?£-c~- Title.
PL. I
U.S. ENSIGNS & PENNANTS. 1880.HISTORY
OF THE
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES
OF
AMERICA,
AND OF THE
NAVAL AND YACHT-CLUB SIGNALS, SEALS, AND ARMS, AND PRINCIPAL NATIONAL SONGS OF THE UNITED STATES,
TOitïj a Œïjronicle
OF
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, BANNERS, AND FLAGS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
BÏ
GEO. HENRY PREBLE,
REAR-ADMIRAL U. S. N.
FOURTH EDITION.
Illustrate foitlj Em (More ÿlatrs, Œfoo pjunOre lEngrairings on OTooU.
anti maps anti ‘Eutograpljies.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. ©Je Etoetßiüe Presa, CDambrt&Fe.
1894.Copyright, 1880,
By Geo. Henry Preble.“ißot to tbe ittotnf, but to t&e iDeaö.”
♦
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO THE
MEMORY OF THOSE GALLANT SPIRITS
WHO, BY LAND OR SEA, HAVE FOUGHT, CONQUERED,
JFallen in defence
OF
THE BANNER WHICH IT COMMEMORATES.“ This is a maxim which I have received by hereditary tradition, not only from my father, but also from my grandfather and his ancestors, that, after what I owe to God, nothing should be more dear or sacred than the love and respect I owe to my country.” — DeThou.
“ Land of my birth ! thy glorious stars Float over shore and sea,
Made sacred by a thousand scars They were not born to flee ;
Oh may that flag for ever wave Where dwell the patriot and the brave,
Till all the earth be free:
Yet still the shrine be here, as now,
Where freeman, pilgrim-like, shall bow.’ ’
“There is the national flag! He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of country. If he be in a foreign land, the flag is companionship, and country itself, with all its endearments. Who, as he sees it, can think of a State merely? Whose eye, once fastened upon its radiant trophies, can fail to recognize the image of the whole nation ? It has been called ‘ a floating piece of poetry; ’ and yet I know not if it have any intrinsic beauty beyond other ensigns. Its highest beauty is in what it symbolizes. It is because it represents all, that all gaze at it with delight and reverence. It is a piece of bunting lifted in the air ; but it speaks sublimely, and every part has a voice. Its stripes of alternate red and white proclaim the original union of thirteen States to maintain the Declaration of Independence Its stars, white on a field of blue, proclaim that union of States constituting our national constellation which receives a new star with every new State. The two together signify union, past and present. The very colors have a language which was officially recognized by our fathers. White is for purity ; red, for valor ; blue, for justice; and all together — bunting, stripes, stars, and colors, blazing in the sky—make the flag of our country, to be cherished by all our hearts, to be upheld by all our hands.” — Charles Sumner.
“ I have seen the glories of art and architecture, and mountain and river; I have seen the sunset on Jungfrau, and the full moon rise over Mont Blanc; but the fairest vision on which these eyes ever looked was the flag of my country in a foreign land. Beautiful as a flower to those who love it, terrible as a meteor to those who hate, it is the symbol of the power and glory, and the honor of fifty millions of Americans.” — George F. Hoar 1878.
“ Up many a fortress wall
They charged, those boys in blue;
’Mid surging smoke and volleyed ball,
The bravest were the first to fall, —
To fall for me and you!
Our brothers mustered by our side,
They marched and fought and nobly died For me and you!
Good friend, for me and you.”PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In preparing this book in its permanent form, the errors of the press and of fact inseparable from the first issue of so novel and comprehensive a work have been corrected, much new matter has been added, and some of the original text discarded, in order to keep the book within reasonable limits, while the general plan and arrangement is the same. The colored plates also have been rearranged and changed, and the wood engravings largely increased, while the maps and autographies of national songs and documents are a new and distinct feature.
The aim of the book is to perpetuate and intensify a love for our Union, through the flag which symbolizes it. The story of Our flag and of the Southern flags in the Civil War show graphically the madness of the time, and will, it is hoped, serve to render the crime of secession hideous, and afford a moral aid towards preventing a recurrence of such fratricide against the life of the nation.
To my sensitive Southern friends who have objected to being called ‘ traitors ’ and 1 rebels ’ I would say, those words are not intended in an offensive sense ; and I respectfully refer them to General Jackson’s opinion of nullification,Vili
PREFACE.
under his own hand, on page 354, and to the general dictionary definition : — Traitor. “ One who violates his allegiance; ” “ one who takes arms and levies war against his country,” &c. Rebel. “ One who defies and seeks to overthrow the authority to which he is rightfully subject.” I think, under these definitions, they must plead guilty to both counts. They were ‘bad boys,’ who barred themselves out, but, having returned to their allegiance, all that is forgiven ; and, having learned by experience, it is hoped they will never again raise a hand to subvert the majesty and authority of the Union.
Although we are comparatively a new nation, our Stars and Stripes may to-day claim antiquity among national flags. They are older than the present flag of Great Britain, established in 1801; than the present flag of Spain, established in 1785; than the French tricolor, decreed in 1794; than the existing flag of Portugal, established in 1830 ; than the flag of the Empire of Germany, which represents the sovereignty of fourteen distinct flags and States, established in 1870 ; than the Italian tricolor, established in 1848; the Swedish Norwegian ensign; the recent flags of the old empires of China and Japan; or the flags of all the South American States, which have very generally been modelled from ‘ Our Flag.’
I wish to return my acknowledgments to many old friends for their continued interest in my work, who have given me much valuable aid and information; and I would also thank the Hon. A. R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, H. A. Homes, LL.D., Librarian of the New York State Library, Hon. William A. Courtenay, Mayor of Charleston, S. C., Hon. John F. H. Claiborne, of Natchez, ex-Governor of Mississippi, Colonel J. P. Nicholson, ofPREFACE.
IX
Philadelphia, Miss D. L. Dix, of Washington, D. C., and the authors of our songs who have furnished autograph copies of them, with many others too numerous to name here, but whose favors have been credited elsewhere in the text.
Cottage Farm, Brookline, Mass.
July 4, 1880.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
The text of this edition is the same as that of the second, except that a few verbal and typographical errors have been corrected, and several pages of notes added, bringing the matter up to date.
November 15, 1881.PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Proudhon, the French socialist, had a peculiar manner of proceeding in the composition of a work.
“ When an idea struck him, he would write it out at length, generally in the shape of a newspaper article ; then he would put it in an envelope, and whenever a new idea occurred to him, or he obtained additional information, he would write it on a piece of paper, and add it to the envelope. When a sufficient quantity of material was assembled, he would write an article for some review or magazine. This article he would place in a larger envelope, and add thoughts and information until, at last, the article became a book; and the day after the publication of his book, he would place it in a pasteboard box, and add thoughts and additional information as he came into possession of them.”
Very much in the same way have these memoirs grown to the size of this volume. More than twenty years since, their compiler became interested in tracing out the first display of Our Flag on foreign seas, and the notes he then gathered resulted in the preparation of an article entitled “ The First Appearance of the Flag of the Free,” which was published in the “ Portland Daily Advertiser,” in 1853, and thence extensively copied into other journals. Around that article from time to time became concretedXll
PREFACE.
numerous additional facts, which were embodied in another and longer newspaper article on the same topic. His interest in the subject grew with the increase of knowledge ; new facts were accumulated and sought for, wherever to be obtained. The War of the Rebellion added a fresh impulse •to his inquiries, and new and interesting incidents. The result is the present volume, which, if not rendered interesting by the graces of a practised authorship, can claim to be a faithful record of facts.
Following the idea of Proudhon, the writer will be glad to receive from his readers any facts, incidents, or corrections, that will enable him to complete his memorial of our grand old flag, and help perpetuate it as the chosen emblem of Liberty and Union.
Collected for his own amusement and instruction, in committing these memoirs to the public the compiler hopes they may interest and amuse others as much as the collecting of them has himself. If they revive and preserve, in the least degree, a patriotic sentiment for our starry banner, his ambition will be accomplished, his end attained.
More than a thousand volumes have been examined in their preparation, and an extensive correspondence has been a necessity. I may say, therefore, to my readers, considering the score of years I have spent in the pursuit, as Montesquieu remarked to a friend concerning a particular part of his writings, “ You will read it in a few hours, but I assure you it has cost me so much labor that it has whitened my hair.”
I would express my obligations to Messrs. William J. Canby, William D. Gemmill, and Charles J. Lukens of Philadelphia, and Messrs. B. J. Lossing and Charles J. Bushnell of New York, for valuable suggestions andPREFACE.
Xlll
facts, and particularly to Mr. John A. McAllister, who has been unwearied in searching for and completing evidences of facts otherwise beyond my reach. Other friends, too numerous to mention, who have given me their assistance, will please accept my silent acknowledgments.
In 1864, the manuscript of this book, in its then incomplete state, was forwarded from Lisbon, Portugal, to the managers of the National Sailors’ Fair at Boston, as a contribution to that charity, which resulted in the establishment of the National Sailors’ Home at Quincy, Mass. It arrived, however, too late to be printed for its benefit.
Naval Rendezvous, Navy Yard,
Charlestown. Mass.
