THE COLONY REBEL FLAGS.
PRIOR to July 4th, 1776, various kinds of Flags were used. Mr. Endicott, Puritan Governor, aided in a religious crusade against the cross of St. George; he cut the cross from the Flag flying at Salem, and was tried for treason, but escaped on the ground that his act was not actuated by treasonable motives, but religious zeal.
About the first of January, 1776, the immortal Washington unfurled his Flag in compliment to the United Colonies, but it was so nearly like the British Flag, that the Bunker Hill patriots objected to it, because it was a blue Flag with the St. George and St. Andrew’s crosses combined; too much like the Flag of the Britons. Nearly every regiment had its own colony Flag. All sorts of devices, corresponding with the variegated coats of the Continental troops, or militia, scarcely two alike. They were styled “Colony Rebel Flags;” still, the “Colony Rebel Flags” were all used as rallying Flags, until they were eclipsed by the starry Flag, called “The Appeal to Heaven,”—“The Star Spangled Banner.”