The 20th North Carolina's Flagstaff

Even when a book is published, new information often becomes available. A new find recently provided new light on the captured flagstaff from the 20th North Carolina at Gettysburg. As Iverson's troops were tapped in the hollow on the Forney farm field on July 1, the men from Henry Baxter's Federal Brigade moved forward and captured the battle flag from the 20th North Carolina. One of the men who seized the flag soon passed it on to Col. Charles Wheelock from the 97th New York.

Soon afterward, General Baxter ordered Wheelock to hand over the captured flag. "But, the colonel would not comply, saying 'my regiment captured these colors and will keep them,'" Lieutenant Grant from the 88th Pennsylvania reported. Baxter immediately placed him under arrest. Wheelock responded by running his sword through the flag, tearing it from the staff. He then began waving "the torn banner' at the enemy in a taunting manner," which drew intense fire from the Confederate troops on the field. When an officer from a nearby company joined Colonel Wheelock and began waving the staff, he "received a ball to the forehead and fell dead" from the enemy fire.

Later in the day, some of Junius Daniel's men recaptured the flag from the retreating Federals and returned it to members of the 20th North Carolina. There the story ended until recently. It turns out, however that Colonel Wheelock, still had the broken flag staff in his possession. As he fled into town along Chambersburg Turnpike, the colonel took refuge in the nearby home of Carrie Sheads, which served as the site for a private women's boarding school. The pursuing Confederates eventually cornered him in the basement and demanded that he surrender his sword. Carrie Sheads quickly intervened. During the distraction, she hid the sword and the staff of the 20th North Carolina's flag in the folds of her dress.

 Wheelock eventually escaped from the Confederates and returned several days later to retrieve both the sword and flag staff. Although most accounts only mention the sword, the chaplain of the 97th New York noted in a letter on July 11, which was recently uncovered, that the items also included the captured flag staff.

The Rashness of that Hour

No commander in the Army of Northern Virginia suffered more damage to his reputation at Gettysburg than did Brig. Gen. Alfred Holt Iverson. In little more than an hour during the early afternoon of July 1, 1863, much of his brigade (the 5th, 12th, 20th, and 23rd North Carolina regiments) was slaughtered in front of a stone wall on Oak Ridge. Amid rumors that he was a drunk, a coward, and had slandered his own troops, Iverson was stripped of his command less than a week after the battle and before the campaign had even ended.

After months of internal feuding and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, the survivors of Iverson's ill-fated brigade had no doubt about who to blame for their devastating losses. What remained unanswered was the lingering uncertainty of how such a disaster could have happened. This and many other questions are explored for the first time in The Rashness of That Hour: Politics, Gettysburg, and the Downfall of Confederate Brigadier General Alfred Iverson.

The brigade's politics, misadventures, and colorful personalities combined to bring about one of the Civil War's most notorious blunders. As the research makes clear, Iverson's was a brigade in fatal turmoil long before its rendezvous with destiny in Forney field on July 1.

For the first time, we have a complete picture of the flawed general and his brigade's bitter internecine feuds that made Iverson's downfall nearly inevitable and help us better understand "the rashness of that hour."