A design for another national flag, the third during the four-year history of the Confederacy, was being considered as early as the fall of 1864.

After an extended controversy over the incorporation of the Beauregard battle flag in the canton corner, the Congress adopted the second national flag of the Confederate States of America on May 1, 1863.

Thurmond was but one of many Americans who opposed the goals of the burgeoning civil rights movement. Segregationists found the battle flag to be a convenient symbol in their attempt to resist federal power as represented by such U.S. Supreme Court decisions as Morgan v. Virginia (1946), which desegregated interstate public transportation, and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), which desegregated public schools. But from the perspective of African Americans, it also symbolized a history of racially motivated violence, such as lynching.

The Stars and Bars, though popular with many Confederate officials, did not capture the imagination of the general public who seemed disappointed that their new nation was symbolized by such an unimaginative emblem. The design of the Stars and Bars was an unfortunate compromise. It looked too much like the American flag for some Confederates, and not enough like it to others.4

Beauregard, who had already anticipated the need for a new battle flag, wrote to William P. Miles, chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee of the Confederate Congress, suggesting the adoption of a new national flag. Failing in that effort, Beauregard asked his Louisiana officers to suggest some possible new designs for a battle flag.

A few weeks later, on April 30, the Virginia Convention of 1861 adopted a new state flag modeled on a different Confederate symbol: the Bonnie Blue Flag. Featuring a single white star on a field of blue, the Bonnie Blue Flag had flown over the short-lived Republic of West Florida, whose territory was eventually divided into the Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The flag had flown over Mississippi’s capitol when the state seceded in January 1861, and a song, written in its honor, was soon popular across the South. Virginia’s flag, meanwhile, featured the commonwealth’s seal in a white circle against a blue background.

The swirling clouds of dust obscured them; their uniforms were similar; and their national colors were indistinguishable on that hot, sultry day with little or no wind to waft them.

Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nation, the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia.

When the Confederate Army of the Shenandoah, under Joseph E. Johnston, and the Confederate Army of the Potomac, under Pierre G. T. Beauregard, met Union forces at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, their troops flew an assortment of flags, both state and national. (States’ rights was a founding principle of the Confederacy and influenced the attachment many units had to their state flags. Some Virginia and North Carolina soldiers refused to fly anything but their state flags.) The Stars and Bars’ resemblance to the U.S. flag, combined with similarities between the two sides’ uniforms and the general confusion of battle, contributed to an incident at First Manassas in which Confederate forces fired on a Confederate infantry brigade commanded by Jubal A. Early. Shortly after, Johnston and Beauregard resolved to establish a new, sufficiently distinctive flag for their troops, and they consulted one of Beauregard’s aides, the same William Miles who had opposed the original flag in the first place.

The 40th Mississippi Volunteer Infantry Regiment adopted one of the most unusual of all the Confederate battle flags. The regiment's rectangular flag was a field of red, bordered in yellow, with thirteen white five-pointed stars and a white crescent. (figure 4)

As the three Confederate officers were considering the design of the battle flag, Cabell indicated that Beauregard's design would be easier and quicker to produce than Johnston's and there would be no waste of cloth in a square or rectangular flag. Johnston, though he outranked Beauregard, accepted Beauregard's design and directed that the new battle flag be a perfect square. (figure 3)

When Beauregard assumed command of the Confederate forces in western Tennessee in early 1862, he found that General Leonidas K. Polk had already adopted a flag "similar to the one I had designed for the Army of the Potomac." Beauregard replaced Polk’s flag with his battle flag.

The second national flag had hardly been adopted before objections were raised about both its design and its shape. To some critics, it looked like a flag of surrender; others said it looked like a “big table cloth.” The Confederate Navy also complained that it was easily soiled, especially on the new steam vessels which the Confederacy had recently secured.17

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The first regimental flag of the 11th Mississippi Infantry was a Stars and Bars with the stars in the canton arranged in the shape of a Latin cross. After its assignment to the Army of Northern Virginia, the regiment adopted the Beauregard design.12

3. Southern Historical Society Papers (cited hereafter as SHSP, volume number, date for the first entry, and page number), 38, 253-256; E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (LSU Press, 1950), 117-119

This flag, which almost immediately became known as the Stars and Bars, was raised at Montgomery on March 4, 1861. (figure 2)

The variety of designs and shapes pictured in the collection of captured Confederate battle flags returned to southern states several years after the war, indicates that Confederate commanders exercised the option of designing and adopting their own flags. Most of the Arkansas battle flags pictured in the collection are blue. There were also rectangular variations of the Beauregard flag, as well as square flags with saltiers of varying widths with different configurations and numbers of stars.