September 10, 1872.CONTENTS
PART I.
PAGE
The Standards, Flags, Banners, and Symbols of Ancient and Modem
Nations....................................................1
PART II.
A.D. 860-1777.
1. The Early Discoveries of America, and the First Banner planted on its Shores, a.d. 860-1634; 2. Colonial and Provincial Flags, 1634-1766 ;
3. Flags of the Pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary Periods preceding the Stars and Stripes, 1766-1777.	4. The Grand Union or Continental
Flag of the United Colonies......................................157
PART III.
The Stars and Stripes, 1777-1818.
1. Theories as to the Origin of the Stars and Stripes, as the Devices of our National Banner; 2. The Flag of Thirteen Stars and Stripes during the Revolution, 1777-1783; 3. The Flag of Thirteen Stars and Thirteen Stripes, 1783-1795; 4. The Flag of Fifteen Stars and Fifteen Stripes, 1795-1818	. 249
PART IY.
The Stars and Stripes, 1818-1861.
1. The Flag of Thirteen Stripes and a Star for each State of the Union, 1818-
1861; 2. Chronicles of the Flag, 1818-1861 ....... 337
PART V.
The Stars and Stripes, 1861-1865. Our Flag in the Great Rebellion.
1. The Beginning of the War against our Flag and the Union; 2. Our Flag at Fort Sumter; 3. Loyal Flag Raisings ;	4. Our Flag in Secessia;
5. Southern Flags, 1861-1865 ........................... 393XVI
CONTENTS.
PART VI.
The Stars and Stripes, 1865-1880.
1. The End of the War against the Union and the Flag; 2. The Return of the Battle-flags of the Volunteer Regiments to their States; 3. The Disposition of the Trophy-flags of the War; 4. Anecdotes and incidents illustrating the History of our Flag, 1865-1880; 5. State Seals, Arms, Flags, and Colors
PART VII.
Miscellaneous.
1. The Distinguishing Flags and Signals of the United States Navy, 1776-1880; 2. The Distinguishing Flags of the United States Army, 1880; 3. The Seal and Arms of the United States, and the Seals of the Departments, 1782-1880; 4. American Yacht Clubs and Flags, 1880 ; 5. Our National and Patriotic Songs..................................
INDEX .
PAGE
535
659
769ILLUSTRATIONS.
COLORED PLATES.
Page
I.	United States National, Revenue, and Yacht Club Ensigns and
Pennants, 1880 ....................................Face Title
II.	The Flags of all Nations, 1880 .	.......................... 1
III.	The Flags of United Germany................................101
IY. The New England Colors, 1686, 1704, and 1784; and the Flag of
the u Royal Savage,” 1775	.............................. 157
Y. Flags of 1775-1777 ......................................... 193
VI.	Southern Flags, 1861-1864	................................. 393
VII.	Returning the Flags of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiments
to Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 1865	............... 533
VIII.	Distinctive Flags of the United States Navy, 1776-1880 ....	657
IX.	Signal Flags, Pennants, &c., United States Navy, 1880 .... 677
X.	American Yacht Club Flags, 1880 ........................... 701
Portrait of Elkanah Watson, engraved on steel, from a painting by Copley, and showing the first Stars and Stripes raised in England, 1783	.......................................... 296WOOD ILLUSTRATIONS
♦
No.	Page
1.	Pulaski’s Banner..................9
2.	Flag of Washington’s Life Guard . 10
3.	Simon de Montfort’s Banner ... 15
4.	Cromwell’s Bannerol..............IT
5.	Cromwell’s Funeral Ensigns, &c.	. 17
6.	The Pennon.......................18
7.	Daubernoun’s Pennon, 1277 ... 19
8.	The Pavon........................19
9.	Ensigns from the Bayeux Tapestry . 21
10.	The Gonfanon......................22
11.	An Ancient Ship...................24
12.	French Vessel of War, 16th Century 26
13.	Ship of Henry VI.’s Time, 1430-61 . 27
14.	The Mora, 1066 .................. 28
15.	Ship of the Earl of Warwick, 1437 . 29
16.	The Harry Grace de Dieu, 1515 . . 31
17.	English Ship of War, 1520 .... 32
18.	The Sovereign of the Seas, 1637 . . 34
19.	A Knight of Malta.................43
20.	Hospitaller’s Standard............44
21.	A Knight Templar ’................46
22.	A Templar in a Travelling Dress . 47
23.	A Knights Templar Standard ... 47
24.	The Beauceant.....................48
25.	Isis..............................48
26.	Egyptian Standards................49
27.	Standards of Pharaoh .	.	.	.	. 50
28.	Egyptian Standards, from Wilkinson 50
29.	The Horse and the Grasshopper .	. 51
30.	Death’s-head and Crescent .... 52
31.	Standards and Devices of the He-
brews ..........................53
32.	Two Assyrian Standards .... 54
33.	The Device of Romulus.............55
34.	Roman Standards...................56
35.	A Bronze Horse, Roman Standard . 57
36.	Group of Eleven Roman Imperial
Standards.......................58
37.	The Labarum of Constantine ... 59
38.	The Hand .	  60
39.	The Doseh.........................62
40 The Crescent and Cross united, 1876 66 41. Tien Hoang and the Dragon ... 72 42 Old Imperial Standard of Japan .	. 78
43.	Imperial Arms of Japan, 1880 . ., . 78
44.	The Banner of Cortez..............82
45.	A Spanish Standard, 1558 .... 88
46.	Banner of Balboa ....... 90
47.	The Royal Standard of Russia . . 95
48.	Russian Flag, 1386	  96
49.	Old East India Flag of Portugal. . 99
50.	Banner of Charlemagne............104
51.	Three Banners of St. Denis . . . 105
52.	The Oriflamme....................105
53.	The Bourbon Standard.............107
54.	A French Eagle...................117
55.	Head of a French Standard, 1878	. 117
56.	The Royal Arms of England. 1066-
1880 ................\ ... 118
57.	The Arms of London, a d. 44	. . 119
No.	Page
58.	The Three Saxes or Swords of
Essex, 530	........... 121
59.	Eleanor of Guyenne	.....	126
60.	Margaret, Daughter of Henry III.,
1252 ..........................127
61.	Standard of Edward III., 1337 . . 128
62.	The Crest of the Black Prince. . 130
63.	Standard of Henry IV..............131
64.	Standard of Edward IV.............133
65.	Two Standards of Henry VIII. . 136
66.	Standard of Henry VIII., 1544	. 136
67.	Standard of the Douglas, 1382	. 141
68.	Arms of Henry V. of England .	. 143
69.	The Formation of the Union Flag of
Great Britain..................149
70.	A Union Device of 1800 .... 150
71.	The Shields of St. George, St. An-
drew, and St.	Patrick	....	151
72.	Nelson’s Signal at Trafalgar .	. 155
73.	A Northman Vessel, 860-1014 .	. 159
74.	Standard of Spain, 1492 .... 168
75.	The Caravel of Columbus .	. . 169
76.	Banner of Columbus................169
77.	Raleigh’s Ship. 1585 ............ 174
78.	Formation of the Union Colors of
1606 .......................... 176
79.	The Long Parliament Flag, 1648 . 177
80.	Standard of the Three County
Troop, 1659 ................... 182
81.	Colors of Captain Noyes’s Com-
pany, 1684..................... 183
82.	The King’s Colors at New York, 1679 184
83.	St. George’s Cross, 1679 .... 185
84.	Colonial Merchant Flag, 1701 . . 186
85.	Six Flags from the “Dominionof
the Sea,” 1705 .............. 188
86.	Pavillon de la Nouvelle Angleterre
en Amérique, 1737 ........... 189
87.	Bas-relief of Boston Liberty Tree . 194
88.	Colonial Seal of New Netherland . 197
89.	Bunker’s Hill Flag...............199
90.	Boston North Battery, &c., show-
ing Flags of 1775 "...........200
91.	The Pine Tree Flag, 1776	. .	. 201
92.	American Floating Battery, 1775 . 202
93.	Flag of the Pennsylvania West-
moreland County Brigade, 1775 205
94.	The Cowpens and Eutaw Flag .	. 207
95.	Rattlesnake Device...............214
96.	Flag of the Royal Savage, 1776	. 219
97.	Flag destroyed at Cheapside, 1644 . 220
98.	East India Company’s Ensign, 1704 221
99.	East India Company’s Ensign, 1834 221
100.	Commodore Hopkins, &c., 1776	. 222
101.	Formation of the Grand Union Flag
of 1776	...................... 223
102.	Flag of the Dutch West India Com-
pany .	.	  224
103.	Fac-simile of Washington’s Book-
plate .........................225XX
WOOD ILLUSTRATIONS.
