Fort Pulaski and at that point Fort Pulaski belonged to the State of Georgia. Once Georgia seceded in 1861 the fort then became a Confederate fort.
After Fort Sumter fell to the Union, Fort Pulaski was next in the sights of the Union. The fort fell within two days with the help of heavy siege cannons battering the thick walls of the fort.
The flag flying over the fort the day we visited was one of the First National Flags of the Confederate States of America. This version of the Confederate flag was designed by a Prussian artist named Nicola Marschall while living in Marion, AL.
The First National Flag (4 Mar 1861 – 21 May 1861) had 7 stars representing the first seven states of the Confederacy. The next flag (21 May 1861 – 2 Jul 1861) had 9 stars for each state and the third flag (2 Jul 1861 – 28 Nov 1861) had 11 stars. The picture above is the third First National Flag. The last (28 Nov 1861 – 26 May 1863) had 13 start for each Confederate State.
Because this flag caused confusion on the battlefield because of its similarity to the flags of the Union, later battle flag designs were developed and evolved into the ones most of us today think of as the “Stars and Bars” although the above flag is also called the “Stars and Bars:’
© 2011 Beverly Hicks Burch All Rights Reserved
