Author: James Breig

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Bio
James Breig is a veteran author who specializes in history. His most recent book is “Star-Spangled Baseball: True Tales of Flags and Fields” about the links between the sport and flags. He is also the author of a nonfiction book about WWII, "Searching for Sgt. Bailey: Saluting an Ordinary Soldier of World War II" and co-author of "The Mystery of the Multiple Mothers," a novel. All three are available at www.amazon.com. His articles have appeared in newspapers and national magazines, including the Colonial Williamsburg Journal (search for them at www.history.org/journal) and History Magazine. He has won many national awards for his opinion writing, media columns and feature articles.
History Lessons

Flags could ‘speak’ at sea

By James Breig Writing in a Boston publication in 1849, an anonymous person shared his “Notes of a Voyage in the Plymouth Rock.” The cruise from Boston to Liverpool, England, lasted 20 days, a span that provided the author with plenty of leisure time to observe life on the ocean. He remarked on story-telling among… continue

History Lessons

‘Flag’ derived from a sound

By James Breig Have you ever listened to a flag? For more than two centuries, Americans have seen them. Whether large and flying smartly in the wind from a mast on the U.S.S. Constitution…or medium-sized and carried proudly by soldiers during the Battle of Gettysburg…or small and waved enthusiastically by families at a Fourth of… continue

History Lessons

‘Shattered old flag’ returns home

By James Breig The continuing 150th anniversary of the four-year Civil War provides an opportunity to focus on regimental flags – and what happened to them. They were carried by troops into battle to mark where their unit was located, to see where they were moving and to provide a rallying point. In a touching… continue

History Lessons

Civil War troops sang about flags

By James Breig From its opening days in 1861 through the Battle of Gettysburg to Appomattox, the Civil War spawned songs about flags that were intoned on both sides of the fray. Northerners sang “The Battle Cry of Freedom” with its rousing chorus of “Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys,” while Southerners gave out with “The… continue

History Lessons

Alamo battle featured many flags

An early Alamo postcard showing the six flags over Texas.

By James Breig One of the earliest accounts of the fall of the Alamo, the famous battle in the drive for Texas independence from Mexico, appeared in The Louisiana Advertiser. It ran about three weeks after the March 6, 1836, assault that captured the former mission and killed – among scores of others – Davy… continue