No.	Page
104.	American Flag at White Plains,
1776 .......................... 246
105.	The Stars and Stripes, 1777-1880,
and the proposed Standard	.	.	248
106.	Standard of the Philadelphia City
Troop, 1775	  252
107.	The Device.....................253
108.	The Phrygian Cap...............254
109.	A Union Device, 1776 ............. 264
110.	House where First Stars and Stripes
are said to have been	made	.	.	265
111.	Diagram of a Union.............272
112.	Old Swedes’ Church, Philadelphia	.	237
113.	A Flag of the Bon Homme Richard,
1779 .......................... 282
114.	Silk Flag displayed at New Haven,
1783	288
115.	The Bark Maria, 1859 ............ 296
116.	A Medal, Discovery of the Colum-
bia River, 1787 ............... 302
117.	Stonington Flag, 1814.............327
118.	Flag of the Enterprise, 1813 . . . 327
119.	Portrait of Sami. C. Reid . . . 339
120.	Design for a National Standard,
1818............................343
121.	Fac-simile of an Engraving of 1785 346
122.	Diagram of Stars in a Union, 1795 347
123.	Two Diagrams of the Unions of
Navy Flags, 1818................349
124.	Joel R. Poinsett and our Flag in
Mexico, 1825 .................. 352
125.	“ The Warders of the Antarctic ”	357
126.	The Schooner Flying Fish beset . 359
127.	The Antarctic Continent .... 364
128.	Arctic Expedition Flag, 1861	. . 387
129.	Prof. S. F. B. Morse’s Suggestion . 403
130.	State House Montgomery, Ala., 1861 406
131.	Fort Sumter, S. C., 1860 .... 417
132.	Raising the Flag at Sumter, Dec.
26, 1860....................... 420
133.	Steamer Star of the West, 1861	. 425
134.	Nailing the Flag to the Staff .	. 440
135.	Repossession of Fort Sumter, April
14, 1865	  452
136.	Portrait of Barbara Frietchie .	.	482
137.	Barbara Frietchie’s House . .	.	483
138.	Street Flag-staff, Charleston, S. C. 495
139.	Banner of the South Carolina Con-
vention ........................496
140.	Banner of South Carolina, 1861 . 498
141.	The Pelican Flag, Louisiana .	.	498
142.	The Confederate States Seal . . . 525
143.	Firemen Saluting the Flag, 1867 . 590
144.	Stanley meeting Livingstone . . 597
145.	Pennsylvania Battle-flags in Pro-
cession, June 17, 1879 •.	.	.	. 601
146.	Arms of Maine .	...........606
147.	Arms of New Hampshire .... 606
148.	Seal of Vermont.................608
149.	Arms of Massachusetts .... 609
150.	,,	Rhode Island .... 611
151.	,,	Connecticut................612
152.	,,	New York...................614
153.	„	New Jersey.................617
No.	Page
154.	Arms of Pennsylvania .... 618
155.	„	Delaware..............621
156.	,,	Maryland..............622
157.	,,	Virginia..............623
158.	„	West Virginia	....	625
159.	,,	North Carolina	.	.	.	•.	626
160.	,,	South Carolina	....	628
161.	,,	Louisiana.............634
162.	,,	Texas.................635
163.	,,	Arkansas..............637
164.	,,	Tennessee	......	638
165.	„	Kentucky..............638
166.	„	Ohio..................640
167.	,,	Michigan..............642
168.	,,	Missouri..............645
169.	,,	Iowa..................646
170.	,,	Wisconsin..............647
171.	,,	Minnesota.............648
172.	,,	California............648
173.	,,	Kansas................650
174.	,,	Nebraska..............651
175.	,,	Colorado..............652
176.	Seal of Utah.....................653
177.	Seal of New Mexico...............653
178.	Flag of the Naval Commander-in-
Chief, 1776	  659
179.	Day Signals U. S. Navy, 1803-4 . 660
180.	Night Signals U. S. Navy, 1803-4	661
181.	Dajr Signals U. S. Navy, 1812-14	663
182.	Perry’s Battle Flag...............663
183.	Day Signals U. S. Navy, 1858-65. 666
184.	Army Signals, 1862	  667
185.	United States Seal commonly used 683
186.	Du Simitiere's Design for U. S. Seal 683
187.	Jefferson’s Design, 1776, obverse
and reverse....................684
188.	Design submitted 1779, obverse and
reverse......................  686
189.	Design submitted 1880, obverse and
reverse .	  687
190.	Barton’s Design, 1782 ........... 687
191.	The Great Seal of the United States,
adopted June 20, 1782, obverse and reverse....................691
192.	The President’s Seal..............697
193.	Franklin’s Post-Rider ..... 697
194.	Naval Seal, 1779	  698
195.	Navy Department Seal, 1879	.	. 698
196.	War Department Seal, 1778-1880 . 698
197.	Treasury Department Seal, 1778-
1880 ......................... 699
198.	State Department Seal.............699
199.	Department of the Interior Seal . 699
200.	Department of Justice Seal . . . 699
201.	Commodore’s Challenge Cup. . . 701
202.	The America’s Cup................709
203.	Yacht Henrietta..................711
204.	The Author of ‘Hail Columbia,’
with the House in which it was Written, and the Theatre in which it was first Sung .	. . 714
205.	The Original ‘ Star-Spangled Ban-
ner’ ..........................721
206.	Bombardment of Fort McHenry . 724
HERALDIC COLORS OF THE ENGRAVINGS OF FLAGS.
Red.	Perpendicular lines.
Blue. Horizontal lines.
Black. Vertical crossed by horizontal lines. Green. Diagonal lines from left to right.
Purple. Diagonal lines from right to left. Yellow. Black dots on white.
White. A plain white field.MAPS AND AUTOGRAPHIES,
XXI
MAPS.
No	Page
1.	Map of	Vineland.....................163
2.	Map of	North	America, 1500 . . . 172
3 Reinel’s Map of Nova Scotia, &c.,
1504	....................... 172
No.	Page
4.	Map of the Antarctic Continent . . 363
5.	Map showing the Progress of our Flag
towards the North Pole ....	389
6.	Map of Charleston Harbor . . .	. 418
AUTOGRAPHIES.
No.	Page
1.	Bills of the Philadelphia City Troop
Standard, September, 1775	.	.	.	257
2.	Letter of James Meyler..........281
3.	H. W. Longfellow, ‘The Stars and
Stripes Everywhere ’..........290
4.	Signature of Sami. C. Reid.	.	.	.	339
5.	Signature of Joel R. Poinsett	.	.	.	352
6.	Andrew Jackson on Nullification, .
1833	.......................... 354
7.	John A. Dix’s ‘ Shoot him on the
Spot ’ Order, Jan. 21,1861	.	.	.	399
8.	John G. Whittier, a Verse of Barbara
Frietchie.....................485
9.	H. W. Longfellow, ‘ The Ship of
State’ . ........................542
No.	Page
10.	Jos. Hopkinson, Signature....	714
11.	Jos. Hopkinson, ‘ Hail Columbia,’ 717,718
12.	F. S. Key, ‘The Star-Spangled
Banner ’........................720
13.	O. W. Holmes, Additional Verse to
‘ The Star-Spangled Banner ’ .	. 730
14.	Samuel Francis Smith, ‘America’ 742, 743
15.	Francis de Haes Janvier, ‘ God Save
our President ’............ 744-746
16.	Thomas a Becket, ‘ Columbia the
Gem of the Ocean’ .... 756,757
17.	Francis Miles Finch, ‘ The Blue and
the Gray’.................. 759,760
18.	Julia Ward Howe, ‘Battle-Hymn of
the Republic’ . . . . «. . 767,768PART I.
■» ■ - —
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, FLAGS, AND BANNERS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.“ 3ft t0 in anb tfjrauglj sgmbals ttjat man cansciauslg or uncanseiauslg Ifbes, rnabes, anti ijas i)ts being, 2H)ase ages, mareaber, are aeeaxmteti tjje nablest foijielj can best reeagnije ggmbalieal inartlj anb pri^e it at tlje
»0t”	Carlyle.
“ @ut af manuments, names, foarbes, praberbes, pribate reearbes anb ebi-benees, fragments af staries, passages af baafes, anb tfje like, foe bae sabe anb reeaber gamefotjat fram tfje betnge af time,”	Bacon
“ fHang things eantarneb in tijis baait are na atijer tijan callectians af after autfjars, anb mg labar is na mare therein ttjan tijeirs foija gather a barietg af fiafoers ant af seberat garbens ta rampage ane sigijtlg garlanb,”
Sir ¥m. Mon son.
“ ©reat raam tijare is far amenbments, as foelt as abbitians, ISttljer af tljese, in fofjat bress saeber tijeg eatne, raugfj ar smaatij, foil! be ijeartilg foel-eatne,”A HISTORY
OF THE
FUG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
WITH A CHRONICLE OF THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, FLAGS, AND BANNERS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
Symbols and colors enabling nations to distinguish themselves from each other have from the most remote periods exercised a powerful influence upon mankind. It is a fact well established both by sacred and profane history that a standard or ensign was borne in the armies of all nations from the most distant era. A colored banner was one of the earliest, as it was the simplest, of military ensigns. As tribes and nations multiplied, these banners naturally became particolored by stripes and other linear divisions, and finally emblazoned with the devices of the several chieftains. Thus these symbols, which during peaceful times were but trivial ornaments, became in political or religious disturbances a lever like that of Archimedes, and convulsed the world.
