continuing our look at richmond, we will visit the american civil war museum and take a look at the largest collection of confederate flags in the country. we are in richmond, virginia at one of the sites of the american civil war museum. we are focusing on the flag collection, which, as far as i know, is the largest election of civil war related flags in the world. 500 50 are full-sized civil war arrow flag. the majority are confederate, but we do have some union flags as well. one of the first orders of business was to select a design for the national flag. we have an example of that flag pattern. this is the first national flag because the confederacy would ultimately go through three

designs. this one was very reminiscent of the united states national flag. that was done on purpose. many southerners served in the united states army or otherwise felt affection for the union. they did not want to completely dispense with the symbols and emblems. -- red, 3 -- three white, red. because southern states were joiningthe union and the confederacy through 1861 they started out with seven stars and went up to officially 11. it would include 13 or 15, which optimistically was including places such as the arizona territory or southern california. this particular flag was a battle flag from the third

florida infantry. this flag was carried by a company d. at the war's outset, every company did have their own flag, but this ultimately resulted in a lot of confusion. at the battle of first manassas , all of thel run company flags were to be sent home and each regiment would the issued one official battle flag. etch confederate army -- each confederate army selected a different design. this design is known as the army of northern virginia flag pattern. this would have been carried by every regiment fighting under lee.al robert e. other generals could pick whatever flag pattern they wanted. a rectangular version of this has become what most of us today consider to be the "confederate

flag." this squareime pattern was the one that would happen carried only by regiments serving under general lee. this one was selected by the army of northern virginia because it was actually submitted as a design by someone who had studied flag design and the elements of good flag design. for instance, the fact that there is a white edge that goes between the red and blue portions which give it that little bit of visual distinction . that was very important. this particular flag has been united in the center i designation. each of the red areas on the flag, you can see what are referred to as battle honors. whichgiment could decide battles were worth remembering.

the battles were often captured by union soldiers. the numbers are stenciled on the , thosef the union flag are referred to as the capture number. this flag was captured in battle. this was turned into the united states war department because capturing applied was one of the ways that a union soldier could capture a medal of honor. they would also capture such information as the eight that the capture -- the flag was captured and who captured it. on the union side, each regiment captured to flags. here is one example of the variety of regimental flags that could have been carried in the union army. sometimes they would carry a

large version of their state flag. this became the much more common eagle raspinghe the arrow and the olive branch in its laws. this mucharried longer they probably would have had the regiments name -- the regiment from name of this red banner. they did not carry a very long. this flag remained in private hands in the south until it was donated to be museum in the early 1920's. richmond burned in the evacuation fire of 1865. any turned into the confederate states war department probably were destroyed in the fire. it was only those that were kept

by those soldiers until they returned home that managed to survive. this is an example of the united states national flag that would have been carried as a national banner. maryland being a border state has -- iond's -- believe it was the first state that had a first united maryland confederate states regiment and there was one notable battle in which they faced off against each other. that was where this particular flag was captured. being a color bearer was a difficult job. you could not carry a weapon simultaneously. you were essentially making yourself a big target.

being a color bearer was a big honor and there were numerous rattles where we have stories of shot downers who are and another person steps forward to take the colors. the flight captured was basically considered a terrible thing and if there were virtually any men -- having the flag captured was basically considered a terrible thing if there were virtually any men capable of carrying the flag forward, they would. basically that was a signal that the regiment was all but decimated during a particular battle. this is another flag with an interesting story behind it. you probably noticed there is only half of the flag here. by a woman whod was a union soldier and he purchased in -- he abated in sherman's march.

he would have been going through georgia, south carolina, north carolina in 1864-65. the stories past down through her family along with the flag is that he and another soldier went into a barn in south carolina and found the flag hidden there and they proceeded to argue about who was going to get the flag. each of them was going to get to keep one half of the flag. fortunately there is a partial unit nickname or designation on it. through our research, we have been able to determine that this is company f of the south carolina infantry. it is really fortunate that this view the full flag with this nice oil painted design, you know, that only half of it still

survive but i cross my fingers that the descendents of the other union soldiers may have the other half somewhere. this is a flag that is a completely unique design that as far as we know, this is the only surviving example of this flag and there probably was never another one made that quite looks like this. this was presented after the battle. they captured several union soldiers, they thought the unusual design meant that the confederate troops intended to fight to the bitter end, essentially meaning that they intended to take no prisoners. which was not the intent of the confederates carrying the flag. we do not know whether it was or the starburst that gave that impression, but it was certainly a message that made union troops fight really,

really hard. confederate troops had not intended to send that particular message and did not want every other regiment to think the same thing. the museum strives to preserve all these flags for a future generation to be able to study and enjoy. or a flag can be conserved professionally, our first step is to preserve them as they currently exist. in the case of silk flags such as this one, so is a fabric that will start to fall apart if you fold it. you don't want any sharp creases. the best way to store these is flat. given that a lot of them are csaes such as in flags like this, we try to keep it stored us flat as possible

