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A
Flag that has grown with the Nation.
We take our flag for
granted. Unless
you were born before 1959, it's always looked
the way it looks now -- 50 white
stars on a blue field, with 13 red and white
stripes (red at top and bottom). But it
hasn't always looked that way.
When this country was
a colony of England, the stripes bordered a
Union Jack -- the British emblem of crossed
red and white bars on a blue field. In
1777 a flag appeared with the stars instead
of the Union Jack, but the stripes
were often reversed (depending on how much fabric
the vexillographer, or flag maker, had.)
It was called the Constellation Flag -- denoting
a new constellation among the nations. Of course,
when outright war was declared between the colonies
and England, other flags began to appear.
One simply turned the red and white bars on
end as an act of defiance, dropping the field
altogether.
What
about the Snake flag?
A famous flag we all
heard about in school was the "Don't tread on
me!" flag. The
idea for using a snake on the flag came from
Benjamin Franklin. He
drew a political poster that showed a snake
cut into thirteen pieces, each piece labeled
with the name of one of the 13 colonies.
The inscription on the poster was "Join, or
Die." A flag maker took up the symbol
of the snake (now joined together, of course)
and produced the symbol of warning to the British.
The
Star Spangled Banner
What about that historic
flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner
that we sing today as our national anthem?
It had 15 stars -- and 15 bars, too! However,
obviously if we kept adding a bar for each new
star, the flag would quickly become unmanageable,
and the bars were scaled back to the original
13 colonies.
Flags were made by
hand prior to 1840 when the sewing machine was
introduced, and they took a lot of labor.
The woman who made the flag that inspired Francis
Scott Key to write his poem was part of a family
of three generations of flag makers. Rebecca
Young was paid nearly 40 times by the Continental
Army for making flags. Her
daughter, Mary Young Pickersgill of Baltimore,
and her granddaughter, Caroline Purdy, made
the flag that inspired the poem.
The
flag was enormous! It
measured 30 feet by 42 feet.
Each of the stars was 2 feet across. It
took about 6 weeks to make, and the women received
$405.90 for their work. (You would think
they could have rounded that up an extra 10
cents!) The blue field alone measured
16 by 20 feet, and the stripes were each 2 feet
wide. The flag contained 400 yards of
first-quality, single-ply woolen bunting, and
was sewn by hand using linen thread. In
other words, it was made to last!
The flag was ordered
for Fort McHenry, which came under seige by
the British on September 13-14, 1814.
Francis Scott Key should have been at the fort
during that time, but he'd gone over to the
British commander to try to intercede for a
friend who had been captured and accused of
crimes against His Majesty's Troops. The
negotiations took several days, and during that
time the fort was beseiged.
Imagine the feelings
of Key as he stood on the deck of the Royal
Navy Ship Surprise, among British troops
who wanted nothing more than to demolish Fort
McHenry. The night wore on, and the shelling
continued pounding at the fort. With each
burst of light, Key would strain to see if the
flag still flew, indicating the fort was not
surrendering.
"By the rockets red glare" he peered through
the smoke and caught quick glimpses of the red,
white and blue flag that Mrs. Pickersgill had
put so much effort into.
When the guns fell silent in the night, there
was no way Key could know what was happening
ashore, but at last, "by the dawn's early light"
his heart leapt to see the flag still flying,
indicating that the fort had held. Later
that day back in his hotel room he jotted down
some lines and wrote the poem he called "Defence
of Fort M'Henry". Somehow,
the Star Spangled Banner has a better ring to
it.
As you fly your flag
this Flag Day, June 14, take a moment and try
to picture that terrible night, and the incredible
flag that flew through it all. You
can see the flag today at the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington, D.C., where it is on display.
Read
more about our flags through history by using
this link. |