Before commencing the memoir of the flag which this volume commemorates, I propose to notice some of the symbols, standards, and banners of other nations. History, in general, has failed to appreciate the value of these symbols, which have given ascendancy to party, and led armies to victory with more certainty and despatch than all the combinations of tactics and the most disinterested valor.
We talk of the eagles of the Romans, of the contest between the crescent and the cross, and of the wars of the white and red roses; of the meteor flag of England, and of the cross of St. George; of the white plume and banner of Henry IV., and the lilies and tricolor of France; and of our own starry banner, which, said Edward Everett (May 27, 1861), “ speaks for itself. Its mute eloquence needs no4
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
aid to interpret its significance. Fidelity to the Union blazes from its stars, allegiance to the government beneath which we live is wrapped in its folds.”
The tassels which are customarily pendent from the upper part of military banners and standards, and the fringes which surround them, have their origin in sacred emblems, which, passing from gentile, mosaic, pagan, and Christian banners and sacerdotal garments, have finally crept upon profane standards and dresses. The high-priests of Brahma, Baal, Osiris, Mithras, Jehovah, the priestesses of Yesta, Isis, Lucinia, Ceres, and Diana, were adorned with tassels, fringes, ribbons, and colors consecrated to their respective worships. When Moses had abjured the gods of Egypt, his native country, to follow the Jehovah of Midian, he wrote a ritual, bidding pomegranates of blue, of purple, and of scarlet, alternating with golden bells, to be placed about the hem of the blue robe of Aaron, to minister in the priest’s office (Exodus xxviii. 31-35). The pomegranates were sometimes figured by tassels. The Mosaic law bade the Israelites to border their garments with fringes and blue ribands, as being, in their eyes, a remembrance against lusting (Numbers xv. 38, 39). Thus early was blue the emblem of purity and innocence. The Popes having wedded the Jewish and Heathen rites with the Christian worship, the Christian prelates adopted the pagan garments with tassels. Hence the warlike priests of Christ, on their return from the crusades, having assumed armorial bearings, the sacred tassels became the badge of prelacy in ecclesiastical armories. The archbishops had their shields surmounted with a green chapeau, or hat, with tassels, interlaced by several rows of cordon or strings, pendent on both sides. The green color was the symbol of a See, which never dies, or always revives as foliage regenerates. The chapeau, or cardinal’s hat, with the same tassels, is of scarlet, the emblematic hue of the criminal court of the Holy Inquisition. The tassels, having passed into profane customs, became ornaments for national standards, which were often blessed by the priests, and for royal girdles or cordelieres. These were a silk or gold cord, terminating in two heavy tassels of the form of pomegranates, and a fringe, with which the royal robe of kings and queens is fastened around the waist.
Our English word, Flag, — which in Danish is the same, in Swedish flagg, in German flagge, in Teutonic and Old French flacke, Icelandic flaka, Belgian flack, flak, — signifying that which hangs down loosely, is said to be derived from the early use of rushes for streamers, and also from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to fly,” because the light material of wThich it is made is floated or lifted by every breeze.OF ANCIENT AND MODEBN NATIONS.
5
In modern parlance, under the generic name of flag is included standards, ancients or ensigns, banners, bannerolls, pavons, colors, streamers, pennons, pennoncelles, gonfanons, guidons, coronetts or cor-onells (hence the title of colonel), and the like.
A flag is defined by the ‘London Encyclopedia’ as “a small banner of distinction used in the army, and stuck in a baggage-wagon, to distinguish the baggage of one brigade from another, and of one battalion from another.” It, however, properly denotes in our time the colors worn at the mastheads of national vessels to mark the rank or quality of the person commanding a squadron or fleet. The admiral of a squadron or fleet is styled the flag-officer, from the square flag hoisted at one of the mastheads of the vessel on which he is embarked, and which denotes to the rest of the fleet his presence there, and causes his ship to be designated as “ the flag-ship.”
The first flag of Great Britain, generally known as the Eoyal standard, is a square flag, blazoned with the arms of the United Kingdom. When hoisted at the masthead it denotes that the sovereign, or some member of the royal family, is embarked on board the vessel; or, when hoisted on the flag-staff over a residence, wherever they may be on shore. The royal salute for this flag is twenty-one guns.
The second flag, that of the lord high admiral, or of “ the commissioners performing the duties of that high office,” is “ a crimson banner,” with “ an anchor argent gorged in the arm with a coronet and a cable through the ring fretted in a true lover’s knot with the ends pendant.”
Thus it was carried by the Earl of Southampton in the reign of Henry VIII., and by the Earl of Lincoln in the time of Mary, except that he bore the stem and flukes of the anchor argent, the ring and stock or, and the cable azure. The Duke of Buckingham used the anchor with cable entwined, all or, much as it is now. In the reign of Charles II., the Duke of York placed his arms on an anchor surmounted by his coronet. Among the first acts of Charles II., after his restoration to the throne, was one declaring his brother the Duke of York lord high admiral, on the 4th of June, 1660. The Duke, having hoisted his flag on board the Eoyal Charles, put to sea on the 25th of April, 1665, with a squadron of fourteen sail, besides five ships and smaller vessels, and met and defeated the fleet of Holland under Op-dam on the 3d of June. On the commencement of the second Dutch war, the Duke again hoisted his flag on board the St. Michael, and engaging the great De Buyter’s ship, the St. Michael was reduced almost to a wreck, when he shifted his flag to the Eoyal London, and was successful6
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The only account we have of the flag of the lord high admiral being carried at sea by an individual not of the blood royal is in the Memoirs of Sir John Leake, which say, “The Earl of Berkeley being then (21st March, 1719) vice-admiral of Great Britain, and first lord commissioner of the admiralty, endeavored to come as near the lord high admiral as possible both in power and state; by a particular warrant from the crown he hoisted the lord high admiral’s flag, and had three captains appointed under him as lord high admiral, Littleton, then vice-admiral of the white, being his first captain.” The Earl of Berkeley was one of fortune’s favorites. As Lord Dursley, at the age of twenty he commanded the Lichfield, 50, it being his second command. When twenty-three he commanded the Boyne, 80; at twenty-seven he was vice-admiral of the blue, and a few months afterward vice-admiral of the white; and the following year, being then only twenty-eight, vice-admiral of the red. At the age of thirty-eight he hoisted his flag on the Dorsetshire as lord high admiral, being then actually vice-admiral of England and first lord of the admiralty. He died near Rochelle, in France, Aug. 17, 1736, aged fifty-five.
The lord high admiral’s flag is entitled to a salute of nineteen guns.
The third flag, that of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is the Union Jack, having in the centre of the crosses a blue shield emblazoned with a golden harp. This flag is worn at the main of any ship in which his Excellency may1* embark within the Irish waters or in St.
George’s Channel, and is entitled to the same salute as that of the
\
lord high admiral.
The fourth flag, the Union, or Union Jack, in which are blended the crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, emblematic of the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is appropriated to the admiral of the fleet of the United Kingdom, and is worn at the main, and entitled to a salute of seventeen guns.
Somewhere before 1692, Sir Francis Wheeler, Knt., a rear-admiral, sent to command in chief in the West Indies, was granted the privilege of wearing “ the Union flag ” at the maintop-masthead “ as soon as he was clear of soundings. ”1
Fifth in rank is the cross of St. George, a white flag with a red cross, the sign of the old crusaders, now worn by the admirals of the royal navy at the main, by vice-admirals at the fore, and by rear-admirals at the mizzen mastheads of their respective ships. Until 1864, Great Britain had admirals, and vice and rear admirals of the 1 Schomberg’s Naval Chronology, vol. v. p. 227.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
7
reel, white, and blue. By an act of Parliament of that year, the red ensign was given up to the use of the merchant marine, the blue ensign assigned to merchant and packet ships commanded by the officers of the newly organized naval reserve or naval militia, and the white ensign alone reserved for the royal navy. The salute of an admiral in the royal navy is fifteen, of a vice-admiral thirteen, and of a rear-admiral eleven guns.
Merchant vessels frequently carry small flags at their mastheads, bearing the arms, monograms, or devices of their owners or commanders, or designating the province or port to which the vessel belongs.
The flag of the President of the United States, hoisted at the main, and denoting his presence on board a vessel -of war, is appropriately the National Ensign, the flag of the sovereign people of whom he is the popular representative, and from whom he derives power and authority.
The Vice-President and members of the Cabinet (the Secretary of the Navy excepted) are also designated by the national flag worn at the fore during their presence on board a vessel of war, and it always floats at the Capitol over the Senate-Chamber and House of Repre-sentatives whenever those bodies are in session, — a custom followed in all or most of the States of the Union whenever their legislative bodies are in session.
A special mark for the Secretary of the Navy, established in 1866, was a square blue flag having a white- foul anchor placed vertically in the centre with four white stars surrounding it, one in each corner of the flag. By an order dated 1869, this flag became obsolete, and the Union Jack was ordered to be hoisted at the main whenever he embarked on board a vessel of the navy; but the flag of 1866 was restored by another order on the 4th of July, 1876.
