THE REVOLUTION
The Birth of the Flag
SIX
The men of the colonies were the ones who did the actual fighting that won American independence; but the brave women of those times also played their part. It was the courageous confidence and fortitude of their wives and sisters that spurred the men on to final victory. Some of the women had even a more active share than this in the Revolution. Betsy Ross, who made the first flag of the United States, was one of these.
When the colonies first rebelled against the tyrannical rule of Great Britain each was a separate unit in itself. Each had its own system of government, and each its own flag. In no way except by a common feeling against the injustice of the mother country were they bound together. Besides the thirteen different banners of the colonies, there were various regimental ensigns, and all sorts of other flags, with pine trees on them, or the words “Liberty or Death” and “Don’t Tread on Me”; but there was no American national flag.
So, after the Declaration of Independence had stated that the colonies would no longer be bound to England, Congress passed this resolution on June 14, 1777: “Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
About a month previous Congress had appointed General Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel Ross a committee to get a flag designed and made. These three men went to Betsy Ross in her little upholstery shop on Arch Street, Philadelphia, and asked her to make a flag after the design they showed her. She agreed to do it, and suggested that the stars, which Washington had drawn with six points, be made with five. Her suggestion was carried out. For several years she and her assistants made flags for our government. Her house on Arch Street is still standing.
The United States flag was first blown over a military post at Fort Schuyler, on the present site of Rome, New York. The fort was besieged early in August, 1777. The garrison was without a flag; so it made one according to the design of Congress by cutting up sheets to form the white stripes, and bits of scarlet cloth for the red stripes. The blue ground for the stars was made of pieces of a cloth cloak belonging to Captain Abraham Swartwout.
John Paul Jones is supposed to have been the first to fly the Stars and Stripes over a naval vessel. This ship was the Ranger, to which he was appointed in 1777.
On December 5, 1782, the day when George III acknowledged the independence of the United States, J. S. Copley, the great early American artist, painted the flag in the background of a portrait he was doing of Elkanah Watson.
The flag was not changed until 1795, when two stripes and two stars were added for Vermont and Kentucky. But it was realized that there must be a limit to the stripes, and on April 4, 1818, a recommendation was adopted that the flag be permanently thirteen stripes, representing the thirteen original states, and that a new star be added for each state admitted.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 1, No. 43. SERIAL No. 43
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.