“It was not the flag of the Confederacy, but simply the banner—the battle flag—of the Confederate soldier. As such it should not share in the condemnation which our cause received, or suffer from its downfall…

In 1880, in another lost cause, Carlton McCarthy wrote a brief history of the Beauregard battle flag and advanced this explanation of its origin and expressed this hope for its future:

Although the Beauregard battle flag was perhaps the emblem most widely used by southern troops, it was never made the official battle flag of the Confederate Army and there were many other battle flags of varying styles, shapes, and colors used by Rebel forces during the Civil War.

Despite its implicit connection to white supremacy, the battle flag was rarely used to promote racial violence prior to World War II (1939–1945), a fact the historian John Coski attributes to southerners’ treatment of the symbol as “sacred.” Beginning late in the 1930s, however, two things happened more or less at the same time: first, the battle flag became a fixture of pop culture, representing the generic Old South of the film Gone with the Wind (1939); and second, it was adopted by the third incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. Previously, the Klan had displayed only the United States flag during its marches, but as the organization was pushed by law enforcement out of such Midwestern redoubts as Indiana and back into the South, it garbed itself in more explicitly southern symbolism.

Cabell issued orders to quartermasters throughout the Army of the Potomac to provide the new battle flag to all their fighting units.

In September 1862, when Beauregard was reassigned to Charleston, he substituted the same banner for the state flags, then principally used in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.11

There were no lobbyists stealing through the corridors of the capitol urging its adoption. Born in battle and bravery, it was the banner that rallied their comrades during the fearsome disarray of combat, when men were disoriented, and death was all about. The veterans, and their sons and grandsons, hoped that the battle flag could escape the bitterness and controversy attached to secession and Civil War.

The Confederate battle flag was never adopted as a national flag, although over the course of the war it was incorporated into two such banners. The second national flag was adopted on May 1, 1863. Rectangular with a white field and a canton containing the battle flag, it was designed to look substantially different from the Stars and Stripes. (Public opinion had shifted since 1861. Matthew Fontaine Maury called the Stars and Bars a “servile imitation” of the Stars and Stripes.) However, the “Stainless Banner,” as the new flag was called, introduced another problem. In the rare instance where it was used on the battlefield, it looked too much like a flag of truce, so on March 4, 1865, a vertical red strip along the fly edge was added, making it the “Blood-Stained Banner.”

2. On Brooke's resolution, see E. Merton Coulter, “The Flags of the Confederacy,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 37 (1953), 187-199, and Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 38 (1910), 251-252; for details on the adoption of various Confederate flags see Devereaux D. Cannon, Jr., The Flags of the Confederacy, An Illustrated History (St. Lukes Press, 1988); Howard M. Madaus and Robert D. Needham, The Battle Flags of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee (Milwaukee Public Museum, 1976); Mrs. Lucile Lange Dufner, “The Flags of the Confederate States of America,” (MA Thesis, University of Texas, 1944); Richard Rollins, (ed.), The Returned Battle Flags (Rank and File Publications, Redondo Beach, CA edition, 1995); and Alan K. Sumrall, Battle Flags of Texans in the Confederacy (Eakin Press, Austin, Texas, 1995); for a study of flags in American history, see Whitney Smith, The Flag Book of the United States (William Morrow & Co., 1970) and Flags Through the Ages and Across the World (McGraw-Hill, 1975)

In early July 1861, General P.G.T. Beauregard directed his quartermaster to issue to each of his troops a red flannel badge to be worn on the left shoulder. Those red badges would distinguish Confederate soldiers from Federal soldiers whose uniforms were similar in style, color, and markings.

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In the meantime, the battle flag slowly transformed into an important national symbol independent of the national flags. For a time it was referred to as “Beauregard’s flag,” and when Beauregard’s and Johnston’s armies combined into a new Army of Northern Virginia in March 1862, it became closely associated with that force and its longtime commander, Robert E. Lee. As the Army of Northern Virginia became an important national symbol, so did the battle flag. Confederate nationhood was not independent of Lee’s army and its success—as suggested by Johnston’s distinction between peace and war flags—but, in fact, dependent upon it.

Beauregard and some other officers urged the Confederate Congress to adopt the new design as the national flag of the Confederacy, but the Congress declined to do so.

