"The damned red flags of the Rebellion thicken and flaunt, and one is waving over one of the guns of the dead Cushing." So wrote a Federal Lieutenant, describing the high tide of Pickett's Charge as it swept up to and over the stone wall.The Confederate battle flag became the most powerful symbolic object produced during the war. In all their forms, and most especially the First National and Army of Northern Virginia patterns, Confederate battle flags appropriated the myths and symbols of the American past. They incorporated the symbolic language of color, shape, design and inscription, weaving them into a new icon that offered a material and highly visible representation of the differences between North and South. In doing so they merged myth and fact: the traditions and influence of the past, the reality of the present, and hopes and dreams of the future.By the summer of 1863, all the arguments between the sections dating back to the era of the American Revolution, and all the emotions of the individual soldiers serving in the army and facing combat, had become bound up in Confederate battle flags. They had in fact become an inseparable part of them. The Confederate battle flag gave physical presence to all the subjective values that the soldiers had in their hearts and minds. Men carried it, followed it, tried to capture it, fought over it and willingly gave their lives for it, but in combat they always concentrated their attention on it. The struggle over the Confederate battle flag at Gettysburg brought all the disparate issues of the war down to a personal level. Combat surrounding the flags was often handto-hand, and of the fiercest magnitude. At Gettysburg, scores of men were killed and wounded fighting to capture or defend a Confederate battle flag. 1997 new hard boun in dust jacket, 6x9, xxxii, 262 pages, illus, maps, a large color section of flag images, appendices, notes, index. . ISBN: 0-9638993-3-3. (more information)

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