Confederate Image Identified

 

        A descendant, Dan McCollum, saw a copy of this photo of Private John M. Sellers of Company G, 16th Louisiana Infantry in the June issue of Calcasieu Greys, which was then unidentified,  and contacted Archie M. Toombs, commander of Capt. J. W. Bryan Camp, and identified it as being his relative. Another descendant, Robert Albanese, a great-great-grandson, provided the excellent quality copy seen at left.

            According to Mr. McCollum, Sellers is listed in the Soldiers and Sailors of the Confederacy of the National Park Service system, as a member of the 16th. Mr. McCollum said Sellers was living in north Alabama, where his family comes from, when the war started. He left Alabama and went back to Louisiana where he had been living and enlisted. After the war he returned to Alabama and died there June 8, 1895 in Blount, Alabama.

          According to Sellers military  service record, he was present for  the Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862, and was wounded in action at the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee on December 31, 1862.

           Sellers was absent in the  hospital recovering from his wound and he returned to duty in July, 1863. He was then present for the Battle of Chickamauga, September 19-20, 1863 where nearly one-third of the regiment was captured. Sellers then fought at the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863. He was then absent in the hospital from January 6, 1864 until May 1, 1864 when he  returned to duty.

          Sellers was then present  for the Atlanta Campaign and fought at Mill Creek Gap, May 7; Resaca, May 14-15; and New Hope Church, May 25-28.  He was also present when his regiment participated in the  battles of Atlanta, July 22, Ezra Church, July 28; and  Jonesboro, August 31. The 16th helped capture Florence, Alabama on October 30, 1864 and  Sellers was in the Battle of Nashville, December 15-16, 1864.

          The regiment was then stationed as part of the garrison of Mobile, Alabama in February, 1865. Sellers was present for duty on the last roll of the war from April 20-30, 1865. John M. Sellers  was truly a faithful soldier and a Southern hero.

Beauregard battle flag

Beauregard's personal Confederate battle flag in the Louisiana State Museum
(Photo by Mike Jones)

[From the Lake Charles American Press, Dec. 27, 1992, page 5.]

Museum's Civil War battle flag was prototype

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Civil War expert! believe a Confederate battle flag stored for years at the Louisiana State Museum in the French Quarter is one of the first three or four such flags made for the man who designed the banner.

Ken Legendre, a Gretna letter carrier and Civil War buff made the discovery earlier this month when he visited the museum's flag collection at the historic Jackson Square building known as the Presbytere.

Museum personnel didn't know the significance of the flag but Legendre recognized it as one of the first flags made for Gen. P.G.T Beauregard. The museum piece isn't for sale but Legendre believes it could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The battle flag is perhaps the symbol most identified with the confederacy.

It was designed after Confederate officers found that it was difficult to tell the South's flag — three broad bands of red and white with a circle of white stars on a blue field — was difficult to tell from the Union's stars and stripes.

In 1861, Beauregard was in command o the Army of the Potomac. He decided or what became know as the "Southern Cross" a blue diagonal cross on a red field with stars on the blue bars representing the Southern states.

Some accounts say the very first battle flag was made under Beauregard's director by two Richmond women and later was possessed by the 5th Company of the Washington Artillery, an elite New Orleans unit.

But the prototypes that became most famous, and that were soon honored throughout the Confederacy as the first three battle flags, were made by Constance Cary Harrison of Richmond, Va., and her cousins Hetty and Jennie Cary.

Each made a silk flag for a top general: Beauregard, Joseph E. Johnston and Earl Van Dorn.

Beauregard sent his flag to his wife in New Orleans. When Union forces occupied the city in 1862, she sent it by foreign ship to Havana. Beauregard reclaimed it after the war and in 1883 donated it to the Washington Artillery.

It reportedly stood above the general's coffin when he died in 1893, and four year earlier it may have covered Confederate President Jefferson Davis' coffin at his funeral in New Orleans.

The flag's fate thereafter is unclear. But in " 1941, according to museum records, the Washington Artillery gave it to the museum. Whether museum personnel ever realized its significance isn't known. If so, the flag's history was forgotten over time.

"I had heard of this flag for many years, but as far as I knew it was missing. To all of a sudden gaze upon it was quite a treat,'"

Legendre said. Legendre's identification of the flag has since been seconded by Keith and Glen Cangelosi, experts with Confederate Memorial Hall in New Orleans.

State Museum Director James Sefcik said the museum will seek money to conserve the fragile flag. The cost is expected to be several thousand dollars. The other two Cary flags can be seen at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.

Robert E. Lee's Letter Dec. 25, 1862

Camp Fredg 25 Decr ’62 

     I will Commence this Holy day dearest Mary by writing to you. My heart is filled with gratitude to Almighty God for his unspeakable mercies with which he has blessed us in this day, for those he has granted us from the beginning of life, & particularly for those for those he has vouchsafed us during the past year. What should have become of us without his crowning help & protection? I have seen his hand in all the events of the war. Oh if our people would only recognize it & cease from their vain self boasting & adulation, how strong would be my belief in final success & happiness to our Country. For in him alone I know is our trust & safety. Cut off from all Communications with you & my children, my greatest pleasure is to write to you & them. Yet I have no time to indulge in it. You must tell them so, & say that I Constantly think of them & love them fervently with all my heart. They must write

Gen. Robert E. Lee

to me without waiting for replies. I shall endeavour to write to Mildred from whom I have not heard for a long time. Tell dear Charlotte I have recd her letter & feel greatly for her. I saw her Fitzhugh this morg, with his young aid, riding at the head of his brigade on his way up the Rappk. I regret so he could not get to see her. He only got her letter I enclosed him last evg. She ought not to have married a young soldier, but an old “exempt” like her Papa who would have loved her as much as he does. F[itzhugh] & R[obert] were very well. But what a cruel thing is war. To separate & separate & destroy families & friends & mar the purest joys & happiness God has granted us in this world. To fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our nieghbours & to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. I pray that on this day when “peace & good will” are preached to all mankind, that better thoughts will fill the hearts of our enemies & turn them to peace. The Confusion that now exists in their Counsels will thus result in good. Our Army was never in such good health & Condition since I have been attached to it & I believe they share with me my disappt, that the enemy did not renew the combat of the 13th. I was holding back all that day, & husbanding our strength & ammunition for the great struggle for which I thought he was preparing. Had I devined that was to have been his only effort, he would have had more of it. But I am content. We might have gained more but we would have lost more, & perhaps our relative condition would not have been improved. My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men. Give much love to every one. Kiss Chass & Agnes for me, & believe me with true affection. 

Yours, 
R E Lee