It’s worth noting that many of the “Seal on a Sheet” State Flags are regimental colors from the Civil War. Typically a regiment would have two flags, a National Colors (the US flag with stars and stripes) and a second flag that was particular to the regiment. In the Regular Army the regimental colors were a sheet colored according to the branch or arm of the service, blue for infantry, yellow for cavalry, red for artillery, and an eagle with the national shield on its chest and a ribbon in its beak. On the ribbon was the regiments name, e.g., “Twelfth Infantry Regiment.” In the State regiments the regimental colors often were a sheet of the branch color with the state seal instead of the eagle that appeared on the regimental colors for the Regular Army units, and a ribbon that listed the regiment’s name, e. g., “Seventy-Second Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.”
While the “Seal on a Sheet” State Flags might not have much emotional significance for us, they meant a lot to Northern veterans who were middle aged men at the turn of the last century. These were the flags that they had marched behind and fought under in a war that decided whether the nation would continue to exist.