The Confederate battle flag, initially authorized for units of the Confederate armed forces during the American Civil War (1861–1865), has become one of the most recognized, misunderstood, and controversial symbols in American history. Originally designed as a Confederate national flag by William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, it was rejected by the Confederate Congress but subsequently adopted by the Confederate army, which needed a banner that was easily distinguishable from the United States flag. The battle flag transformed into a national symbol as the Army of Northern Virginia, with which it was closely associated, also became an important symbol. It even was incorporated into the Confederacy’s second and third national flags. Following the war, proponents of the Lost Cause used the battle flag to represent Southern valor and honor, although it also was implicitly connected to white supremacy. In the mid-twentieth century, the battle flag simultaneously became ubiquitous in American culture while, partly through the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan, becoming increasingly tied to racial violence and intimidation. African Americans conflated the battle flag to opposition to the civil rights movement, while neo-Confederates argued that its meaning had to do with states’ rights and southern identity, not racial hatred. The political and social lines of dispute over the flag remain much the same at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

During the Civil War Centennial (1961–1965), the flag was widely used not simply in the context of what it meant during the Civil War, but what it meant in the twentieth century. When Virginia governor J. Lindsay Almond proposed that the centennial be used to emphasize “the basic underlying principles in defense of which the war was fought,” the politics of the civil rights movement were most explicitly linked with the politics of the Civil War, with the battle flag the symbolic link.

The first national flag of the Confederate States of America was adopted at the Montgomery convention. After the delegates had established the Confederacy, a special committee was appointed to design a flag and a seal for the new nation.

Beauregard asked his officers to study the movement through their field glasses to see if they could identify the approaching army. They were finally identified as friendly forces, but during those agonizing moments of delay and indecision, some Confederate troops fired on their comrades approaching from the left.5

Johnston's hope for secrecy was dashed when he arranged for about seventy-five women in Richmond to begin making the new flags. The new design could be seen all over the Confederate capital the day after its adoption.

Johnston, the ranking Confederate officer, ordered all military units to use the flags of their states. But only Virginia had supplied her troops with their state flag. The Confederate officers were then determined to design and adopt a battle flag that would be clearly recognizable.6

Incorporated into Mississippi's state flag in 1894, the Beauregard battle flag has been swept up in the passions of modern politics and racial discord and is now, in 2000, the focus of an intense public discourse.

Although the chairman personally considered the American flag a symbol of oppression and tyranny, the committee's recommended design retained “a suggestion of the old Stars and Stripes.”3

The eleven seceding states, plus Missouri and Kentucky, are represented in the constellation of thirteen stars in the Confederate flag. The other two states, Maryland and Delaware, did not secede.1

After lengthy consideration was given to various designs, Johnston and Quartermaster General William L. Cabell met with Beauregard at his headquarters in Virginia on September 1861 to finalize the design of the new battle flag. Johnston proposed a flag in the shape of an ellipse with a red field and a blue saltier (a diagonal cross, often called a St. Andrew's cross) containing a white star for each Confederate state.

The six southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida met February 4, 1861, in convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and established the Confederate States of America.

Congressman Miles found Beauregard's color combination to be contrary to the laws of heraldry and suggested a blue saltier, with white stars, on a field of red. Deferring to Miles' knowledge of heraldry, Beauregard accepted his modifications and included them in his final proposal to Johnston and Cabell.8

The new flag was a white field, its length double its width, with the Beauregard battle flag in the canton corner. One of the first prominent public displays of the second national flag was at the funeral of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. The new flag draped his coffin and soon became known as the Stainless Banner.16

In emphasizing the positive aspects of the South and especially the antebellum social order, the Lost Cause—and with it the battle flag—also came to represent white supremacy for many. As far back as 1863, when the mostly white second national flag was adopted, a newspaper in Savannah, Georgia, praised it as “emblematical” of the Confederacy’s fight “to maintain the Heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race.” Such a literal reading of that flag’s design was rare, and no equivalent reading of the battle flag’s design has been made. But between the 1890s and the 1930s, similar meanings were nevertheless gathered up into its folds, along with many others, such as patriotism, valor, and states’ rights.

