8-STAR CONFEDERATE FIRST NATIONAL FLAG (“STARS AND BARS”)

Wool bunting and cotton. N.p., ca. April–May 1861. Approx. 53 1/4 x 33 1/4 in. (135.3 x 84.5 cm.); canton 21 1/4 x 22 1/4 in. (54 x 56.5 cm.); framed 64 x 44 in. (162.6 x 111.8 cm.). 

A fine, rare First National flag exhibiting the short-lived eight-star form of the “Stars and Bars," a configuration possible only during the brief interval in the spring of 1861 when eight states were represented in the new Confederacy. Its blue canton bears eight white five-pointed stars, arranged as seven in a ring around a central star, above the familiar red-white-red horizontal bars. In this early state, the design records a precise moment in the formation of the Confederacy, when South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Virginia alone were counted among the seceded states.

Finely hand-sewn throughout, the flag displays the precise construction associated with period military colors, with the cotton stars carefully inset into the blue field and the bars joined by narrow flat-felled seams. A 2012 textile examination that accompanies this lot identifies the wool as lightweight challis and concluded that the materials and construction are consistent with documented Civil War-period flags, noting the unusually expert quality of the sewing and suggesting manufacture by a skilled professional hand, likely for military use, although the missing hoist attachment precludes absolute certainty on that point. 

According to accompanying documentation, the flag was deaccessioned in 2012 from the Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, Hudson, New York, where it had long been preserved among Civil War material reportedly donated in 1900 by Frances Chester White Hartley. Tradition within the collection held that it descended through her husband, Marcellus Hartley, the noted arms manufacturer and later owner of Remington Arms, and may have been presented to him by General Ulysses S. Grant. Whatever the precise course of its early custody, it is a fine, rare surviving example. 

Note: This lot cannot be packaged and shipped in-house. Successful bidders winning items marked as being packaged and shipped by a third-party service are responsible for paying the third party directly. We are happy to offer complimentary drop-off service to local third-party packing/shipping companies in Columbus, Ohio. 

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Flags, Patriotic Textiles]