FORTISVEX Cavalry Guidon Flag 3x5 Feet Nylon - Made in USA with Brass Grommets

Cavalry Guidon Flag History

The cavalry guidon shown here adapts the Stars and Stripes to a distinctive forked outline. Thirteen red-and-white horizontal stripes extend toward two pointed ends, while a blue canton holds thirty-five gold-colored stars. The stars form an inner ring, a larger outer ring, and a star near each corner. There is no regiment number, company letter, or battle honor in the supplied design. It represents a recognizable family of Civil War-era guidons rather than identifying one particular cavalry unit.

The shape served a different purpose from a large rectangular national color. A guidon was a smaller identifying and maneuvering flag, carried where soldiers could use it as a visual reference. The U.S. Army’s historical illustrated series describes the change from earlier red-and-white cavalry guidons to a swallow-tailed Stars-and-Stripes pattern after the Civil War began. Earlier mounted units had therefore used guidons, but the national-colors design belongs to a specific stage in their development. It should not be dated to the beginning of the nineteenth century simply because mounted-unit flags existed then. Read the Army’s historical account of the pattern.

The New York State Military Museum identifies the Stars-and-Stripes pattern in a surviving 2nd New York Cavalry guidon with General Order No. 4, issued by Army headquarters on January 18, 1862. That order provides a useful historical anchor for this design family. The same museum preserves examples from other branches, showing that the swallowtail and national colors were not confined exclusively to cavalry. A cavalry listing can accurately acknowledge that wider use without assigning this unlettered version to an undocumented regiment. View the cavalry example.

The thirty-five-star arrangement has a particularly close visual parallel in the museum’s 3rd New York Light Artillery guidon. Its catalog describes twelve gold-painted stars in the inner circle, nineteen in the outer circle, and four in the corners. These details help explain the distinctive constellation reproduced in the pictured design. They are evidence for the historical pattern, not a claim that this product duplicates every measurement, mark, material, or stitch of that surviving artifact. Inspect the museum’s thirty-five-star record.

A surviving cavalry example connects this type of flag with the closing days of the Civil War. Appomattox Court House National Historical Park documents the thirty-five-star mounted-troops guidon carried by Company B, 5th U.S. Cavalry, part of Ulysses S. Grant’s escort on April 9, 1865. The escort accompanied Grant to the surrender meeting with Robert E. Lee, and Captain Julius Wilmot Mason later preserved its flag. That association belongs to the documented museum object; it illustrates how guidons were used rather than establishing a battle history for every reproduction of the type. Read the National Park Service’s object history.

Seen alongside rectangular national and regimental colors, a guidon makes the variety of military flags easier to understand. Shape, star arrangement, and inscriptions could distinguish one category from another, while actual objects carried the histories of the people who used and preserved them. The unlettered version shown here offers a clear introduction to the national-pattern guidon without borrowing a particular unit’s honors or claiming an unsupported connection to a famous commander.