Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1876 — Our Flag. [ARTICLE]

Our Flag.

Every nation has Its flag. Every ship in foreign waters is known by the colors she shows at her peak. The French frigate hoists her bunting ofjhree vertical stripes, red, white and blue; the English man-of-war shows a red flag, with the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George on a blue union in the upper left-handed corner; and the Austrian, a double-head black eagle, on a yellow ground—every nation with a name and a place, having its own appropriate symbol. When we were colonies of England we sailed and fought under her flag. Twenty years before the Revolution, when we were at war with the French and their Allies, the Indians, many a brave man in some hot skirmish with Indians would have welcomed the sight of the red flag of England—it would mean aid and comfort when sorely pressed. But the time was coming when he was to hate it as much as he had hated the French colors. The time was coming when the sight of it was to mean oppression and tyranny to him, and pvery feeling of his nature would be roused against it. Every child knows how we finally labelled; it was nothing less, and, to England, our George Washington was merely a leading rebel. It was a bold proceeding. We were thirteen little States, fringed along on the Atlantic coast, with the unbroken forest behind Us, aid among the great family of nations we had neither place nor name. We were like the last m-w boy at a public school—we had t<> fight to obtain due respect from all the great,old nations who were looking on. Qf course we had no flag; we bad to earn that, too. For a year or soom' privateers carried the Massachusetts State flag. It was better, they thought, than the English flag, at any rate. The field was of white bunting; in the middle a green pine Oree, and on the opposite side the motto: “ Appeal to Heaven.” Washington, in his character of Gener-al-in-Chief, commissioned several privateer schooners, and they all carried this flag. ’ *' J ' The Alfred was one of the few large ships we had, and she carried the pinetree flag, and beside that, one with thirteen stripes, in red and white, but with no stars; while on the stripes was coiled a rattle-snake, with the motto, “ Don’t tread on me.” The rattle-snake being found only in America, there was,’ of course, a peculiar meaning in this emblem. In the early part of the Revolution, some of the South Carolina regiments carried the palmetto tree on their flag. That was a very good symbol, and the State yet koeps it on her coat of arms, though it grpws everywhere in the South. The palmetto logs at Fort Moultrie were found very good things to receive cannon balls when that fort was besieged by the British in June of 1776. . There was this multiplicity of flags, because we did not clearly know what we were. No nation had acknowledged us as belonging to their great family yet; in fact, we had not quite cut loose from England, yet we were fighting her with all our might, and it seemed absurd to be under her colors. In the fight at Bunker Hill, the flag planted in the corner of that famous’redoubt was of blue bunting, with the cross of St. George in red in the corner, and a pine tree, that same pine tree, in the upper right-hand quarter of the cross. Our army at Cambridge celebrated New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, 1776, not as the Chinese, by firing crackers and illuminating lanterns in the evening, nor yet by making calls, but by unfurling for the first time in an American camp the flag of thirteen stripes. But even then we had not declared ourselves independent of Great Britain, and this flag had the British union in the corner, and the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George. Finally, on the 14th of June, 1776, Congress, which met then in Philadelphia, settled upon our style of flag. “It shall have,” said they, “thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and the union of the States shall be indicated by thirteen stars, white, in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” It, was not until about forty JWSRgo that it was decided to add another star for every new State as it joined the Union. So that the constellation as it is now, with nearly forty stars in it, has grown a good deal from the original thirteen. But the sfripes still remain the same in number, to remind us of the first little band of States who “ fought it oitf” against Great Britain. — Kate Foote, in St. Niclwlto for July..