expect four or five hundred female tongues to be silent on the subject? No great harm was done by the disclosure, however, and when next the brave troops of the Confederacy went into the fight those flags were seen dancing in the breeze, the symbol of hope to the defenders of our liberty, wherever the fire was deadliest over the crimsoned field, borne always aloft where follower and foe might behold it; ever the chosen perch of victory ere the fight was done.
Could these little pieces of handiwork of the women of Richmond be collected now, what emotions would not the sight of them awaken, blackened as they are with the smoke of powder, riddled with bullets, many of them stained with the blood, the last drops that welled up from the heart of a patriot hero! We repeat that the baptism of blood and fire has made the battleflag of General Johnston our national ensign. It is associated with our severest trials and our proudest achievements. Nor is it by any means a poor thing in itself. The device is simple and striking. The colors are readily distinguishable at a great distance. In heraldry, the saltier is emblematic of strength. And it is quite unlike any other flag now borne among the nations of the earth. There is but one difficulty that can present itself—the impossibility of indicating by a reversal of the flag distress of ships upon the high seas. This might be obviated by the adoption of a special flag of distress, with the saltier or Saint Andrew's cross as a union, to be hoisted, union down, when the occasion demanded.
With regard to the seal we understand that the committee of Congress is ready to report for the obverse, the device suggested by Mr. Clay, of Alabama, of the cavalier. If by this is meant the figure of a man on horseback simply, nothing, it seems to us, could be in better taste or more appropriate as expressive of the habits of our people. The device is not new; indeed it is one of the oldest ever employed in this manner. The man on the back of the horse has ever been a favorite emblem to denote the mastery of the human over the highest type of the brute creation. It appears in sculptured majesty upon the glorious friezes of the Parthenon. It was used by the Roman Emperors upon their coins and seals; and constituted the sole image upon the great seals of the sovereigns of England, with the single exception of Henry VI, from the time of William the Conqueror down to the sway of the House of Hanover. William and Mary appeared together on the seal, a cheval, thus introducing two horses. Cromwell discarded the horsemen from the seal of the commonwealth, but placed a representation of himself mounted on a charger upon the seal of Scotland. The Southern people are eminently an equestrian people. The horseman, therefore, is the best of all symbols to be placed upon their seal of state. But if by cavalier is meant any political character, anything more than a Southern gentleman on horseback, the device is objectionable as false to history, and as conveying ideas of caste. We were not all cavaliers and we have no patrician
