c. 1861 Civil War Period, "THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG." Confederate Patriotic Song Sheet, being a letterpress printing of the full text of the celebrated Confederate anthem, Choice Very Fine.
This historic Confederate Song Sheet is 1 page, measures about 8.5” x 3” sharply printed in black typeset on clean white wove period paper. This version presents the full text of "The Bonnie Blue Flag," one of the most popular and widely circulated Confederate patriotic songs of the Civil War, second in popularity only to "Dixie." Written by Harry McCarthy and first performed in Jackson, Mississippi in 1861. This song celebrates the Secession of the Southern states under the Single-Starred Bonnie Blue Flag, the unofficial first flag of the Confederacy. This printing presents four stanzas and the chorus, opening with the celebrated first verse celebrating the Confederate cause, and proceeding through stanzas naming the seceding states beginning with South Carolina and Alabama, and honoring Virginia's joining of the Confederacy, concluding with a defiant pledge of Confederate loyalty. Of note is the trace of a pin used with two tiny pinholes to attach this example likely to wear in some event in defiance to the Union.

The stanza referencing Virginia's Secession and the young Confederacy allows the printing to be dated with confidence to mid-1861 or later. Broadside printings of Confederate patriotic songs are primary documents of Southern Civil War popular culture and are increasingly scarce. The thin paper on which such song sheets were typically printed, reflecting wartime material shortages in the South, has contributed to their fragility and rarity.

[Civil War, Confederate States of America, Secession Crisis] [Bonnie Blue Flag, Confederate Patriotic Music, Harry McCarthy] [Sheet Music, Broadsides, Printed Americana]