Miles resurrected what had been his preference for the national flag, a design of his own that featured a blue saltire, or X shape, with a white border and white stars (again, one for each state) on a field of red. The Committee on the Flag and Seal had rejected it the first time, suggesting that it looked “like a pair of suspenders,” and now the members rejected it again. Johnston and Beauregard decided to use it anyway, with Beauregard proposing to Johnston two Confederate flags: “a peace or parade flag, and a war flag to be used only on the field of battle.” This second flag, the so-called battle flag, would be the one Miles designed, and the two generals and their lieutenants met at Fairfax Court House in September 1861 to work out the details. At Johnston’s urging, a square design was adopted, and each branch of the army was assigned a different size: forty-eight inches square for infantry, thirty-six inches square for artillery, and thirty inches square for cavalry.

12. For many illustrations, see Rollins, Returned Flags, Madaus and Needham, Battle Flags, and Sumrall, Battle Flags of Texans

But history has not placed the battle flag in a safe or secure place, above or beyond the enduring legacy of slavery and suppression, of insurrection and disunion.

General Bradley T. Johnson, whose Maryland regiment fought with the Confederacy at Manassas, had seen a watercolor drawing of the original design and described the flag several years later as a red square, on which was displayed a blue St. Andrew's cross, bordered with white, and charged with thirteen white, five-pointed stars. He referred to this design as Beauregard's battle flag.9

The strong emotions generated by the Confederacy's icons, especially its flag, sparked a controversy which produced a wave of letters to the editors of southern newspapers. One writer to the Southern Illustrated News objected to any change in the national colors. He had favored the adoption of the Stars and Stripes by the Confederacy back in 1861. If there had to be a change, however, he recommended the incorporation of the Beauregard battle flag in the new national flag.

Brooke, and several other delegates, praised the Stars and Stripes and some even suggested that the CSA adopt the American flag with no change at all. However, the patriotic fervor that swept through the convention forced Brooke to withdraw his resolution.2

By the 1950s and 1960s, and despite efforts by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to limit its use, the battle flag was everywhere in the South. It became an unofficial symbol of the University of Mississippi and was especially popular among professional stock car drivers and their fans. It was incorporated into the state flags of Mississippi, in 1894, and Georgia, in 1956. Georgia subsequently redesigned the state flag in 2001, de-emphasizing the battle flag, and in 2003 adopted a flag design that closely mimics the Confederacy’s first national flag. As African Americans entered the political life of the United States again after years of Jim Crow laws in the South, they often opposed the use of the battle flag. The Afro-American, a newspaper published in Baltimore and Richmond, warned its readers that the ubiquitous flags were “an attempt to popularize the South’s opposition to Civil Rights,” and later compared the symbolism of the battle flag to Nazi propaganda.

When it became known that a new battle flag would soon be adopted, the high command was inundated with designs and drafts. Of the many different designs and configurations, the basic pattern that appeared most often was a cross, of various shapes, emblazoned with stars. The colors of red, white, and blue were also prominent.7

In 1863, the issue of a new national flag resurfaced in the southern press and in the Confederate Congress. There was increasing sentiment among the general public to replace the Stars and Bars.

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Both Johnston and Beauregard were anxious to have new flags prepared before the next military engagement. They cautioned Cabell to keep the design and shape of the new emblem a secret to prevent Federal forces from counterfeiting the flag and causing more confusion on the field of battle.

By the end of the Civil War, the battle flag had become imbued with a religious and patriotic meaning hinted at in Union general and Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s description of “flags made sacred by heroic service and sacrifice of noble manhood,” flags—in this instance at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House—that were “battle-torn and smoke-dimmed, draped in sorrow, but some of them blazoned with a crimson deeper than their red, touching the stars.” Following the war, organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the United Confederate Veterans cultivated this idea of the battle flag as an important symbol of the Confederacy and integrated it into their Lost Cause view of the war. The Lost Cause portrayed the South as heroic—particularly its generals and its white women—while downplaying the role of slavery in causing and justifying the war. For some, this view served to reconcile North and South by acknowledging Union victory while glorifying what Ellen Glasgow, in her novel The Battle-Ground (1902), described as “the daily sacrifice, the very poverty and cold and hunger [that were] bound up and made one with the tattered flag.”

It is unlikely that the third national flag ever flew over any Confederate troops or civilian agencies. In a brief sketch of the flags of the Confederacy, General Bradley T. Johnson wrote: “I never saw this flag, nor have I seen a man who did see it.”19

By the twenty-first century, the flag had shed the connotations of sacredness it had held during Reconstruction (1865–1877), as well as its association only with the relatively narrow tenets of the Lost Cause, and instead had come to represent broad regional, political, and racial identities. As such, it has often been highly controversial—as in the arguments over its use in the Georgia state flag—but its meanings not easily parsed.

