Colonel Emory Upton’s VI Corps brigade flag
Heritage Auctions, HA.com
A battle-tested banner brings a tidy sum
The Artifact
Colonel Emory Upton’s VI Corps brigade flag
Condition
The flag is in excellent condition, with some scattered small holes and a couple of stains. There is also a small tear and fraying at one corner on the hoist where it was attached to the staff.
Details
During the Overland Campaign in 1864—Ulysses S. Grant’s first offensive against Robert E. Lee in Virginia—25-year-old Colonel Emory Upton commanded an infantry brigade in the First Division of the Army of the Potomac’s VI Corps. At the battles at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House, Upton’s brigade carried this wool-bunting pennant, truncated at the tip, which measured 56 inches on the hoist and 53 inches on the fly. While Upton and his men were heavily engaged in both fights, they are most remembered for their actions at Spotsylvania, where Upton devised and led an innovative attack against an identified weak point in a prominent salient in the Confederate line known as the “Mule Shoe.” Upton’s plan called for a quick assault on the Mule Shoe by 5,000 men in four lines. Once an initial breakthrough was made by the lead troops, the remainder would spread out on each side, widening the breach, which would be further exploited by Union reinforcements. The assault, which proceeded on May 10, 1864, was initially successful. But the failure of Union reinforcements to arrive as planned—plus a stiff counterattack launched by the Confederates—eventually forced the young commander to order a retreat. Upton, who was wounded during the fighting, was promoted to brigadier general soon after and would end the war as a major general in command of a division of Union cavalry. After the war, Upton would serve as commandant of West Point and write influential books on U.S. military policy and tactics. It is thought that his suicide in 1881 was a reaction to the severe headaches that plagued him for several years, possibly the result of a brain tumor. He was 41.
Quotable
Upton wrote the following about the initial phase of his brigade’s May 10 attack at Spotsylvania in his official after-action report: “[A]t the command, the lines rose, moved noiselessly to the edge of the wood, and, with a wild cheer and faces averted, rushed for the works. Through a terrible front and flank fire the column advanced, quickly gaining the parapet. Here occurred a deadly hand-to-hand conflict. The enemy, sitting in their pits, with pieces upright, loaded, and with bayonets fixed, ready to impale the first who should leap over, absolutely refused to yield the ground. The first of our men who tried to surmount the works, fell, pierced through the head with musket-balls; others, seeing the fate of their comrades, held their pieces at arm’s-length and fired downward; while others, poising their pieces vertically, hurled them down upon their enemies, pinning them to the ground…. The struggle lasted but a few seconds. Numbers prevailed, and, like a resistless wave, the column poured over the works, quickly putting hors-de-combat those who resisted, and sending to the rear those who surrendered.”
Value
$15,535 (price realized at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2008). “This style of corps flag first appeared in the spring campaign of 1864 and, unlike most extant corps flags, which were fabricated for use in the Grand Review of the Armies in May 1865, this flag was actually carried in the field and into combat,” noted a representative of Heritage Auctions at the time of the sale. “It’s a very rare and historically important Civil War regulation flag.”
