The Original Confederate Museum in Richmond.

Edmund DeWitt Patterson, an enlisted man in the 9^th Alabama Infantry, was wounded during the battle of Frayser’s Farm, June 30, 1862. One musket ball struck his shoulder, another his left leg, and a third his right leg. Patterson was transported to Richmond and entered a private home to heal and recover.

   By late August, he was well enough to visit sessions of the Confederate Congress. Soon, Patterson had discovered a great pleasure: visiting the Virginia State Library. The library was founded by the Virginia General Assembly in 1823. By 1851, the Library had 14,000 volumes, most housed in the loft of the State Capitol building in Richmond. Patterson visited on August 29, recording his experience.

Virginia State Capitol, April 1865 (National Archives) 

   “I have found another place to spend my leisure hours, viz: in the state library, which is in the capitol building. There, besides books of all kinds, I find a good many trophies of war. Various kinds of shells, thrown from those water monsters, the “Monitors.” There is also Gen’l Pope’s coat, which he forgot in his great hurry when Stuart called on him. Stretched overhead is a tremendous flag, the ‘glorious old flag’ so called, one presented to Gen’l. McClellan by the ladies of New York City to be hoisted over our capitol. His troops left Gain’s Mill in such a hurry that they forgot it and instead of floating over the capitol, it hangs in the capitol. I suppose that does just as well though. There are a great many curiosities scattered over the room, things that give a body some very slight idea of war or a battle, but one knows in reality nothing at all about it until he has participated in it.” (43-44, Barrett, ed., Confederate Yankee.)

   There are a couple of references in period newspapers to the collection of “trophies of war” at the State Library. The Richmond Enquirer reported on August 29, 1862, that that Pope’s uniform “has been hung up amidst the numerous trophies that adorn and disfigure the galleries of the State Library.” On February 17, 1863, the Staunton Spectator reported that one of the trophies was the “white silken banner captured from a Philadelphia Turn Veteran Regiment, on one side of which is the motto to “Gut Heil.” The translation of these words is said to be “Good Luck,’ but the majority of visitors give them a phonetic signification, readily believing that the regiment to which the banner belonged gut heil on the occasion of the capture.”

   Patterson does not mention if Confederate artifacts were also included, but there were many items he did not describe in detail.

   It is not really clear what happened to the uniform or flags. We know that five boxes of captured Federal flags were sent with other items from the War Department to Charlotte as the Confederacy collapsed. You can read my previous blog on that topic here. But what became of Pope’s uniform? Was it secreted away? Or maybe consigned to the flames that engulfed Richmond the night after the Federal breakthrough of Richmond on April 2, 1865? If anyone has more information, I would love to hear from you.