This article is penned to accomplish, if possible, two things: first to preserve the little history connected with the origin of the flag; and second, to place the battle flag in a place of security, as it were, separated from all the political significance which attached to the Confederate flag and depending for its future place solely upon the deeds of the armies which bore it amid hardships untold to many victories.”20

The Rogers design slightly modified the second national flag. To the second national flag, Rogers added a broad red perpendicular bar on the fly end. The dimensions of the third national flag would be length two thirds the width. The Confederate Congress adopted the third national flag on March 4, 1865, just over a month before Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

In the collective memory of White southerners, the failure of their forebears to win the independence of the Confederate States of America is known as the Lost Cause, and the Beauregard battle flag is the most enduring symbol of that cause. In the receding memories of the Confederate veterans, who adopted it as their official insignia, the battle flag was the soldier's banner, not the colors of the Confederacy.

1. For the best one-volume history of the American Civil War, see James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (Ballantine Books, 1989); for a more extensive history, see Shelby Foote's three-volume study, Civil War, A Narrative (Vintage Books Edition, 1986). Details on secession and Civil War in Mississippi may be found in William Barney, The Secession Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi (Princeton University Press, 1974); Percy L. Rainwater, Mississippi, Storm Center of Secession (Otto Claitor, Baton Rouge, 1938); John K. Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi (Louisiana State University Press, 1943); and Edwin C. Bearss, “The Armed Conflict, 1861-1865,” Vol. 1, 447-492, in Richard A. McLemore, (ed) A History of Mississippi (University Press of Mississippi, 1973)

The flag committee was swamped with so many models and designs that the committee chairman, William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, lost track of the number. When Miles made his report March 5, he explained to the convention that the committee had divided the proposed designs into two classes: 1) variations of the American flag, and 2) highly original and elaborate designs.

They were soon joined by Texas, and after the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, they were joined by Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Virginia. Missouri and Kentucky were prevented from seceding by the presence of federal troops, but both states sent unofficial representatives to the Confederate Congress and both supplied troops to the Confederate Army.

After it was learned that both Federal and Confederate troops wore badges of red flannel, officials of both armies accused their opponents of using the markings and colors of the other side as a military strategem.

About 4 o'clock that afternoon, Beauregard looked across the Warrenton turnpike, which ran through the valley between the Confederates and the Federals, who occupied the higher elevation. He saw a column of troops moving toward his left and the Federals right. He was anxious to learn if they were his troops or the enemy's.

Still, even as it became an important national symbol, the various meanings contained by the battle flag were complicated and sometimes ironic. Miles’s original design was inspired by a South Carolina secession flag, which featured a blue St. George’s cross, populated by fifteen white stars, on a field of red. In the upper left were a white crescent and a white palmetto. However, a Confederate Jew complained that the cross invested the flag with inappropriate religious symbolism, and Miles replaced it with what in heraldic terms is known as a saltire. Ironically, the X-shaped saltire is identical to a St. Andrew’s cross, named for the Christian martyr and patron saint of Scotland. In that way, a flag that was intended to be secular took on powerful religious associations for some. Meanwhile, a flag not originally intended to be a national symbol has come to powerfully represent, more than any of the national flags, the Confederate nation and its varied and sometimes volatile associations, including slavery. Finally, during the twentieth century, the battle flag was often mistakenly referred to as the Stars and Bars, linking it to the first national flag, whose design Miles had found so objectionable. A flag that has come to symbolize Confederate independence is often called by the name of a flag designed to emphasize the Confederacy’s connection to the United States.

Beauregard had suggested in his letter to Congressman Miles a square or rectangular design consisting of a blue field with a red cross containing gold stars. It appears from that correspondence that Beauregard favored either a Latin cross (a crucifix) or a Greek cross (St. George's), rather than the diagonal cross of St. Andrew.

Walker Brooke, a Mississippi delegate, offered a resolution to instruct the committee to design a flag as similar as possible to the American flag, the Stars and Stripes. (figure 1)

Note: Mississippi retired the state flag with the Beauregard battle flag in 2020, twenty years after this article was published, and replaced it with the "In God We Trust" state flag.

