North Carolina adopts a state flag

• In Raleigh, the North Carolina Secession Convention votes to adopt a state flag of a blue field with a white horizontal bar and a red vertical bar on the left side with an insignia star and two dates: May 20th, 1775 (Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence) and May 20th, 1861 (Secession from the United States)./1861 

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  John Winder
  

  Career US Army officer from Maryland, John H. Winder, is today commissioned Brigadier General in the Confederate Army and assigned  one of the most difficult jobs of the war – Assistant Inspector General for the military Camps of Instruction in the Richmond vicinity. Winder is charged with arming, clothing and equipping the Confederate recruits, local law enforcement, setting commodity prices in a city that is doubling in population, handling paperwork for those unfit for service, capturing deserters, caring for the sick and wounded, and later overseeing military prisons for prisoners of war. His job would prove nearly impossible, hamstrung by the Confederacy's dismal supply system and diminishing resources. Northern newspapers would accuse him of intentionally starving Union prisoners. President Jefferson Davis, Secretary James Seddon, and Adjutant Samuel Cooper would later agree that he was a much-maligned man, set to perform a task made impossible by the inadequacy of supplies of men, food, clothing, and medicines. Despite the criticisms, Winder would order that Federal prisoners receive the same ration as did Confederate soldiers in the field, scanty as it was./1861 
• Career US Navy officer, George N. Hollins, is commissioned a captain in the Confederate States Navy. A veteran of the War of 1812, Hollins joined the navy at age 15 and had a long and distinguished career. The Maryland native had been commander of the USS Susquehanna in the Mediterranean squadron when hostilities erupted. When he put in at Naples in May 1861, he received orders to return to New York. There he resigned his commission. After a brief stop in his hometown, Baltimore, Hollins offered his services to the Confederacy and receives his commission today./1861.