The first rear-admiral's flag in our navy was a plain blue flag, such as had been used by the rank of flag-officer before the introduction of admirals to the service. This flag was, by law, required to be worn at the main by the three senior rear-admirals, at the fore by the next three in seniority, and at the mizzen by the three junior rear-admirals, and was first hoisted at the main on board the Hartford, in 1862, by Rear-Admiral Farragut, who had previously, as flag-officer, carried it at the fore.1 The absurdity of a rear-admiral’s wearing his flag at
1 I have in my possession this flag, which was worn by Flag-Officer Farragut at the passage of the forts below, New Orleans, and hoisted on the Hartford on his promotion to rear-admiral. Later, the two stars were added to it. The admiral presented the flag to Lieut. D. G. McRitchie, U.S.N., who gave it to me in 1875.8
THE SYMBOLS; STANDARDS; AND BANNERS
the fore or main was so contrary to the custom of other nations, that, by the suggestion of Hon. R. H. Dana, Jr., the next Congress repealed the law, after which a square flag hoisted at the mizzen, blue, red, or white, according to the seniority of the officer, was adopted. In 1866, after the introduction of the grades of admiral and vice-admiral, the device adopted for the admiral was four five-pointed w7hite stars arranged as a diamond in a blue field, to be hoisted at the main. For the vice-admiral, three white stars arranged as an equilateral triangle on a blue field, to be hoisted at the fore. For rear-admirals, a square flag, blue, red, or white, according to seniority, at the mizzen, with two stars placed vertically in the centre of the flag. The color of the stars to be white when the flag was blue or red, and blue when the flag was white. The commodore’s broad pennants were swallowtailed flags, the same in color according to their seniority as the rear-admiral’s flags. From the organization of our navy until the regulation of 1866 they had been studded with a constellation of stars equal in number to the States of the Union, by the regulations then established only one star in the centre was to be emblazoned on their field.
In 1869, a radical change was made in the flags of our admirals and commodores; square flags, with thirteen alternate red and white stripes, were then prescribed for all grades of admirals, their position on the fore, main, or mizzen mast showing whether the officer was an admiral, vice, or a rear admiral; and if two rear-admirals should happen to meet in the same port in command, then the junior was directed, while in the presence of his senior, to wear two red stars perpendicular in a white canton on the upper luff of his flag. The commodore’s pendant was swallow-tailed, but otherwise like the admiral’s flag, and worn at the main or fore, according to seniority, when more than one were in port together. The order of Jan. 6, 1876, restored the flags of 1866 on our centennial birthday.
Each of the States of our Union and most of the Territories have flags of their own, generally of one color, white, blue, or red, and blazoned with the arms of the State. This flag is carried by the State militia into battle or on parade side by side with the national standard. We shall treat of these under an appropriate heading.
An interesting relic of the American revolution is the banner of Count Pulaski, presented to him by the Moravian Sisters of Bethlehem, Penn., in 1778. Count Pulaski was appointed a brigadier in the Continental army on the 15th of September, 1777, just after the battle of the Brandywine, and given the command of the cavalryOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.	9
He resigned that command in a few months, and obtained permission to raise and command an independent corps, to consist of 68 horse and 200 foot, which was chiefly levied and fully organized in Baltimore in 1778. Pulaski visited Lafayette while wounded, and was a recipient of the care and hospitality of the Moravian Sisters at Bethlehem, Penn. His presence and eventful history made a deep impression upon that community, and, when informed that he was organizing a corps of cavalry, they prepared a banner of crimson silk, with designs beautifully wrought with the needle by their own hands, and sent it to Pulaski, with their blessing. The memory of this event has been embalmed in beautiful verse by Longfellow.
Pulaski received the banner with grateful acknowledgments, and bore it gallantly through many a martial scene, until he fell at Savannah, in the autumn of 1779. His banner was saved by his first lieutenant, who received fourteen wounds, and delivered to Captain Bentalon, who, on retiring from the army, took the banner home with him to Baltimore. It was in the procession that welcomed Lafayette to that city in 1824, and was then deposited in Peale’s Museum, where it was ceremoniously received by young ladies of the city. Mr. Edmund Peale presented it to the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, wThere it is carefully preserved in a glass case. Little of its pristine beauty remains. It is composed of double silk, now faded to a dull brownish red. The designs on each side are embroidered with yellow silk, the letters shaded with green, and a deep bullion fringe ornaments the edge. The size of the banner is twenty inches square. It was attached to a lance when borne in the field.
On one side of the banner are the letters U. S., and in a circle around them the words Unitas Virtus Forcior, — Union makes valor
stronger. The letter c in the last word is incorrect, it should be t. On the other side, in the centre, is the all-seeing eye, with the words Non Alius Kegit, — “ No other governs.”
Another interesting Eevolutionary relic is the flag of Washington’s Life Puiasia’s Banner.	Guard, which is preserved in the
Museum of Alexandria, Ya. It is of white silk, on which the device is neatly painted. One of the guard is holding a horse, and in the act of receiving a dag from the Genius of Liberty personified as a woman leaning upon the Union shield, near which is an American10
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
eagle. The motto of the corps, Conquer or Die, is on a ribbon over the device. This Life Guard was a distinct corps of mounted men,
attached to the person of Washington, but never spared in battle. It was organized in 1776, soon after the siege of Boston, while the American army was encamped near the city of New York. It consisted of a major’s command; viz., one hundred and eighty men, and its chief bore the title of Captain Commandant. The uniform of the guard consisted of a blue coat with white facings, white waistcoat and breeches, blue half-gaiters, and Flag of the Washington Life Guard. a COcked hat with a white plume. They
carried muskets, and occasionally side-arms. Care was taken to have all the States from which the Continental army was supplied with troops represented in this corps.
♦
BANNERS, BANDEROLES, GUIDONS, PENNONS,
ENSIGNS, ETC.
Several varieties of flags were formerly employed, indicating by their form and size the rank of the bearer. The qse of many of these, however, has become obsolete; but, as frequent allusion is made to them in history and in ancient ballads, it is necessary that the modern reader should be acquainted with the names and significations of these flags of former times.
A passage in ‘ Marmion ’ alludes to several flags now fallen into disuse.
u Nor marked they less, where in the air A thousand streamers flaunted fair ;
Various in shape, device, and hue, —
Green, sanguine, purple, red, and blue,
Broad, narrow, swallow-tailed, and square,
Scroll, pennon, pensil, bandrol, there O’er the pavilions flew.
Highest and midmost was descried The Royal banner, floating wide ;
The staff, a pine-tree strong and straight,
Pitched deeply in a massive stone Which still in memory is shown.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
11
Yet beneath the standard’s weight,
Whene’er the western wind unrolled,
With toil, the huge and cumbrous fold,
It gave to view the dazzling field,
Where, in proud Scotland’s royal shield,
The ruddy lion ramped in gold.” 1
Banner — in Dutch, baniere ; French, banniere; German, banner; Spanish, banclercc; Italian, bandiem; Swedish, baner — signifies in these languages a flag, the emblem of a bond-roll or bond-sign, the sign of union, the standard under which men were united or bound
O	7
for some common purpose.
Some derive the etymology of the name from the Latin bandum, a band or flag; others, from the German ban, a rallying-point, a field, a tenement, because only landed men were allowed a banner; others, again, believe it a corruption of panniere, from p annus, cloth, because banners were originally made of cloth. The Germans are said to have fastened a streamer to a lance, which the duke carried in front of the army, and which was called band; afterwards, a large cloth was used, ornamented with emblems and inscriptions.
Knights wore a pointed flag or pennon. A squire’s mark was a long pennant similar to the coach-whip pennant of modern ships of war. Bannerets were of a rank above a simple knight, and yet below that of a baron, and carried a knight’s pennon slit at the end. Barons were usually created on a battle-field, when the candidate presented his pennon to the king or general, who cut off the train of it, and thus making it square, returned it to him as the symbol of his increased rank. Thenceforward the knight was entitled to emblazon his arms upon a square shield, and was styled a Knight Banneret. Barnes, in his ‘Wars of Edward III.,’ writes that, before the battle of Kagera, Lord John Chandos brought his pennon to Edward the Black Prince, requesting to hoist it as a banner. The Prince took the flag, and, having torn off the tail, returned it, saying, “ Sir John, behold, here is your banner; God send you much joy and honor with it.” From these customs may be traced the coach-whip and broad pennants worn by commanding officers of ships, and of commodores, and the square flags of the admirals of our own and foreign navies.
The banner has been made to assume almost every shape a parallelogram so small could be converted into. As a rule, in banners of cognizance or individual escutcheons, its size bore relation to the rank of the owner; thus the banner of an earl was larger than that of a baron, and the baron’s larger than that of a banneret. At first,
1 Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion, Canto III., 28.12
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS; AND BANNERS
banners were plain or of several colors, but they were early ornamented with devices of men and animals, and finally used as a flying shield, to display the blazonry of the bearer, the symbols of a nation, or the heraldry of a particular order, or of a department of the State.
