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| Conecuh Guards flag. |
This coming Sunday – April 24 – will mark the 155th
anniversary of the day that the Conecuh Guards mustered at Sparta to depart for
service in Virginia during what we now call the Civil War or the War Between
the States.
So far as I know, the best source about what
happened at Sparta on April 24, 1861 is B.F. Riley’s 1881 book, “The History of
Conecuh County,” which was published just 16 years after the end of the war.
According to Riley, the Conecuh Guards, which was also known as Co. E of the
Fourth Alabama Infantry Regiment, organized at Sparta on April 1, 1861 and
mustered at Sparta on April 24 to depart “for the seat of war in Virginia.”
Prior to their departure, a “magnificent
banner” was presented to the unit by a group that included Misses Stearns and
Mathews, Mrs. Jay and Mrs. Dubose. They’d ordered this flag some time before,
and it had arrived at Sparta the day before, just in time to formally present
it to the “gallant company,” Riley wrote.
A large crowd gathered at the Sparta train depot to watch
the formal presentation of the flag to the unit, and the banner was held during
the ceremony by a young man named Henry Stearns. Standing with him were six
young women, who were dressed to represent the states that had already joined
the Confederacy. Those young ladies (and the states they represented) included
Kate Autrey (Georgia), C. Cary (Mississippi), S. Crosby (Louisiana), L.
Henderson (Florida), Mathews (Alabama) and Irene Stearns (South Carolina).
Members of the Conecuh Guards assembled in front of this
group of young ladies, and Miss Mathews delivered a speech to mark their
departure. At the end of this send-off address, the flag was presented to Capt.
Pinckney D. Bowles, who accepted the flag on behalf of the company, which left the
following day for Montgomery and mustered into the Confederate army at
Lynchburg, Va. on May 7, 1861.
The Conecuh Guards served throughout the Civil War and lost
many of its members before eventually surrendering with the rest of the Army of
Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Va. on April 9, 1865.
During the four years of the conflict, members of the
Conecuh Guards saw service at some of the most important, ferocious and
decisive battles of the war, including Cold Harbor, Chickamauga, Eltham’s
Landing, First Manassas, Second Manassas, Fort Harrison, Fredericksburg, Gaines
Farm, Gettysburg, Lookout Mountain, Malvern Hill, Knoxville, Petersburg, Seven
Pines, Sharpsburg, Spotsylvania Court House, The Wilderness and Darbytown Road.
Years after the end of the war, on Nov. 22, 1907, the flag
of the Conecuh Guards was presented to the Alabama Department of Archives and
History by Col. Pickney D. Bowles and Capt. James W. Darby. Today, that flag is
still housed within the flag collection at the Department of Archives and
History in Montgomery, where the staff goes to great lengths to preserve dozens
of flags of this type.
Many of you in the reading audience will be interested to
learn that a typical company in the Confederate army consisted of about 100
men, and they were usually led by a captain. A review of the original roster of
the Conecuh Guards shows a number of family names that will be familiar to
current county residents. Those last names include such names as Bowles, Lee,
McInnis, Darby, Travis, Taliaferro, Stearns, Green, Mosley, Downs, Cotton,
Stinson, Boulware, Clark, Andrews, Floyd, Thomas, Crosby, Anderson, Robertson,
Betts, Booker, Baggett, Brown, Carter, Chapman, Coleman, Dean, Hudson, Hyde,
Horton, Johnston, King, Mathews, Morrow, Mason, McMillan, Peacock, Powell,
Robbins, Stallworth, Snowden, Salter, Shaver, Wilson, Wilkinson and Watson.
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