CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG FRAGMENT FROM APPOMATTOX, APRIL 12, 1865, RETAINED BY PVT. IRVING W. TYLER, 20TH MAINE

A significant, museum-worthy relic of the Civil War’s final chapter, this fragment of a Confederate battle flag was taken during the surrender ceremony at Appomattox Court House, when Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia laid down their arms and furled their banners, formally ending four years of war. Presiding over the occasion was Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine, remembered for his stand at Gettysburg’s Little Round Top. Chamberlain ordered his soldiers to “carry arms” in salute to the defeated Confederates, a gesture of respect answered by a return salute from Gen. John B. Gordon, a moment long celebrated as the symbolic reconciliation of the two armies.

Contemporary accounts describe Union soldiers cutting fragments of captured Confederate colors as mementos once the formalities concluded. The piece offered here was preserved by Pvt. Irving W. Tyler of the 20th Maine, a regiment that had fought at Little Round Top, Petersburg, and Chancellorsville, before taking its place in Chamberlain’s brigade at Appomattox. Tyler carefully inscribed a slip of paper accompanying the relic, dating it to April 12, 1865, the day Confederate soldiers were paroled. He intriguingly described the cloth as taken from the “first” Confederate flag surrendered, which likely belonged to one of Gordon’s regiments, the first corps to stack arms.

The fragment itself measures approximately 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, cut from wool bunting with a white, five-pointed cotton star once part of the iconic St. Andrew’s Cross battle flag. Tyler carried the relic for the remainder of his life, from his postwar home in Maine to Bristol, Connecticut.

Preserved with Tyler’s own inscription and framed for posterity, few relics more powerfully embody the beginning of national reconciliation.

Provenance: Irving W. Tyler; by descent to his direct descendant Carol Tyler Kendrick; consigned with the dealer Ron Patch; acquired by the collector Charles R. Hazard; subsequently in the collection of the historian Gregory A. Coco.

Gregory Coco (1946-2009) served for decades as a National Park Service Ranger and Licensed Battlefield Guide. A prolific historian, he authored sixteen books and numerous articles on the Civil War, including A Strange and Blighted Land and A Vast Sea of Misery, both regarded as enduring classics of Gettysburg scholarship.

[CIVIL WAR, ROBERT E. LEE, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, UNION, CONFEDERATE]