The banner, says Burke,1 is coeval with the introduction of heraldry, and dates from the twelfth century. The banner was of a square form, and served as a rallying-point for the divisions of which the army was composed. Judging from the siege of Carleverock,2 * as early as the fourteenth century there was a banner to every twenty-five or thirty men at arms, and thus the battle array was marshalled. At that period the English forces comprised tenants in capite of the crown, with their followers; and such tenants were entitled to lead their contingent under a banner of their arms. When the tenant in capite was unable to attend in person, from illness or other cause, he sent his quota of soldiers and archers which the tenure of his lands enjoined, and his banner was committed to the charge of a deputy of rank equal to his own. Thus, at Carleverock, the Bishop of Durham sent one hundred and sixty of his men at arms, with his banner, intrusted to John de Hastings; and Edmund, Lord ckEyn-court, who could not attend himself, sent his two brave sons in his stead with his banner of blue biletee of gold, with a dancettee over all. The right to bear a banner was confined to bannerets and persons of higher rank. According to the roll of Carleverock, the banners of the principal nobles were made of silk. The banner of the Earl of Lincoln is described as
u Of saffron silk his banner good,
Whereon a purple lion stood } ”
and the banner of Hugh de Vere, the younger son of the Earl of Oxford, “ As a banner both long and wide, of good silk, and not of
1	Burke’s Heraldic Register, 1849-50.
2	The 4 Siege of Carleverock ’ is the title of a poem descriptive of the banners of the peers and knights of the English army who were present at the siege of Carleverock Castle, in Scotland, in February, 1301. This roll or poem wTas first printed in 1779, in the second edition of the 4 Antiquarian Repertory,’ from the MS. in the Cottonian collection, but with a text “as corrupt,” says Sir Harris Nicolas, “as unfortunate.” In 1828, the work was edited by Sir H. Nicolas, and published in a handsome quarto of more than 400 pages, the larger portion of which is occupied by memoirs of the persons commemorated by the poet, forming in a great measure a baronage for the reign of Edward I. In 1864, a third edition was printed, under the following title : —
“The Roll of Arms of the Princes, Barons, and Knights who attended King Edward I. to the Siege of Caerlaverock in 1300. Edited from the MS. in the British Museum, with a translation and notes by Tlios. Wright, Esqr., M.A., E.R.S., &e., Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. With Coat Armory emblazoned with gold and
colors. London : John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly. 1864. 4to. viii, 39.”OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
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cloth.” The latter was the material with which knights-banneret were content. The banner of the constable, the good ‘ Earle of Hereford/ was “ of strong blue cendal,” a superior kind of silk.
In 1361, Edward III. granted to Sir Guy de Bryan two hundred marks a year for having discreetly borne the king’s banner at the siege of Calais, in 1347; and Thomas Strickland, the esquire who so gallantly sustained Henry’s banner at Agincourt, urged the service as worthy of remuneration from Henry YI. In Scotland, the representative of the great house of Scrimgeour still enjoys the honor of being “ hereditary banner-bearer of the queen,” an office to which by special grant Alexander I., a.d. 1107, appointed a member of the Carrón family, giving him the title Scrimgeour, for his valor in a sharp fight.
Two manuscripts in the British Museum, not older than Henry VIII., afford us authentic information as to the size of banners, standards, and pennons; extracts from them are printed in the ‘ Retrospective Review/ in 1827. That valuable work, ‘Excerpta Histórica/ also, has many interesting details on the subject.1
Bannerets. — Everard, a correspondent of the ‘ Gentleman’s Magazine/ in 1792, states that bannerets “ were feudal lords who, possessing several large fees, led their vassals to battle under their own flag or banner, when summoned thereto by the king, whereas the bachlarius eques, or little knights, in contradistinction to bannerets, who were great knights, followed that of another.” To be qualified for a banneret, one must have been a gentleman of family, and must have had the power to raise a certain number of armed men, with an estate enough to subsist twenty-eight or thirty men. This must have been very considerable, as each man, beside his servants, had two horsemen to wait on him, armed, the one with a cross-bow, the other with a bow
and hatchet. As no one was allowed to be a baron who had not
*
above thirteen knights’ fees, so no one was admitted to be a banneret if he had less than ten.
Some assert ‘Bannerets’ were originally persons who had portions of a barony assigned them, and enjoyed it under the title bciro proximus. Others find the origin of bannerets in France; some, again, in Brittany ; others, in England. The last attribute the institution of bannerets to Conan, a lieutenant of Maximus, who commanded the Roman legions in England under the empire of Gratian, a.d. 383. This general, revolting, divided England into forty cantons, and in
1 Retrospective Review, 2d series, vol. i. p. 113 ; Excerpta Histórica, or Illustrations of English History. One volume, 8vo. London, 1838, pp. 50, 66, 163, 170.14	THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
the cantons distributed forty knights ; to each he gave the power of assembling under their several banners as many effective men as were in their districts; whence they were called bannerets. ‘Froissart’ says that anciently such military men as were rich enough to raise and subsist a company of armed men, and had a right to do so, were called bannerets ; not that these qualifications rendered them knights, but only bannerets,—the appellation of knights being added because they w7ere knights before. Sir John Chandos was made a lmight-ban-neret by the Black Prince, and the King of Castile was made one at Nagera, April 3, 1367.
Bannerets in England were only second to knights of the garter. They were next in degree below nobility, and were allowed to bear arms with' supporters, which no one else could under a baron. In France the dignity was hereditary, but in England it died with the person who gained it. The order, after the institution of baronets or hereditary knighthood by King James I., in 1611, dwindled and became extinct in England.1 The last person created a banneret was Sir John Smith, who was created a banneret after the Edgehill fight, Oct. 23, 1642, for his gallantry in rescuing the standard of Charles I. George III., however, in 1764, made Sir William Erskine a banneret.
According to Froissart, the degrees of chivalry were three: knights-bannerets, knights, and esquires. Before a man could become a lmight-banneret, he had to serve as a squire and a knight to attain renown in arms, and to have a considerable military following. This was the letter of the law, but it was not always strictly enforced. The knight who aspired to the higher distinction could carry his pennon to the leader of the army in which he served, and demand to raise his banner; when his qualifications were proved, the leader cut off the end of the pennon, which thus became a square banner. This simple ceremony was completed with a short address on the banneret’s duties, pronounced by the leader, or by a herald. The knight-banneret had no superior except the king, and was the equal of the feudal baron.
The banners of the Knights of the Garter, blazoned with their arms, hang over their stalls in Sir George’s Chapel at Windsor; those of the Knights of the Bath over their stalls in Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey. In Roman Catholic countries, banners form an important feature in religious services, processions, &c. Before the Reformation, all the monasteries in England had banners preserved in
1 The first baronet, Sir Nicolas Bacon, was created May 22, 1611 ; baronets of Ireland were created 1629 ; of Nova Scotia, 1625. All baronets created since the Irish union, 1801, are of the United Kingdom.OF ANCIENT AND MODEEN NATIONS.
15
their wardrobes, from whence they were brought on anniversaries, festivals, and important occasions, and were sometimes displayed in battle. Edward I. paid eight and a half pence per day to a priest of Beverley for carrying in his army the banner of St. John, and one penny per day while taking it back to his monastery.
The celebrated painting of the ‘ Madonna di San Sisto ’ which is now in the Dresden Gallery, was painted by Eaphael as a banner to be used in processions for the Benedictine Cloister of St. Sixtus, in Piacenza. It was, however, soon placed upon the high altar of the church, where it remained until purchased by Augustus III., Elector of Saxony, and was removed to Dresden in 1753 or 1754. The price paid, according to Wickelmann, was 60,000 gulden. In 1827, the painting was restored, and a portion that had been concealed in the framing was brought to light, — the top of the curtain with the rod and rings supporting it. Engravings by Schulze and Muller were made before this discovery; and by Nordheim, Steinla, and Keller after. Hence the difference in their details.
The union jack of Great Britain is a religious banner, composed of the crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick. The corporations in former times had their banners, and several of the livery companies of London still retain them for public occasions, as do the St. Patrick, St. Andrew, and other societies of the United States. No political, religious, or secular procession would be considered complete in the United States without a display of banners. The study of this subject is of great importance to the historical painter, and few sources of information are available.
Drayton, in his ‘ Battle of Agincourt,’ says : —
“A silver tower Dorset’s red banner bears,
The Cornishmen two wrestlers had for theirs.”
All the great nobles of England and Scotland carried banners blazoned with the family arms.
John of Dreux, Earl of Bichmond, in the reign of Edward I., bore a banner charged with the chequey coat of Dreux, surrounded by a bordure of England, and a canton of Bretagne. The bordure of England is described as “ a red orle with yellow leopards.” The banner of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, is represented on a window of the cathedral at Chartres. On his shield he carries a lion rampant. Banners and bannerols were carried at funerals of the great in England, from fort’s Banner.u the eleventh to the sixteenth century. They usually16
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
consisted of banners blazoned with the arms of the individual, and the families with which he was allied. On some occasions ecclesiastical banners were displayed. In 1388, John Lord Montecute, a brother of the Earl of Salisbury, ordered in his will that no painting should be placed about his hearse, excepting one banner of the arms of England, two charged with that of Montecute, and two with the arms of Monthermer. In the fourteenth century, those who were descended from or connected by marriage with the royal family used the royal arms with their own. Isabel, Countess of Suffolk, 1416, and the Earl of Huntington, 1380, forbade any banners to be borne at their funerals; but Richard, Earl of Salisbury, 1458, ordered at his interment “ there be banners, standards, and other accoutrements, according as was usual to a person of his degree.” At the exposing of the body of Richard II. in St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1400, four banners were affixed to the carriage or bier supporting it, — two of which contained the arms of St. George, and the other two the arms of Edward the Confessor. In 1542, Sir Gilbert Talbot, of Grafton, desired four banners should be carried at his funeral, — one of the Trinity, one of the Annunciation of Our Lady, one of St. John the Evangelist, and one of St. Anthony. Sir David Owen, who died the same year, ordered by his will, 1529, his body should be buried after the degree of banneret; that is, with his helmet, sword, coat armor, banner, standard, and pendant, and set over all a banner of the Holy Trinity, one of Our Lady, and another of St. George, borne after the order of a man of his degree; and the same should be placed over his tomb in the priory of Essebourne.
