Three American flags tied to Lincoln – or not?
Last week’s article focused on the many flags associated with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago this month. Three American flags that may have been involved with major events in his life and death reside around the U.S. – maybe.
FLAG #1: Three score and four stars
One of the most famous speeches in history was delivered in 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when Lincoln spoke about the meaning of the Civil War. Union College in – where else? – Lincoln, Nebraska, thinks it might have an American flag that flew there that November day
Using genealogy and vexillology, researcher Sabrina Riley has weighed the evidence, pro and con, that the 34-star flag was there. But that’s the rub. “We do know that at least three new 35-star flags were created specifically for the dedication of the cemetery,” she wrote. “One was…on the flag pole on stage visible in the photographs of the occasion.”
FLAG #2: Ford’s Theater’s bloody flag
After Lincoln was shot on Good Friday 1865 in Ford’s Theater, he was laid on the floor of the box he had been seated in. As an actress in the play rested his bleeding head on her lap, an actor pulled down a flag decorating the space to bunch under his head.
That flag now resides at the Pike County Historical Society in Pennsylvania. The 36-star-spangled banner has been authenticated through two methods. First, the actor kept the flag and passed it down through generations. Chain of custody is one proof.
As for the stains, the museum says that “tests confirmed that the stains on the flag are human blood” and are “consistent with a bleeding wound coming into direct contact with the flag.”
Click here to see the article and flag.
FLAG #3: Coverlet for a martyr
When Lincoln drew his last breath on April 15, 1865, he was in a rooming house across from the theater. According to the Chicago History Museum, arrangements were made to cover (or perhaps wrap) his body with an American flag as he was carried outside to a hearse.
A 34-star flag “was brought there,” the Museum discloses, “perhaps by the Union army soldiers summoned by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton during Lincoln’s death vigil.”