5th Minnesota Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment - National Flag

Less than half of this national color exists today. This flag was issued to the regiment during the last months of 1863. The battle honors, some missing, record the role that two of the regiment’s companies had in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, at Redwood Ferry and Ft. Ridgely, and the regiment’s participation in the battles of Corinth, Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Organized in the winter of 1861-62, three companies of the Fifth were stationed in Minnesota military posts during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. The full regiment was heavily engaged at Corinth (October 1862), Vicksburg (July 1863), in the Red River Expedition (March-May 1864), Tupelo (July 1864), Nashville (December 1864), and the Mobile Campaign (March– April 1865).