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Published in Chicago in 1861, “Down with the Traitors’ Serpent Flag” is one of thousands of political parlor songs from the American Civil War. Many of these songs are unremarkable musically and were preserved in homes, archives, and museum collections largely for their vibrant illustrations. In my presentation I examine this song’s lithographic cover illustration—a Union soldier grinding a Confederate flag into the dust—within a broader discourse of Civil War flag imagery taken from songs, political cartoons, and cartes-de-visite. Compelling secrets exist within this colorful image that may not first meet the eye; to uncover these meanings along with the ways in which they operated for 19th-century audiences, I address how citizens used flags as material objects and signs in a wider social context. I argue that this defiled flag can be seen as a symbol of nation and state, as a reminder of the female presence in war, and as a surrogate for the wounded or even deceased human body. By utilizing flag culture to interrogate objects in an art historical or visual culture context, this presentation argues that vexillology should be accepted by the larger scholarly community not only as an independent discipline but as a theoretical approach to the allied fields of art history, material culture, and cultural studies.
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No primary sources support the myth that Confederate supporters used the Crossland banner, a component of the Maryland flag, during the Civil War. The Maryland flag is deeply embedded in the identity and culture of Marylanders. However, its history is convoluted, and the interpretation of its adoption often oversimplified. This article explores the history of the flag of Maryland, especially its role during the Civil War, to explain how the Calvert and Crossland symbols came to be the Maryland state flag. While the history of the Maryland flag found online appears straightforward and broadly held—multiple historians assert that, during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers utilized the Crossland banner to represent the South, while Union soldiers utilized the Calvert banner to represent the North—the story of the Calvert and Crossland arms’ use on flags is much more complex. The online oversimplification of the history of the Maryland flag stems from a lack of primary sources used on credible websites and the projection of personal biases by historians onto historical flags.
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Discusses the flag of Atlanta, Georgia.
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