The Banner, blazoned with all the quartering^ of him to whom it belonged, was either attached to a staff or lance, or frequently depended from a trumpet, — a custom which is still retained by the trumpeters of the Household Brigade.
We read in Shakspeare, —
1 i I will a banner from a trumpet take, and use it for my haste; v and in Chaucer, —
u On every trump hanging a brode bannere Of fine tartarium full richly bete,
Every trumpet his lordis armes here.”
The flags carried by cavalry regiments, though usually called f standards,’ might properly be styled ‘ banners/ The term ‘ colors ’ is applied to the flags of foot regiments. Shakspeare uses colors to denote military flags.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
17
During the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, and even later, care was observed that the proper banners should be carried at the funerals of persons of rank.
The Banderole, Bannerol, or Bandroll was a small banner about a yard square, generally bub not always rounded at the fly, several of
which were carried at funerals. They displayed the arms and the matches of the deceased’s ancestors, especially of those which brought honor or estate into the family. These arms filled the entire flag, which was generally fringed with the principal metal and color of the arms of the deceased. The bannerol which was placed at the head of Cromwell, at his magnificent funeral, exhibited his arms, viz., sable; a lion rampant argent; impaling Stuart or; on a fess cheeky argent and azure; an escutcheon argent debruised with a bend fretty.
At his funeral there were also displayed four standards, eight great banners, and twelve bannerols, with a guydon, of which we give a reduced fac-similefrom Prestwick’s ‘ Res Ee-publicae.’ These standards exhibit the shape and design of the standards of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales at the period of the great Protector’s death, and also the banners of the ‘ Union or States,’
, ‘ St. George,’ ‘ St. Andrew,’ ‘King David,’ and of the Commonwealth, the ban-
Fit tit? / y/AF/T/t^/u^	1 tv /rs fctfe * S ij/vt u'/jftg///1	yyv//
Standards it C .m clou
LEnglaiul	*.*	n SrofIyli(]
Crmuwefl	r> ^ cw!
nojSei-. ^/¿Steuarcl. .C&Warreu: C &Moruiu. C.8c CromwellC k.



Oliver Cromwell’s Bannerol18
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
ner of Cromwell and his guydon, and the bannerols of the families with which he was allied.
It appears by the bill rendered for the funeral expenses that the six great banners cost £6 each, and the five large standards, “ wrought in rich taffety, in oyle, and guilt with fine gold and silver,” cost £10 each; the guydon, “ as large as a great banner,” £6; and the twelve bannerols, £30.
At the Restoration, Cromwells body and the bodies of his associates were dug up, suspended on Tyburn gallows for a day, and then buried under it. The head of Cromwell was taken off, carried to Westminster Hall, and fixed there, where it remained until the great tempest at the commencement of the eighteenth century, which blew it down, when it was picked up by the great-grandfather of its present possessor, a citizen of London, — a significant commentary on earthly greatness. “ The body of Cromwell, carried to his burial in royal state, only a few years after his interment is rudely torn from its last resting-place, and the half-decayed carcass, dragged by the heels through the mud and mire of London, is hanged upon Tyburn tree, the head afterwards torn off and placed so that, in grinning horror, it ever looked towards the spot wrhere King Charles was executed.” 1
The Guydon, or Guidon, Fr. (derived from guide-homme), resembled a banner in form and emblazonment, but was one-third less in size, and had the end rounded off. It was the standard of a company of soldiers, and borne by their cornet.
“ The guydhome must be two yards and a half or three yards longe, and therein shall no armes be putt, but only the mans crest, cognizance & devyce, and from that, from his standard and streamer, a man may flee, but not from his banner or pennon bearinge his armes.”
“ Place under the guidhome fifty men, by the conduct of an esquire or gentleman.” 2
Every guydon carried, in chief, a cross of St. George.
The Pennon (Fr.), sometimes spelled Pinione, was a small streamer = half the size of the guydon, of a swallow-tailed form, attached to the handle of a spear or lance, such as the lancers of the present day carry. Afterwards, by increase in length and breadth, it became a military ensign, and was charged with the crest, badge, or war-cry of the
k\J
Pennon.
1 Anonymous ; Prestwick.
2 MS. British Museum.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS	19l
knight, — his arms being emblazoned on his banner, so arranged as to appear correctly when the lance was held in a horizontal position.
The pennon charged with a cross is borne by St. George, St. Michael, and St. Ursula; that of John the Baptist is inscribed with his words announcing the coming of Christ : “ Eece Agnus Dei!' The illustration, a pennon of the earliest form, is copied from one Daubemoun’s Pennon, 1277. held by the figure of Sir John Daubernoun, 1277, on his monumental brass in the church of Stoke D’Aubernoun, Surrey.
A manuscript, giving the size of banners, &c., in the fifteenth century, says : “ Every knight may have his pennon, if he be chiefe cap-taine, and in it sett his armes; and if he be made a banneret by the king or the lieutenant, shall make a slitte in the end of the pennon, and the heraldes shall raze it oute: and when a knight is made a banneret the heralds shall bringe him to his tente, and receive for their fees, three pounds, eleven shillings and four pence for every bachelor knight, and the trumpetter twenty shillings.”
In f Canterbury Tales/ Chaucer’s knight says : —
“And by liys bannere borne is bis pennon Of gold full riche.”
Sir Walter Scott thus alludes to the pennon in ‘ Marmion : ’ —
“ The trustiest of the four,
On high his forky pennon bore :
Like swallow’s tail in shape and hue,
Fluttered the streamer, glossy blue,
Where blazoned sable, as before,
The towering falcon seemed to soar.”
The Pavon was a peculiar-shaped flag, somewhat like a gryon attached to a spear. The cut is from an illuminated Psalter executed in 1340. The original is charged with the arms of Sir Geoffrey Loutterell: azure; a bencl between six martlets argent.
Pavon.
Penoncels, or Pensils, were small narrow pennons, usually borne to ensign the helmet, or to form part of the caparisons of the knight’s charger, though they were sometimes affixed to lances, as appears from a line of the ‘ Lyfe of Alesaunder,’ a metrical romance of the fourteenth century, —
u Many a fair pencel on spere.”20
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Ensign (Wal. insigna; Span, ensena; Lat. insigne; Fr. enseigne; also in English, antient or ancient), applied first to the flag, is now applied both to the flag and its bearer. In ‘ Othello,’ Cassio, in speaking of Iago, says, “ The lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient.” Edward the Black Prince commanded his 'ancient’ bearer, Sir Walter Woodland, to march forward.1 King Richard took with him on his crusade the standard and ensigns of his kingdom. Of late years, the national flags borne by vessels of war or merchant ships have been known as ensigns, and a grade of junior officers has been introduced into the United States navy, who are styled 4 ensigns,’ though their duties necessarily have no connection with the colors. The French also have a class of officers in their navy styled enseignes de vaisseaux.1
Winthrop, in his ' History of New England,’ mentions, under date Saturday, May 22,1634, his meeting, on his passage across the Atlantic, a small French vessel, and “ when we drew near her, we put forth our ' ancient,’ and she luffed up the wind to us.”
That celebrated piece of royal embroidery, the Bayeux tapestry, the handiwork of Matilda, the consort of William the Conqueror, and her ladies, exhibits a display of the military ensigns in use at the period of the conquest by the Norman invaders and the Saxon occupants of England. The examples I have given from it afford an idea of the shape and devices of the ensigns of the chieftains of the eleventh century.2
The Bayeux tapestry, divided into compartments showing the events from Harold’s visit to the Norman court to his death at Hastings, is preserved in the public library at Bayeux, near Caen, Normandy. Only within a few years has it been where it could be seen with comfort or ability to appreciate its merits, having formerly been kept on a huge cylinder, from which an official unrolled seventy-two yards on to another cylinder. In this way it was carried through France in 1803, by order of Bonaparte, to be displayed from the stages of the theatres as an incentive to the public mind not to Tevive this kind of work, but to awaken the people to a project then on foot for the invasion of England. Now this grand work is shown on the walls of the town library, it consisting of a strip of linen cloth 218 feet long, and 1 foot 8 inches wide, having worked upon its entire length a series of fifty-eight scenes, representing the events in the 'Norman Conquests,’ in which there are more than ten thousand figures, many of them being men who are 10 to 12 inches high; then there are horses, dogs, ships, and houses, and a running border
1 Boutell’s Heraldry.	2 Stow.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
21
with innumerable figures, all worked in worsted, and with only eight colors, dark and light blue, red, yellow, buff, and two shades of green; the houses are either blue, red, green, or yellow, to suit the surroundings.
