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Post by marklemon on Mar 30, 2009 21:39:18 GMT -5
You seem to insist on making me defend a position I never took. Again, I'll state my position in very clear, simple words: 1) The NOG flag was at the Alamo during the Feb23, to March 6, 1836 siege. 2) While not designed to be hoisted, but instead attached to a pole, this still does not preclude the POSSIBILITY of its being raised and flown, however briefly,at some point along the defensive perimeter. Can you state categorically that it was not? 3) The flag, before reaching the state of near-nothingness of the photo you reference, did indeed have stains on it, and they were much darker than in the photos where the flag had nearly crumbled to dust. 4) Why this fact so troubles you I cannot fathom. After all, I never said that they definitely were blood, just stains of unknown origin. What's the problem with that? It is as if the mere presence of any kind of stains on the flag somehow endangers your position that it was never flown, or proves that it was flown and captured in the battle. I have said nothing of the sort. Just that that was a possibility, nothing more, noting less. If you can state categorically that it was not, then you have power far greater than the rest of us mere mortals. If not, you are just speculating like the rest of us, who have "informed opinion" as valid as the next guy's. Sorry, but your incontestable points are nothing of the sort. The flag could have been, if only temporaily, flown above the walls during the siege, and have escaped the notice of Sanchez-Navarro. As stated previously, it might have been up for only a short time, and when SN made his observation, it was not flying. Also the fringe being in "perfect" shape does not prove that it was never flown, as the fringe is actually hardier than the rest of the flag. A temporary appearance by the flag would not damage or otherwise disfigure the fringe. Unless someone is given the opportunity to forensically examine the flag for trace blood, you cannot state that there are no traces of blood on it. That's just not responsible. All you can responsibly state is that to your eyes, there are no blood stains on it. As you know, or should know, such stains fade radically over time. I have a fragment of linen bandage which was found in my old family home place in Georgia, with unmistakable bloodstains on it. The house was used as a field hospital after the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864. The stains, however, are faded to about 10 - 20 % of their original darkness. Now, I am not saying that the NOG stains are in fact blood, but they COULD be, we just cannot say either way with certainty, unless and until tests can be run. But this will almost surely never happen.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Mar 30, 2009 21:42:20 GMT -5
As someone without a horse in this race, after looking at the photos in Lord's book and "The Texans," I don't see anything that looks like blood or battle damage to the flag. I can see where the blotches in the "Time to Stand" image might look like bloodstains, but after comparing them against the "Texans" image they don't seem to be anything other than slight variations in color that reproduced poorly in the Lord book.
If anyone can scan and post the other color image that's been mentioned, it would be appreciated.
Interesting discussion, guys.
Jim
Jim
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Post by marklemon on Mar 30, 2009 21:50:50 GMT -5
Jim,. Surely you can see that the "Texans" photo is taken much, much later than the "Lord" photo, and that in the Texans, the flag is severely deteriorated to the point of being about 40% GONE. In the Texans photo, it has a white backing cloth which fills in the missing portions. The flag has undergone so much deterioration in the later photo, that a clear opinion cannot be reached regarding this question.
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Post by garyzaboly on Mar 30, 2009 22:17:24 GMT -5
I've also seen very old bloodstains---including a piece of white cloth that had been dipped into a pool of blood 237 years ago, and the blood was still very dark...very dark brown in fact. Old blood obviously works differently on different fabrics, but even so: what may otherwise suggest a blood drop is not necessarily and always a blood drop. I don't see bloodstains on the Greys flag. I'm sure if you take many old flags that never saw the heat of battle you would be able to "see" stains resembling blood, and even bulletholes, on them. It wasn't my purpose to get you so inexplicably upset by simply strongly disagreeing on some points. Good debate is healthy for historians.
The best I can add now is to close by reiterating what I stated at the very outset of this exchange, without getting into stains and holes and arguments about silk and canvas and photographs etc. The pure facts of my observation seem incontestable since the only other evidences being offered to counter it are mere hunches and suppositions. This is what I wrote and I stick by it until evidence comes forth to the contrary:
I've drawn the New Orleans Greys flag above the Alamo walls, too---quite often in fact---but I am now convinced that only one flag flew over the walls, and that is the one depicted by Sanchez-Navarro, viz., two stars in the central white of a tricolor field (and mentioned by Almonte in his diary). Travis' letter of February 24 confirms this: "our FLAG [my emphasis] still waves proudly from our walls." It was not 19th century military custom to wave more than a single flag from a fort. Doubtless there have been exceptions to this rule, and in field encampments it wasn't uncommon, but in terms of a fortress the Greys flag was a unit color and not a garrison flag. And Santa Anna's point in sending the Greys flag, rather than the tricolor one, to Mexico City is obvious: the tricolor represented the Mexican states of Texas and Coahuila, as well as displaying Mexico's national colors, whereas the Greys flag was 100% "North American," and signified the territorial "piracy," as he would have put it, of those "invaders." What happened to the tricolor remains unknown, but of course bears investigating.
