The Confederate Flag and the Uniform

If you read my last blog you know that Nichola Marschall is credited by most people with designing the Stars and Bars and the Confederate Uniform.

 

In his own words, he told of how Mrs. Napoleon Lockett of Marion, Alabama asked him to make the design for the flag. He said that he took pencil and paper and made three different designs. The first was of two red stripes and one white with a blue field bearing seven white stars - indicating the number of States that had then seceded - in the upper left hand corner. The other two were similar.

 

She thanked him and then asked for a design for a uniform. He remembered back in Prussia, his native land, seeing fine-looking Austrian sharpshooters in gray uniforms and how impressed he had been with them. Based on this he made several rough sketches indicating the gray color, and also different colors on the collars to denote the branch of service.

 

He said: "It did not occur to me that I had done anything worthy of note. I simply made the sketches at the request of Mrs. Lockett. I knew no more about them from then, until I found that the uniform and one of the flags had been adopted by the Confederacy".

 

Marschall died at the age of 88 in Louisville, Kentucky. A tribute was written about him which appears in his daughter's scrapbook. It read: "The last time this writer saw the delightful man he had grown old and feeble and was going slowly down the street in the sunshine, going home, and not so long after that he did go home, regretted, honored and beloved by all who had the privilege of knowing him".