Hello to everyone!
First off, I'll just start with a little introduction (as this is my first post here). I'm 21-year-old fellow re-enactor from Finland, northern Europe. I've been doing world war two re-enacting for quite a few years but I have always been fascinated by the american history, especially that of late 18th century and mid 19th century. Last summer I had an opportunity to meet with other people sharing my interests and now american civil war re-enacting is on the rise here. We've got some 20 (active) people here who are slowly gathering information and studying this part of the history. Also, we are lucky to have only the most dedicated people doing this so far, so we don't really have problems with farbs now. So this is where I come from.
Unfortunately, living in Finland we don't really have any sort of literature concerning american civil war (as it is not really something people care about here) and all the books we can get have to be ordered mainly from UK and USA. This is kinda tricky, as good books are often sold out or not made anymore and picking books on random isn't really a good choice. This has left us to use mainly internet as a source for information (which does sound kinda bad, I know), luckily there are good sites like Authentic Campaigner around.
Now this has brought me here to ask this small, but very important question about confederate flags.
We've wanted to get our unit a flag, both US and CS ones. We got US flag from a group in UK, so we still need a CS flag. Unfortunately, every single book about CS flags we've ordered hasn't arrived or has been sold out so we are basicly without information now. We've been thinking of having just a generic flag made for us, but then again we'd like to have a bit more attention paid to it.
We've so far been going for a more "generic" look on our unit, we haven't chosen any specific regiment or anything for our impressions, other than "Army of Northern Virginia, pre-Gettysburg" as we aim to participate re-enactments outside Finland (and hopefully outside Europe, too) and it helps to be a more generic unit, so we can blend in while still maintaining high level of authenticity. The problem lies there. How to be generic, yet specific enough to carry a flag of a certain unit? Especially one with battle honors (as those flags are, well, "better looking" in the eyes of public). I've been looking for few sites lately and I think that getting a 3rd bunting issue battle flag, something similar to this 13th Alabama Infantry flag (Click here) would probably be fitting for our unit. However, I would also like to hear from you opinions on this and more info on different regiments and their flags, if you have any ideas how to solve this problem of ours.
Also, if you could recommend us proper, well established flag makers who can make authentic and high quality flag(s) for our unit. I've found a few internet sites of some flag makers, but all of them made mostly other than civil war flags and ACW flags were just a small curiosity, so I wasn't quite convinced I would be getting a proper flag from them...
Anyways, I want to thank you all in advance for even the smallest piece of information I could get. Thank you.
-Peter Bauer
First off, I'll just start with a little introduction (as this is my first post here). I'm 21-year-old fellow re-enactor from Finland, northern Europe. I've been doing world war two re-enacting for quite a few years but I have always been fascinated by the american history, especially that of late 18th century and mid 19th century. Last summer I had an opportunity to meet with other people sharing my interests and now american civil war re-enacting is on the rise here. We've got some 20 (active) people here who are slowly gathering information and studying this part of the history. Also, we are lucky to have only the most dedicated people doing this so far, so we don't really have problems with farbs now. So this is where I come from.
Unfortunately, living in Finland we don't really have any sort of literature concerning american civil war (as it is not really something people care about here) and all the books we can get have to be ordered mainly from UK and USA. This is kinda tricky, as good books are often sold out or not made anymore and picking books on random isn't really a good choice. This has left us to use mainly internet as a source for information (which does sound kinda bad, I know), luckily there are good sites like Authentic Campaigner around.
Now this has brought me here to ask this small, but very important question about confederate flags.
We've wanted to get our unit a flag, both US and CS ones. We got US flag from a group in UK, so we still need a CS flag. Unfortunately, every single book about CS flags we've ordered hasn't arrived or has been sold out so we are basicly without information now. We've been thinking of having just a generic flag made for us, but then again we'd like to have a bit more attention paid to it.
We've so far been going for a more "generic" look on our unit, we haven't chosen any specific regiment or anything for our impressions, other than "Army of Northern Virginia, pre-Gettysburg" as we aim to participate re-enactments outside Finland (and hopefully outside Europe, too) and it helps to be a more generic unit, so we can blend in while still maintaining high level of authenticity. The problem lies there. How to be generic, yet specific enough to carry a flag of a certain unit? Especially one with battle honors (as those flags are, well, "better looking" in the eyes of public). I've been looking for few sites lately and I think that getting a 3rd bunting issue battle flag, something similar to this 13th Alabama Infantry flag (Click here) would probably be fitting for our unit. However, I would also like to hear from you opinions on this and more info on different regiments and their flags, if you have any ideas how to solve this problem of ours.
Also, if you could recommend us proper, well established flag makers who can make authentic and high quality flag(s) for our unit. I've found a few internet sites of some flag makers, but all of them made mostly other than civil war flags and ACW flags were just a small curiosity, so I wasn't quite convinced I would be getting a proper flag from them...
Anyways, I want to thank you all in advance for even the smallest piece of information I could get. Thank you.
-Peter Bauer
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