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Post by marklemon on Mar 30, 2009 22:21:51 GMT -5
It is interesting to see you use such terms as "incontestable facts...." Where were these incontestable facts in 1994, when you showed the NOG flag and the 2-star tricolor in Hardin's Texian Iliad....in 1998, when you showed the NOG flag and the 2-star tricolor for Davis' Three Roads to the Alamo....... then, in 2000, when you showed no flag other than the 2-star tricolor in The Gates of the Alamo....... and then in 2004, when you showed the 2-star tricolor and a flag which never existed, ( a star and stripe flag with the word "TEXAS" placed in an arc above the star) in Dr Winders' Sacrificed at the Alamo? Weren't these facts as "incontestable" in 1998, 2000, and 2004 as they are now? Or did you only recently discover them to be such? I can certainly understand that ongoing research can change one's position, but still, it is just interesting to see you make such clear statements of "fact,"as if no question can or should exist as to their truthfulness, when you yourself have clearly, and recently, been unclear on which flag, or flags, flew, and which did not. And now that you have made your mind up, you'll hear no opinion to the contrary. "There is none so strident as the newly converted...."
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Post by garyzaboly on Mar 30, 2009 22:31:23 GMT -5
I painted that cover for SACRIFICED AT THE ALAMO in 1988...when I knew far far less than I do now. It was not intended as a book cover: it was a painting sold through a gallery to famed Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, who ran off a number of prints for his friends in office and elsewhere. It was an honor to see Bruce Winders choose it for that cover, replete with errors though the image was. And I freely admit that.
Yes, beginning with BLOOD OF NOBLE MEN, I decided to leave out the Greys flag from a position over the walls, after being miseld by earlier historians. Admittedly it took a while for me to put two and two together...and to see that often the answers are staring us in the face--- and we can't see them.
The compound drawing in Davis' book came from TEXIAN ILIAD---drawn in 1993, before I saw the light, so to speak, of all the evidence.
I remain open-minded about most of the related issues. And I appreciate this forum in which to express my views in the hope that the truth---the common goal of all historians---will be reached. Without rancor.
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Post by marklemon on Mar 30, 2009 22:31:52 GMT -5
It wasn't my purpose to get you so inexplicably upset by simply strongly disagreeing on some points. Good debate is healthy for historians. This is bordering on the absurd. If you simply go back and actually read my earlier posts, you'll see that I clearly stated the following: " The possibility exists, of course, that the two-star tricolor WAS the Travis flag, and that it was the one flown over the church as the "Flag of the Alamo." In fact, I have chosen to depict this in my book, as , after all, it is the ONLY documented flag to have flown over the church, at that spot, during this time. It's just the most responsible choice an historical artist can make." Do you not see that this statement is in virtual agreement with your position? The difference seems to me that, beyond those things we know, I allow for possibilities and you do not. Simple as that. I wish I had your sense of clarity and assurance. I am not "upset" in the slightest, and the only thing that is "inextricable" is how, or why, you cannot read these things I am writing, and accept that we are closer to agreeing than we are to disagreeing.
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Post by stuart on Mar 31, 2009 0:59:24 GMT -5
Speaking as someone who has been writing military history for longer than I care to think about, far less admit, I do hate it when folks criticise things I said or wrote years ago when I have since modified those views - and published something quite different...
In arguing over the presence or otherwise of stains of unknown origin, we're perhaps losing sight of the real argument as to whether the Greys' flag was flown over the Alamo.
I'll stick my neck out on this one and say that no it was not. It was an infantry colour made from silk, not a flag, it was never designed far less intended to be flown from a flag-pole. There are plenty of precedents from the English Civil War to the American Civil War of troops temporarily planting their regimental colours in the parapet of trenches on the day of battle - still attached to the staff, which is why I discussed the practicalities of attaching said staff to the Alamo walls way back up this thread. It is possible that if the Greys were assigned a particular stretch of wall they may well have planted their colours in the middle of it while physically lining it. Whether they might have done so in the awful dawn of March 6 is a different matter.
Either way, I cannot recall a single instance of an infantry colour being bent on to a flag pole and flown over a fortress.
There is another practical point to consider. The ordinary way of managing flags is that they are lowered at sunset and raised again at daybreak. There are precedents for besieged fortresses leaving their flag flying night and day to avoid any confusion as to whether they were surrendering at dusk, but either way the flag flying over the Alamo on March 6 was either already flying there over-night, or at the very least bent on to the halyard ready to be run up at a moment's notice. As we've discussed above, a silk flag like the Greys' one simply wouldn't have survived that sort of treatment and nor would there have been time to get it up on the morning of March 6. If it was flown at all, then as Herb suggests, it was carried on its own staff to the walls by the Greys themselves.
