The La Crosse Light Guard Flag

By Peggy Derrick

This flag is a piece of La Crosse history. It has been carried to war, hung in at least 3 different public buildings, and been forgotten and rediscovered several times over.

Often referred to as a relic of the Civil War, the flag actually predates the Civil War by about a year. In the young city of La Crosse a private militia had formed, calling themselves the Light Guard, with a quasi-military purpose, but mostly appearing at parades, balls and other social events. According to the La Crosse Tri Weekly Union and Democrat, “ladies of the city” presented the silk flag to the Light Guard at one such social event on June 27, 1860, a ball they called “the affair of the season.”

Each side of this white silk flag has a painted medallion in the center. On one side a light blue oval contains an eagle and the words “presented by the ladies of La Crosse, July 4, 1860, to The La Crosse Light Guard.” The medallion on the other side is a rendition of the 1851 State Seal of Wisconsin. Together, these two sides perfectly represent the dichotomy of the public identity being forged at that time, with state and local symbols sharing opposite sides of the same symbolic object.

The following year, the Light Guard marched off to war with their beautiful new flag. The Light Guard became Company B of the 2nd Wisconsin Regiment of Infantry Volunteers, and saw action in some of the bloodiest conflicts of the war: the first and second battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness. They fought under their regiment’s flag, while their Light Guard flag remained in Washington D.C.  At the end of the three-year term, just 27 of their original 130 members returned; all the rest were dead, wounded or missing. Captain Wilson Colwell, the 6th mayor of La Crosse, was among the casualties.

From here on there are many points of conjecture and murkiness as the flag disappears and reappears in the historic record. Some years after the war it was discovered in Washington D.C. by a former Co. B member, who brought it back to La Crosse. Veterans carried it in parades for many years. Then it disappeared again, only to resurface in the effects of a deceased Co. B member, Milo Pitkin.

 In 1930 we find it documented in an article in the La Crosse Tribune, when it was presented to the county board of commissioners by the daughter of Captain Colwell, to be hung in the La Crosse County courthouse. There was a public ceremony in which the flag was symbolically returned to the “ladies of La Crosse,” a role played by the members of the Wilson Colwell Relief Corps, a GAR women’s auxiliary group. Then the flag was hung in the courthouse, where it remained until the courthouse was razed in 1965. Records show it was then transferred to the La Crosse County Historical Society by the county board.

At some undetermined point after that, someone allegedly removed the flag from Society property, claiming that it had been “placed with the rubbish.” The flag then hung at the American Legion, until a group of Co. B re-enactors recognized its significance and mounted a campaign to preserve the flag, now nearly in tatters.  In 1994 they raised funds to have the flag professionally conserved and stabilized. Forty percent of the funding came from a La Crosse Community Foundation grant that was acquired with the La Crosse County Historical Society acting as fiscal agent. The curator at that time, Brenda Jordan, rightly felt it was important for LCHS to do everything it could to “dismiss the image of trying to throw it away.”

For the last two decades, the La Crosse County Historical Society has overseen the flag’s care. Following its conservation, the flag went on display in the Swarthout Gallery at the main branch of the La Crosse Public Library, where it remained available to the public from 1994 until LCHS left the library. With the closing of the Swarthout Gallery at the end of 2012, the flag was in storage for 6 months, and now is available for viewing in the LCHS building at 145 West Ave.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on April 9, 2016.

*The flag has since been donated to the Veteran's Museum in Madison, Wisconsin by the American Legion. A replica of the flag was donated by the American Legion to LCHS.

Carrying a Torch for Garfield

Caroline C. Morris

Catalog Number: 1920.002.01

Historically, voters in Wisconsin have known how to light it up in presidential elections. In the twenty-first century, Wisconsin voters attend lively town hall debates in Milwaukee; in the late nineteenth century, Wisconsin voters played with fire. On sticks. In large crowds.

Without electricity and without large convention centers, political enthusiasts generally had to meet outside in open spaces. Given the demands of the harvest season, political rallies in the fall were often held at night, so farmers could attend. Bonfires were a popular means of illumination for the nighttime rallies, but if attendees wished to perambulate in an organized fashion – that is, to have a parade – they would need portable light.

This lantern would have been screwed onto a large stick, filled with kerosene, and then held aloft to provide light from above. The fuel tank is balanced on gimbals, so gravity would keep it steady despite the movement of the person carrying it. The wooden shaft may have been adorned with hand-drawn political imagery. It also may have been a broom, to symbolize “sweeping out” the bad guys. Political rallies – then as now – were boisterous affairs, and one wonders that there was never a mass conflagration.

This torch was made by the A&W Manufacturing Co. of Chicago in Jan. 1880, and most likely played a role in the election of Republican candidate James A. Garfield later that year. Garfield was from Ohio, and Midwesterners supported him in a bloc. Garfield could count on strong support from Wisconsin, where the Republican Party had been born in 1854 in Ripon’s schoolhouse. Wisconsin Republicans were outspoken critics of slavery in the 1850s and ardent supporters of Abraham Lincoln in the early 1860s, but were losing some ground to a new voting bloc of farmers and immigrants by the time of the 1880 election. Garfield, a former Civil War general and hard-scrabble Midwesterner, rallied the Wisconsin Republicans, however, and Garfield carried both La Crosse and Wisconsin in Nov. 1880. 

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on April 2, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Kepi with torch turned parades, rallies into adventures

By Peggy Derrick

Catalog Number: 2012.fic.124

The presidential election season is heating up as we approach the national nominating conventions. Giant political rallies follow the candidates across the country, as they work the campaign trail. It would be easy to think this election is unusually intense, but Americans have always been passionate about their presidential elections, even if the means by which we show our partisanship have changed.

This cap, known as a kepi, was designed to be worn at a nighttime political rally. The small oil lamp on its top would have been one of many illuminating the night, and a large parade of these must have been an exciting, dramatic sight. Torches had long been used in political parades, and the kepi was a creative – if dangerous – innovation.  Kepis developed from similar but larger torches carried on staffs, with a fuel receptacle balanced on gimbals, helping it remain level and not tip. The first notable American use of night-time parades was in the campaign of the so-called Wide Awakes: groups of young men who, in 1860, organized themselves into small armies in black capes and kepis. The Wide Awakes filled dark city streets with the glow of their torches as they campaigned for their candidate, Abraham Lincoln. From New England through the Midwest, these groups organized and marched, galvanizing support for Lincoln.  

Throughout the rest of the 19th century, torch-lit parades were popular, and at some point the torches migrated to the tops of caps. This kepi most likely dates from the 1880 presidential election, when kepis with torches reached the height of their popularity. Garfield, who only won the popular vote by less than 2,000, did carry La Crosse and the rest of Wisconsin.

Parading about with a burning container of lamp oil on top of your head seems foolhardy and downright stupid to the modern eye. What if you moved too fast, or the swivel got stuck? Perhaps the risk of self-immolation added to the zeal of the marchers and the excitement of watchers?  In any case, lamp oil went out of use and with it went these parade kepis. Now we express ourselves in bumper stickers and Facebook postings, which at least aren’t going to leave us looking like a dumpster fire with singed eyebrows.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on March 26, 2016.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.