There is a prized possession – a “Southern Cross” confederate flag – stored in the Minnesota Historical Society.
Why should a symbol of the old slave-owning South be a “prized possession?” It is because it was captured 154 years ago by a Minnesota soldier during the battle of Gettysburg.
The three-day bloodbath near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. was a turning point in the Civil War, giving the edge to Union forces, forcing Gen. Robert E. Lee and his troops to retreat back into Virginia. Most historians credit the Minnesota regiment for turning the tide of that crucial battle.
Here is what happened:
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln put out a call for Union troops. Some of the first to enlist were those who formed the First Minnesota Voluntary Infantry Regiment at Fort Snelling. Those soldiers fought in several major battles, suffering heavy casualties. On July 1, 1863, the battle of Gettysburg began, on the “hallowed ground” on which Lincoln later delivered his magnificent Gettysburg Address.
On the second day of battle, the outnumbered Minnesota regiment attacked a brigade of enemy soldiers. Of the 262 men in the regiment, only 47 survived, alive or unwounded. Despite the awful casualty rate, the ferocious charge bought time for reinforcements, allowing the Union to keep its all-important defensive position on a hill known as Missionary Ridge.
On the third and final day of the battle, the Minnesota survivors participated in another bloody melee, and 17 of them were killed or wounded. It was during that chaotic combat that Private Marshall Sherman of the Minnesota Regiment captured the flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry.
It was stored for years in the basement of the St. Paul Capitol, but now it is periodically displayed in the Minnesota Historical Society in tribute to the Minnesota Regiment’s heroic sacrifices to keep the United States united.
And that artifact is an example of how some wounds from the Civil War never quite heal. For more than a century, some groups in Virginia requested Minnesota to loan the flag to Virginia or to relinquish it altogether. After one such request, Gov. Mark Dayton said no, just as previous governors had refused to return the flag.
“It (the flag) was taken in a battle with the cost of the blood of all these Minnesotans,” Dayton said. “It would be a sacrilege to return it to (Virginia).”
When I was 15, I spent the summer of 1963 at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama. My oldest brother, Jimmy, was stationed there in the Army, living on-post with his wife and baby daughter.
Jimmy often remarked to me that Southerners are still fighting the Civil War – that is, still arguing about every aspect of it. Some, he said, insist they actually won that war, at least in spirit and in what they regarded as the righteousness of their cause. One weekend, on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, we visited Chattanooga, Tennessee and toured the Civil War battlefields of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. There were abundant confederate statues and marble monuments all around. At the time, I thought so many Southerners died (even if for a dastardly cause) that they have a right to memorialize their dead.
All these years later, I still regard such memorials as part of history, like it or not. However, they should probably not be exhibited in public places but in museums because they are such painful, offensive reminders to so many people, including Afro-Americans whose ancestors were so brutalized by the vicious institution of slavery.
The other day, in the parking lot of Walmart, I happened to see a parked white pickup sporting two huge flags that were fluttering in the breeze – one an American flag, the other a confederate flag. The driver, I suppose, was exercising a form of freedom of speech, and that is his right. But was he also sporting an in-your-face attitude, like “flipping the bird?” Well, that’s his right, too, I suppose. When I saw that confederate flag, I felt not so much offended as sad. Sad that someone – that driver in this case – might actually think such a mobile display of the “Stars and Bars” is a “cool” thing to do. It’s not. It’s about as “cool” as wearing a Nazi swastika T-shirt.
