John M. Coski was for 33 years historian and director of research and publications at The Museum of the Confederacy (subsequently the American Civil War Museum) in Richmond, Virginia. He earned his B.A. from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from the College of William and Mary, working summers for the National Park Service and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He is the author of Capital Navy: The Men, Ships, and Operations of the James River Squadron (Savas Beatie, 1996, 2005) and The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Harvard, 2005), among other publications. He received the Emerging Civil War Award for Service in Civil War Public History.