The Stainless Banner

[CMWinkler]

I was asked a question recently but could not find the answer. I have seen claims that William Tappan Thompson, a Savannah newspaper editor was the "designer" of the 2nd National or the Stainless Banner. I can find nothing that supports this claim. In fact, Devereaux Cannon in his Flags of the Confederacy seems to attribute its design to William Porcher Miles and that it was adopted by the Confederate Congress based upon an amendment to a Senate bill by Peter W. Gray of Houston.

I have found no source as to Thompson's contribution to the design and I'm asking if any of you can point me to a source that supports that claim.

 

[MajGenl.Meade]

Perhaps this is helpful? The book covers more than just the USA flag history.

Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America ...
By George Henry Preble

 

[MajGenl.Meade]

What I've seen is that David Porcher Miles had a hand in designing the battle flag which he wanted adopted as the 1st national flag.

 

[Gettysburg Echos]

I was asked a question recently but could not find the answer. I have seen claims that William Tappan Thompson, a Savannah newspaper editor was the "designer" of the 2nd National or the Stainless Banner. I can find nothing that supports this claim. In fact, Devereaux Cannon in his Flags of the Confederacy seems to attribute its design to William Porcher Miles and that it was adopted by the Confederate Congress based upon an amendment to a Senate bill by Peter W. Gray of Houston.

I have found no source as to Thompson's contribution to the design and I'm asking if any of you can point me to a source that supports that claim.

The best info I have.

The flag is also known as "the Stainless Banner" and was designed by William T Thompson, a newspaper editor and writer based in Savannah with assistance from William Ross Postell, a Confederate blockade runner. The nickname "stainless" referred to the pure white field which took up a large part of the flag's design, although W.T. Thompson, the flag's designer, referred to his design as "The White Man's Flag". In referring to the white field that comprised a large part of the flag's design elements, Thompson stated that its color symbolized the "supremacy of the white man"

 

[AndyHall]

Miles designed the Army of Northern Virginia Battle Flag in late 1861, in conjunction with Beauregard. Miles based it on a South Carolina secession flag:

From John Coski's book:

William Miles's disappointment with the Stars and Bars [i.e., the "First National" flag of the Confederacy] went beyond his strong ideological objections to the Stars and Stripes. He had hoped that the Confederacy would adopt his own design for a national flag-the pattern that later generations mistakenly and ironically insisted on calling the Stars and Bars. The design that Miles championed was apparently inspired by one of the flags used at the South Carolina secession convention in December 1860. That flag featured a blue St. George's (or upright) cross on a red field. Emblazoned on the cross were fifteen white stars representing the slaveholding states, and on the red field were two symbols of South Carolina: the palmetto tree and the crescent. Charles Moise, a self-described "southerner of Jewish persuasion," wrote Miles and other members of the South Carolina delegation asking that "the symbol of a particular religion" not be made the symbol of the nation.

In adapting his flag to take these criticisms into account, Miles removed the palmetto tree and crescent and substituted a diagonal cross for the St. George's cross. Recalling (and sketching) his proposal a few months later, Miles explained that the diagonal cross was preferable because "it avoided the religious objection about the cross (from the Jews & many Protestant sects), because it did not stand out so conspicuously as if the cross had been placed upright thus." The diagonal cross was, Miles argued, "more Heraldric [sic] than Ecclesiastical, it being the 'saltire' of Heraldry, and significant of strength and progress (from the Latin salto, to leap)." [1]​

AFAIK, Miles' only connection to the "Stainless Banner" is that it incorporated his design of the Battle Flag in the canton.

__________

[1] John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 5-6.

 

[CMWinkler]

Perhaps this is helpful? The book covers more than just the USA flag history.

Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America ...
By George Henry Preble

View attachment 77151
View attachment 77152

He has a footnote. Do you know the source?

 

[CMWinkler]

Here are pages 18-19 from The Flags of the Confederacy by Devereaux Cannon. I understood Thompson supported the Stainless Banner and editorialized it in racist terms.

 

[MajGenl.Meade]

That footnote is:

So Preble got it from Thompson

I should have given the link - sorry. The e-book is freely downloadable

https://books.google.com/books?id=v...ge&q="as a people we are fighting to"&f=false

Part of his editorial that Preble referred to as "repeated below"

 

[MajGenl.Meade]

Yes, your docs above show that Miles did indeed design the battle flag and he stood up and supported the idea of incorporating the battle flag as the union (ironic isn't it???) on the plain white field.