In 1905, Congress passed a resolution directing the War Department to return captured Confederate flags to their respective states. The United Confederate Veterans published a record of these flags called The Flags of the Confederate Armies, containing colorized photographs and short descriptions of the units that bore them in battle.
Among them was the regimental flag of the 1st Regiment Georgia Volunteer Infantry, which played a role in the Western Virginia campaign of 1861. Two regiments bore that designation during the war. The first was led by Colonel James Newton Ramsey (1821-1870). Ramsey briefly took command of the Army of the Northwest after Robert S. Garnett was killed at Corrick’s Ford.
Here is the brief regimental history provided by the book:
Flag of the First Georgia Volunteer Infantry. This Regiment, commanded by Col. James N Ramsey, enlisted for twelve months, and organized at Macon, Ga., April 3, 1861; fought in West Virginia under General Robert S. Garnett, taking part in the Laurel Hill engagement, and the fights at Garrick’s Fork [Corrick’s Ford], Greenbrier River and Cheat Mountain.
In April, 1862, this regiment having served its period of enlistment disbanded. All the companies re-enlisted, however; four Companies forming the Twelfth Georgia Battalion of Artillery. Served around Charleston and in the Western Army until June, 1864, when it was armed as infantry and assigned to Gordon’s Georgia Brigade, with which it served around Richmond, in the valley, in Early’s Maryland campaign, around Petersburg and surrendered at Appomattox.
The flag was a modified Confederate national flag, the “stars and bars,” with nine stars, which was in use from May 18 to July 2, 1861. The book didn’t give any information about where it was captured, but the regiment had a rough time following the Battle of Corrick’s Ford, with several of its companies becoming lost in the wilderness.
According to George Winston Martin, author of “I Will Give Them One More Shot”: Ramsey’s First Regiment Georgia Volunteers (2011), the 9th Indiana Regiment captured the flag of the Washington Rifles, Company E, when they discovered it left behind in a wagon after the Battle of Corrick’s Ford.
These flags currently reside at the Georgia Capitol Museum in Atlanta.
Spirit of '61 