and we keep an archival basket called mylar, one layer on top and one layer on bottom. this allows us to store the flag on a flat panel so when we pick it up, we are only picking up the panel itself and not the actual flag. in the case of a fly that is too large to fit completely flat on a panel, the mylar gives it a nice role rather than a sharp crease. has -- you can see the silk has started to shatter and disintegrate. sometimes this is due to the way the die was applied to the fabric when it was first made. there's all kinds of chemicals and things and a wide variety of places where the silk came from and how it was treated. in this case there's also a bit of staining on the flag itself. the best we can do before having it take to a professional and theirnservator

work is simply to keep it stored as carefully as possible in a stable environment. we are looking at a virginia state flag carried by an unidentified virginia regiment in the civil war. sometimes for those of us working in museums today, they work of conserving a flag begins with undoing the work others may have done to the flag in the past. au will notice there is zigzag pitching all over the flag, which is most notable on the dark portions but goes right through this hand-painted field. you will also notice there are two different colors of glue fabric on the flag. there is a darker blue. the far righton side, and there's a much lighter blue that then compresses the far right end of the flag. back in the 1940's, a very who-meaning group of people

are the textile conservatives of their day decided this poor, tattered flag needed to be fixed and stabilized. their method of doing that was to sell the remaining -- so the remaining flag onto a backing that approximated the color of the original flag, then to run the entire thing back and forth to a sewing machine many, many times. we know the process is very invasive. they punched holes in the flag as they were doing all of that stitching, which is particularly problematic on the handsewn portion, where the needle was passing through paint. nowadays, we would remove all of the sewing machines from the flag as well as to remove the backing fabric to which it had been attached, because we don't want the blue modern fabric to be possibly staining or covering the back of this virginia state field, or any portions of the

original flag itself. this is a very painstaking process, and this is one level of conservation that we will actually do here at the museum in-house because it can save quite a lot of time and money from the overall conservation process once we take it to the conservator. it's a very mentally and somewhat physically grueling process because it involves taking a tiny pair of scissors and a tiny pair of tweezers, and essentially cutting the sewing machine spreads at the same point all the way across for each row of stitching and then pulling them out. you have to be very careful when you are doing it because the goal is not to cut any of the original fibers of the flag, but only the modern sewing machine stitching. because this was done in a variety of ways, sometimes the best thing to do is filp the flag over. -- flip the flag over

and cut out the stitching starting from the backside of the flag. once you actually go through and cut the line of stitches, you want to flip the flag back over, and very carefully pull all of them out. it's easier to work from the back of the flag sometimes also because the fabric of working with here is the backing fabric, the modern fabric. not the original fabric of the flag. it is simply removing the stitches row by row. somewhere in here. a lot of times these threads are very brittle and almost dry rotting. it's easy to go and pull them out. get nice little runs of the stitches there you can start to pull out, you cut them off in the back. this becomes the first step of conserving a flag like this that has been treated in this way. once you get all of that done,

you can start to arrange and flatten all of the original portion of the flag and start to get it back into the original shape. we try to be very cautious about the treatment methods of which we employ to conserve any of these flags, because we want to take a long-term approach to it and think through all the possible implications of any treatment to ensure that what we are doing now is something that tol not cause permanent harm the item over time. we hope that people will want to learn a variety of things from this flag collection. the flags can be viewed as work of art. there's a lot of artistry behind these, whether it's quality with the painting or the really beautiful way they are sewn thingsr, knowing the people were fighting and in many cases dying for underneath these flags, in a literal way. make some very powerful, historic messengers to us.

>> fame thought edgar allan poll moved to richmond as a small child, spending most of his life in the city. it was here that he developed an interest in writing and began his career at the southern literary messenger. poe left richmond and went on to write some of his most famous works, including "the raven," before he returned to richmond to marry his childhood sweetheart trade edgar allan poll later died under mysterious circumstances will in baltimore in 1849. american history tv continues its look at richmond with a tour of hollywood cemetery. it is the second most visited cemetery in the country after arlington national cemetery. >> the master scans the woven

score of subtle harmonies before a note is stirred. and the nature now is pondering the title symphony of spring as yet unheard. this is a poem by john bannister , american poet buried in hollywood cemetery. here at hollywood cemetery we are anticipating the coming of spring. now many of the trees are dormant, but soon they will break forth with tremendous color and life. hollywood cemetery was beyondshed in 1847, just the city limits of richmond, virginia. the founders of hollywood hired , a philadelphia landscape architect, to design and layout they grounds. not rename the grounds, but the -- you name the grounds for the extensive growth of hollywood trees