Lincoln Heritage Museum

Located on the campus of the only college named for Lincoln in his lifetime, the Lincoln Heritage Museum exhibits a rare and valuable collection of artifacts that tell the story of the life and times of Abraham Lincoln.

From Elmer to Bree: A Confederate Flag Saga by: Ron J. Keller, Director of the LHM

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In the wake of the recent shooting at the historic AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederate flag issue has again risen as a subject of great debate.   Is the Confederate flag an appropriate symbol to be represented on state flags as well as flying on capitol grounds?   Does such symbol represent hatred or heritage?  And how significant is a simple flag in defining our national identity?  Those questions now confront state legislators all across the South.  

One person then refused to wait for political action to take its course.  This past week, within the subsequent controversy over the proper display of the Confederate flag, a young woman named Bree Newsome climbed her way to the top of the flagpole of the South Carolina state capitol and removed the flag. While some cheered her on, authorities awaited at the bottom to arrest her for defacing a monument.  She is now facing criminal charges.  

We have been here before.  This debate and even Bree’s deed have antecedents.  In reality, the Confederate flag debate did not begin in recent years, but rather has its roots over 150 years ago in the opening months of the American Civil War.   It involves President Abraham Lincoln, an ardent patriot named Elmer Ellsworth, and the retrieval of the Confederate flag from atop a southern city.  

It must be realized that Washington D.C. lay geographically within the borders of Maryland, a state which remained in the Union but held Southern sympathies throughout the Civil War.   More significantly, just a few miles away across the Potomac River lay Virginia, the state which contained the capitol of the Confederacy.   President Lincoln did not need reminders that beginning in April 1861 half the country separated itself from the Union.  The White House lay under constant threats of possible attack from rebel armies fighting under the banner of the Confederacy.   The Confederate flag represented disunion, and from his upstairs office window, Lincoln could look out southward and witness in plain defiance the Confederate flag waving atop buildings in Arlington, Virginia. The sight of the Confederate flag and what it stood for immensely bothered the president.

Thus arrives the patriotic and energetic Elmer Ellsworth.   Following Lincoln’s call for troops in early 1861, the New York born Ellsworth raised and organized a regiment of Zouaves.   The young Ellsworth had lived in Illinois for a while before the war, had studied law at Lincoln’s feet in Springfield, and became a very close friend to the Lincoln family.   As a fixture in the Lincoln White House, he and the president would peer at the rebel flag flapping mockingly.   Just a symbol perhaps, but one which epitomized a cause—a cause in which Southerners were willing to kill and die for. 

On a fateful day in May 1861 Ellsworth and a few soldiers in his unit volunteered to enter Alexandria to seize the rail station and telegraph offices. While there, Ellsworth fixed his eyes on the flag atop the Marshall Hotel.   He decided to enter the hotel, then proceeded to bolt up the stairs, climbed up out of a window near the roof and snatched the flag.  On his way back down, he encountered the hotel owner who shot and killed Ellsworth, making him the first commissioned officer to be killed in the Civil War.  

Upon hearing the news, Lincoln mourned openly at the loss of his young friend.   Ellsworth body lay in state at the White House, and the president wrote to Elmer’s parents one of the most touching letters a chief executive has ever penned. Lincoln lauded the heroism of Ellsworth in capturing the flag, and how he “so gallantly gave his life,” not for himself, but his country.

Bree Newsome perhaps has never heard of Elmer Ellsworth, nor may she know that her actions have such similarity to Ellsworth’s fateful mission.   Perhaps Newsome will eventually be just a footnote in the history of the long saga of the Confederate flag.   But it also might be possible that her actions might culminate in a rallying moment.   For Lincoln, Ellsworth, and many others at the time, the flag represented more than a symbol.  And by taking it down from such a place of prominence in 1861 stood the hope that the nation could take another step towards reunion and healing.   Perhaps we need that reminder now in 2015 more than ever before.  

  1. lhm1865 posted this