The Southern Cross: The Story of the Confederacy's First Battleflag

Streaming video - 2005

This production chronicles the history of the design and creation of a flag that became the prototype for all of the St. Andrews Cross battle flags carried by Confederate armed forces. The hand-stitched silk flag with gold painted stars was borne by the Fifth Company of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans through the Battles of Shiloh and Perryville. The story of the flag’s creation will surprise and delight audiences everywhere. The flag was designed and made for the army after the first battle of Manassas as a military necessity and wholly without the authority or even the knowledge of the Confederate government. Mary Henry Lyon Jones of Richmond, Virginia stitched the flag together. After Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Jo...hnston approved Ms. Jones’s flag, sewing circles of more than four hundred women in Richmond sewed 120 flags made from Ms. Jones’s original design. Features a collection of photographic images of the officers and men of the Fifth Company. Action scenes were filmed at Waveland Historic Site in Lexington, Kentucky depicting Mary Henry Lyon Jones being given the design for the flag and stitching the prototype along with the Richmond sewing circles stitching the 120 battle flags to be given to the army in November 1861.. more