She's A Grand Old Flag

The single most visible symbol of America is her flag. From an intellectual viewpoint, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are the most important statements of what America was, is, and intends to be. But the flag represents that plus the true emotion felt by patriots past, present and future. The flag shown here is the first official thirteen star flag, even though the thirteen star flag with the stars arranged in a circle is usually thought of as the "first flag."

The earliest American flags were a multitude of patriotic and independence-minded sentiments. The defiant rattlesnake was very popular, and one version showed the snake cut in pieces with the initials of each colony above the segments entitled "join, or die." But the best-known is the "don't tread on me" flag with the rattler coiled to strike against the oppressor on a yellow background. Another version was among the first to use the alternating thirteen red and white stripes with the rattler stretched out across them.

The patriots originally considered themselves British subjects who were being treated unfairly, so even the first "American" flags used multiple versions of the red, white and blue of the English flag. One very popular early flag had the same future red and white stripes we are familiar with, but the space now containing the blue background with the white stars instead housed the British Union Jack. That flag was the first flag officially recognized by the Continental Congress as being the flag of "the independent colonies" within the British empire. It was first hoisted on January 1, 1776 as a sign of defiance to the British fleet which had just arrived in Boston Harbor. Ultimately, the red white and blue continued to dominate the flags which represented the colonies, early independence movements, and post-Declaration assertion of the complete break from the mother country.

The first legendary flag was the Betsy Ross flag. It had the stars in a circular pattern on a blue field, as Congress had ordered it from the famous seamstress, and George Washington personally intervened to make the six-point stars into five-point stars. The only problem is that there is no historical proof that this ever actually happened. There were several popular versions of the thirteen star, thirteen stripe flag, the "Betsy Ross" version being the most popular. But Congress ultimately decided on the stars arranged horizontally for future additions which would not change the basic pattern of the stars. And that became the flag pictured at the beginning of this column.

The Star Spangled Banner flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor during the War of 1812. By that time, Congress had begun to recognize that if a new star and a new stripe were added each time a new state entered the Union (there were fifteen states by then), the stripes would become unmanageable. At that point, it was determined that only stars would be added, and the original thirteen stripes would be maintained to represent the thirteen original states. That huge flag was the one that Francis Scott Key saw flying in the rockets' red glare and the dawn's early light during the British assault on Fort McHenry. He wrote his poem praising the flag, it was set to the tune of "Ode to Anacreon in Heaven," and over a hundred years later, it became our national anthem.

In 1854, Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor to open the first official diplomatic relations between Japan and America. He was flying the thirty-six star flag. What many people do not know is that when General McArthur accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945, he ordered Perry's flag to be flown on the USS Missouri where the treaty was signed.

During the Civil War, Congress would not recognize the rebellion as being a dissolution of the Union, and maintained the stars of all the states, including those states which had seceded, on the flag of the United States. The Confederacy at first adopted a similar flag, with only the Confederate States represented in the blue field, but quickly realized it could easily be confused with the Union flag in the heat of battle. Thus was born the famous "stars and bars." Teddy Roosevelt carried a forty-five star flag up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American war, and for the first time, the American flag flew over territory not on the North American mainland.

The forty-eight star flag under which I was born flew over America in war and peace through the Great Depression, the First and Second World Wars and the Korean Conflict. Alaska and Hawaii became the first two (and only) non-contiguous states in the Union in the latter part of the 1950s and when their two stars were added, we had the flag we fly today.

I place the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on my shelf right next to the Bible in importance. They have a deep and profound influence on all my thinking. But the sight of Old Glory flying and the sound of the The Star Spangled Banner get my heart pounding and my pride in America showing. Maybe it's my inner feelings that say that the two documents represent America, but that wonderful flag represents Americans, the beneficiaries of those documents. It represents freedom and a free people in a way that no other flag in the world can.

For our fighting men and women overseas, let me add the last stanza of the Star Spangled Banner. Have a great Fourth of July:

Oh! Thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation;
Bles't with victory and peace may the Heavn' rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made, and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just;
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.