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Time lifts high a Civil War banner

A woolen flag with cotton stars flew the night Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson caught a bullet in the arm -- a quiet witness to one of history's great accidents.
You can see it inside a case on the third floor of the N.C. Museum of History, hanging over a Confederate ammunition chest recovered from a Johnston County farm: the flag carried by the regiment that inadvertently shot the man who was arguably the South's No. 2 general.

The museum just bought the flag for a price Curator of Military History Tom Belton would describe only as a bargain.

Any price would be puny for such a find, he said, calling the flag one of the greatest acquisitions in his 30-year career. No matter what you feel for the rebel soldiers who carried it -- pride, disdain, boredom -- the flag can light the imagination.
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