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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. |
