Former Enemies Meet in Marianna to Return a Civil War Battle Flag

September 26, 1927 — A veterans' reunion opens in Marianna.

By Wm. E. McMullen II

More than sixty years after the Civil War ended, veterans and representatives from opposite sides gathered in Marianna, Florida, for an unusual reunion beginning September 26, 1927.

Ohio representatives had come south in connection with the return of a Confederate battle flag captured during the Civil War.

The Men in the Photograph

Florida Memory identifies Eli Bourdo, William W. Alcorn and Emery D. Potter of Ohio with Thomas Jefferson Appleyard of Tallahassee in one surviving photograph. Other images record the larger reunion and the returned flag.

A Historical Mystery

For years the flag was described as belonging to the 4th Florida Infantry Regiment. Later research complicated that identification. Florida Memory notes that research by the Museum of Florida History and a private flag scholar raised questions about where the flag was captured and whether it belonged to a Florida unit at all.

That uncertainty matters. Historical objects often arrive with inherited identifications that later research must test against military records and provenance.

Marianna and Memory

The reunion began September 26; the following day was the sixty-third anniversary of the Battle of Marianna. Such reunions emphasized reconciliation between former white Union and Confederate participants, while the era's commemorative culture often gave far less attention to slavery, emancipation and Black Americans' wartime experiences.

The photograph preserves both an event and the way Americans in the 1920s chose to remember the Civil War.

Sources for Additional Reading

• Florida Memory — N046322
• Florida Memory — returned battle flag