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Post by garyzaboly on Mar 31, 2009 5:55:01 GMT -5
Jim, thanks for posting that photo of the interior of the Museo Artilleria---that's what Kevin Young had sent me years ago, and even though it's a xerox of a xerox copy, what it shows is maddeningly fascinating: the Hidalgo Room, full of captured flags. The room was created in 1878, but according to one source, most of the flags "were burned or discarded around 1917 when the old Museum of Artillery was dismantled. Many of its contents were destroyed, among them the battle flags. Most of the flags were in shreds even then." The source mentions the surviving American ones (in 1965 anyway) as being Greys flag, the flag of the Galveston Invincibles, and two Texas flags (one with a single star and two bars) captured near Angustura during the Mexican War. Other colors had been captured at "Refugio, Coleto Creek, Goliad, Copora, Villa Gonzalez, San Patricio, Agua Dulce and other places," and are evidently among the ones lost or destroyed. But the picture is clear as a bell in one respect: there in upper foreground is the Greys flag, hanging quietly...and one wonders about all the others we can barely make out. To add a postcriptum to the speculation about the Greys flag: all of the historians who saw it, from J. C. Hefter to Walter Lord and beyond, never mentioned blood stains or bulletholes. Of course that's a can of worms likely never to be resealed.
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Post by Kevin Young on Mar 31, 2009 8:04:56 GMT -5
Wow-look what you miss when you go to sleep!
Jim-thanks for posting my poor copy of the image of the Greys flag, which is probably the earlest photographic image of it that I know of. And thanks to Gary for finding the copy of the copy sent him years ago...
That image comes from Seis Siglos de Historica Grafica de Mexico 1325-1925 by Gustavo Casasola. Volume II. This is the 4th edition, published in Mexico in 1971. The copy I found was at the library of Trinity University in San Antonio. If someone can find a copy of this book and scane the image, it would be great!
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Post by TRK on Mar 31, 2009 8:28:27 GMT -5
If someone can find a copy of this book and scane the image, it would be great! Not only the image, but any captioning. I had access to Casasola's complete set years ago, and copied much stuff in it, but missed the captured flags photo. Let me throw in a comment, FWIW. In December 1975 I was at the Museo Nacional de Historia at Chapultepec, and stood about two feet in front of the N.O. Greys banner, with just the glass of the case between me and it. I didn't take a photo of it, because it wasn't permitted, and there was a soldier with an M14 standing a few yards away. But my strong impression at the time was that the banner was in remarkably good preservation, and had evidently been heavily restored. If anything, it resembled the version in A Time to Stand, but cleaner. The Time-Life The Texans book was published around the same time, and the color photo of the banner, in a dilapidated state, blew my mind. It looked nothing like the relatively complete banner on display at Chapultepec. Tom Lindley, in Alamo Traces, has an interesting section on the New Orleans Greys banner, and he basically states that Texas would be getting a raw deal if it ever swapped its captured Mexican flags to get the N.O. flag back, because only a very small percentage of it is original. It would answer a lot of questions if the entire history of the flag while in Mexican custody were known.
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Post by TRK on Mar 31, 2009 9:26:19 GMT -5
Robert Maberry has the illustration in his book, Texas Flags but it would be worth it to have it posted here. He goes into some detail on the id of each flag. Kevin (or anybody else), if you have that book and have the time, could you post here the i.d.s of those flags in the lithograph? It's killing me not knowing what the ones labeled "Fayette" and "Westward Ho!!" were. Thanks, Tom
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Post by stuart on Mar 31, 2009 9:57:35 GMT -5
There are a couple of clues in the list of places where they were supposedly taken: "Refugio, Coleto Creek, Goliad, Copora,(Copano?) Villa Gonzalez, San Patricio, Agua Dulce and other places,"
There’s a probably a bit of rhetoric here in that Urrea reported taking a flag at San Patricio but didn’t mention taking one at Agua Dulce, while Coleto Creek and Goliad are presumably one and the same. Its possible that this was just a way of saying they were taken in texas in 1836 rather than at those specific places
However, that being said. We know that Grant had the 1824 tricolour and it would have been sensible for him to have displayed it when he went south of the Rio Grande. If so the one taken at San Patricio probably belonged to Tom Pearson’s Company, which largely came from New Orleans.
I would suggest that the “FAYETTE” one – which we can only see folded – is actually LAFAYETTE as in the second battalion of Fannin’s regiment, which was presumably taken at Coleto Creek. There are one or two descriptions of other flags which may have been carried by Fannin’s men, but I don’t think any of them match those illustrated.
The flag taken at Copano was presumably that of the Nashville Volunteers, who you’ll recall found the Mexican Army waiting for them on the dockside and surrendered promptly enough to avoid charges of having borne arms on Mexican soil. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I’ve a gut feeling that theirs could have been the Westward Ho flag. The motto suggests it belonged to a pre-organised American company
Mention of Refugio may suggest at least one flag was taken from Ward’s Georgia Rattlers but none of those illustrated springs out.
Any idea what Villa Gonzalez refers to?
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Post by TRK on Mar 31, 2009 10:10:42 GMT -5
Any idea what Villa Gonzalez refers to? Something to do with Gonzales, Texas?
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Post by marklemon on Mar 31, 2009 10:17:03 GMT -5
Stuart wrote: "Speaking as someone who has been writing military history for longer than I care to think about, far less admit, I do hate it when folks criticise things I said or wrote years ago when I have since modified those views - and published something quite different..."
Stuart, Hate it or not, if you have a recent history of being murky on a particular subject, and then suddenly come out with the fervent certainty of a newly converted believer who allows no variation on the one "true" version, you can bet that your previous opinions are absolutely fair game... MHL
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