The Confederate quartermaster ordered a model of the flag made and then contracted Constance Cary and her cousins Hetty and Jennie Cary—members of a refugee family from Baltimore then living in Richmond—to produce silk prototypes. (Constance Cary’s flag went to Confederate general Earl Van Dorn, Hetty Cary’s to Johnston, and Jennie Cary’s to Beauregard.) An additional 120 silk flags were sewn for the quartermaster by seventy-five Richmond women and issued to Beauregard’s and Johnston’s armies in October and November, with a formal presentation at Centreville, Virginia, on November 28, 1861. The silk flags were quickly replaced by those made of wool bunting, which was better suited for the field. Beauregard and Van Dorn were eventually transferred to the Western Theater, but their attempts to introduce the flag into the Confederate armies there were less successful. Still, by the end of the war, when Johnston and then another veteran of the East, John Bell Hood, were leading the defense of Atlanta and the Carolinas, the Confederate battle flag had become more common.

The Beauregard battle flag was very popular among the rank-and-file soldiers and among the people generally. It was eventually adopted in rectangular form as the naval jack by the Confederate Navy on May 26, 1863. A naval jack is a small flag displayed on a ship's bow to designate the vessel's nationality.13

On October 1, 1861, the Confederate War Department authorized the use of the new battle flag by the Army of the Potomac, which was later renamed the Army of Northern Virginia by General Robert E. Lee.10

The designer of the new flag and the prime mover in its adoption was Major Arthur L. Rogers who had been seriously wounded at Chancellorsville in May 1863. Rogers sent drafts of the flag to several naval and army officers, including Robert E. Lee, asking for their suggestions and comments.

David G. Sansing, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of history, University of Mississippi. This article was updated in September 2021.

And, the new national flag did not fly properly because of its shape and dimensions. To fly properly, the length of a flag should be no more than two thirds its width, rather than double its width as was the case with the second national flag.

19. SHSP, 24, 118; Bradley did note that Colonel Lewis Euker claimed to have seen a representation of the flag in December 1864, three months before its adoption.

The flag that flew over the Confederate capitol in Richmond did not conform to the dimensions specified in the statute of May 1, 1863. That flag had been modified to conform to the length “two thirds the width” specifications which allowed the flag to wave more gracefully.18

The war department did not direct other Confederate armies to adopt the new design although many of the Confederate armies east of the Mississippi River did eventually use the Beauregard flag.

Following the First Battle of Manassas, General Joseph E. Johnston, General G. W. Smith, General Beauregard, and other Confederate officers were determined that the fiasco at Manassas would not happen again.

In explaining the committee's recommendations, Miles said the basic colors red, white, and blue were retained. But rather than displaying red and white stripes, the Confederate flag displayed two red bars and one white bar. In the canton, or union corner, a star for each state was placed in a field of blue.

The Richmond newspaper explained to its readers the difficulty in identifying and recognizing the Stars and Bars at great distances, and endorsed a new design.15

The first Confederate national flag, which came to be known as the Stars and Bars, was rectangular with three horizontal bars alternating red, white, and red. In the upper left was a portion of blue and a circle of white stars representing each Confederate state—at first seven, then eleven, and finally thirteen (the last two were a gesture to the secessionist factions of Missouri and Kentucky).

This, in turn, helped to shape the meaning of the battle flag in American political and popular culture during the mid- to late-twentieth century. It became a symbol of the States’ Rights Democratic Party, nicknamed the Dixiecrats, which ran South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond for U.S. president in 1948. The Dixiecrats explicitly stood for what some considered to be the traditional values of the Confederacy—states’ rights and white supremacy—and although they lost the election, their use of the battle flag helped to associate it with those values. According to a newspaper account, Thurmond’s supporters in Richmond shouted the rebel yell and displayed what the newspaper mistakenly described as the “Stars and Bars.” In the meantime, Richmond store owners reported that sales of the battle flag during the summer and fall of 1948 equaled or surpassed sales of the Stars and Stripes.

Even with these distinctive red badges, the difficulty of identifying the opposing army especially at great distances created much anxiety and near catastrophe for the Confederates on July 21 at Manassas Junction, near Bull Run Creek, the first major battle of the Civil War.

In the spring of 1863, the Confederate Congress took up the issue of a new national flag. Although the editor of Richmond's Southern Illustrated News on March 12, 1863, chastised the Confederate Congress for wasting its time discussing the shapes and colors of flags while the war was raging and the southern economy was in disorder, he did admit that he detested the Stars and Bars because it resembled the Stars and Stripes.14

To African Americans and many White people, the Beauregard battle flag is also a symbol of the Lost Cause and a reminder that Black freedom was won only because the cause was lost. The flag was the emblem of slavery carried by soldiers in a war to maintain it, and the icon of hooded night riders who terrorized and firebombed African Americans in the name of White supremacy.