Ensigns from the Bayeux Tapestry
Thus the queen has handed down to the present day a memorial so explicit in its details and graphic in its delineations as to form a valuable standard of reference in an archaeological point of view, and at the same time a perfect mirror of the curious usages, economy, manners, and even looks of the people of her time. Over each scene22
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
is written, also in needle-work, the subject, in Eoman capitals, in the Latin language.1
The number of pennons carried by the Norman soldiers figured in the entire tapestry amounts to thirty-seven, and of these no less than twenty-eight have their ends cut into three points or flames.
Mr. French argues that the three-pointed ends on these pennons symbolize the Holy Trinity, as did those of crusaders of the first crusade subsequently. Whether the pennons with their triple terminations were intended to symbolize the Trinity or not, there is no doubt of their having been used extensively. When the crusader returned, this symbol of his hostility to the Saracen was removed, as shown on the tomb of Edward Crookback, Earl of Lancaster, the brother of Edward I., who returned from the first crusade of 1270. The tomb remains to this day, though defaced. In 1783, the colors were copied, and each of the figures of the ten knights who accompanied him to the East and returned with him to England are represented as holding a square banner.
Gonfanons were properly sacred banners carried in religious processions, and as such Chaucer and Milton speak of them. The great standard or banner of St. Mark was styled a gonfanon. The gonfanon was bordered with fringe or twisted silk, and usually supported as shown in the illustration. In the f Lyfe of Alesaunder ’ we read, —
Gonfanon.
u Ther gonfannons and their penselles Wer well wrought off grene sendels.”
Dr. Myrick considers the small pennon attached to a lance in the hand of William the Conqueror on his great seal as a gonfanon, differing from a banner, being, instead of square and fastened to a tronsure bar, of the same figure as the gonfanon, fixed in a frame, and made to turn like a modern ship’s vane, with two or three streamers or tails. The object of the gonfanon was principally to render the leaders more conspicuous to their followers, and to terrify the horses
1 Mrs. Emma D. Southworth, Cor. Boston ‘Traveller,’ Oct. 4, 1879. A copy drawn by C. Stothard, and colored after the originals, was published by the Society of Antiquaries in 1821-23. A fac-simile in chromo-lithograph, the full size of the original, has been published. In 1856, the Rev. John Collingwood Bruce published a quarto volume, entitled ‘The Bayeux Tapestry elucidated,’ which has reduced colored illustrations of the entire roll. In 1857, the Journal of the Archaeological Association of Great Britain printed a paper by Gilbert J. French on the ‘ Banners of the Bayeux Tapestry,’ which was subsequently published in a thin 8vo volume, for presentation only.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
23
of their adversaries; hence the gonfanon was a mark of dignity. From the Bayeux tapestry it would appear that a standard was borne near the person of the commander-in-chief, which is described by the writer of the period as a gonfanon. Wace says: —
11 The barons had gonfanons,
The knights had pennons.’7
The Conqueror’s gonfanon, depicted on the Bayeux tapestry,1 has three tails, and is white, within a blue border charged with a cross, or. The same charge also occurs on the mast of his ship, though in a square form. Wace says, Harold’s standard was a noble one,—a dragon sparkling with gems and precious stones.
One of the banners of the Bayeux tapestry, of which an illustration is given, represents a bird within a semicircle of rays, and has usually been called a Danish war-flag, the bird supposed to be the raven sacred to Odin; and Herr Worsac2 adopts the opinion that it is the danbrog or war-flag of the Scandinavian vikings. He goes on to state that the banners (or marks) of the ancient Danes were in times of peace light-colored, but in war times of a blood color, with a black raven on a red ground. This is entirely against the supposition that the flag of the tapestry represents the raven of Denmark, since, after the lapse of six hundred years, the bird remains of a pale blue color, upon what appears to have been white, and it is represented with closed wings, — a peaceful and dovelike attitude. There is, therefore, reason for a belief that this singular and interesting banner bears a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, within a nimbus of rays.3 Speed informs us that the Duke of Normandy, “with three hundred ships fraught full of his Normans, Flemings, Frenchmen, and Britaignes, weighed anchor.” In this list there is no mention of Danes or Norwegians, and there is good reason for supposing that no soldiers of Scandinavian nations were present in the army of the Conqueror.
The strength of these nations had invaded England in the north, and been subdued in a sanguinary and decisive battle, only four days before the Duke of Normandy landed at Hastings. The probability, therefore, is that neither Dane nor Danish banner was in the Norman army.3
The Standard was a flag somewhat resembling an elongated pennon. It did not like the banner, indicate a distinctive mark of honor,
1 Retrospective Review — Sir Harris Nicolas.	2 The Danes in England.
3 Gilbert J. French. Banners of the Bayeux Tapestry, 1857.24
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
but might be borne by any noble commander irrespective of his rank,, the only restriction being that of its length. A king’s standard was eight or nine yards long; a duke’s, seven; a marquis’s, six and a half; an earl’s, six; a viscount’s, five and a half; a baron’s, five; a banneret’s, four and a half; and a knight’s, four.
The banner was always charged with the arms of its owner; but on the standard only the crest or badge and motto were exhibited; the field being composed of the livery colors. When the livery of a family consisted of more than one color, — as the Tudor sovereigns, for example, who bore argent and vert,—the standard was always parted per fess of such colors. Next the staff was emblazoned the cross of St. George; then followed the badge or badges, repeated an indefinite number of times, surmounted by narrow bands, on which was inscribed the motto, or cri-de-guerre; the whole being usually surrounded by a roll of silk composed of the livery colors.
The charges were so depicted upon the standard as to appear correct when it was developed by the wind in a horizontal position. On account of its size, it was not generally carried in the hand, like a banner, but the staff to which it was attached was fixed in the ground, — hence its name. The Royal standards of the present time are really square banners, blazoned with the royal arms over the entire field.
THE EARLY USE OF ENSIGNS AND COLORS ON
BOARD SHIP.
According to Wilkinson and Bonomi, there are no flags depicted upon Egyptian or Assyrian representations of vessels; but in lieu of
a flag certain devices are embroidered on the sail, such as a phenix, flowers, &c., whence the sail bearing the device was called nes, or ensign.
The utility of vanes and pennons must have been soon suggested as a means of ascertaining the direction of the wind. The blazoning them with the arms of the owner or the name of the vessel naturally followed. Livy mentions that Scipio, b.c. 202, was met by a ship of the Carthaginians, “garnished with infules, ribbands, and white flags of peace, and beset with branches of olives,” &c. A medal of the time of Antiochus VII., king of Syria, B.c. 123, shows a galley without mast or sail, having a swallow-tailed flag, notOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
25
slung upon a spreader, but hoisted on an ensign-staff abaft. The Prophet Ezekiel, whose prophecies date 600 years b.c., metaphorically comparing the maritime city of Tyre to one of the ships by which they carried on their commerce, speaks of her banner as made of fine linen.
Pliny tells us that the sterns and prows of trading vessels and men-of-war, without exception, were decorated with colors: and at Athens, Corinth, and Sicyon the profession of ship-painters founded the famous school of painters in those cities.
At first, merely to preserve the wood, the ship-builders covered every part of the vessel exposed to the action of the air and water with a coating of pitch; but this sombre and uniform tint soon wearied the eye. A more brilliant color, prepared with wax, was painted over the pitch; the costlier class of ships glistened in all the splendor of white, ultramarine, and vermilion; while pirates and occasionally men-of-war were covered with a coat of green paint, which, blending with the color of the sea, prevented them from being seen at a distance. Gildings glistened on the vessels of the rich, and the sculptor’s chisel added busts and figures to the decoration of their bows and sterns. Even in this respect the Middle Ages still followed the traditions of antiquity.
The decorations of ships varied according to the caprice of owners and the fashion of the times. The Saracen dromon boarded and taken by Richard Coeur de Lion had one side colored green, and the other yellow. The Genoese at first painted their ships green ; but in-1242, when they were at war with the Pisans, they colored them white, spotted with vermilion crosses ; that is, “ red crosses on a silver ground, which resembled the arms of Monsieur Saint-Georges.” Red was the color generally adopted for ships’ hulls in the sixteenth century, though a pattern in black and white was sometimes added, and sometimes the ground was painted black, and the pattern only vermilion. In 1525, when Francis I., made prisoner at the battle of Pavia, was taken to Barcelona, the six galleys which carried the captive sovereign and his suite were painted entirely black, from the top of the masts to the water-line. The Knights of St. Stephen, in the fifteenth) century, hid the brilliant hues of the principal galley of their squadron, and painted its sails, pennants, awnings, oars, and hull with black,, and swore never to alter the sombre hue till their order had recaptured from the Turks a galley lost by the Pisans. The Normans, or men of the North, were as fond of these brilliant standards as the nations of the Mediterranean: when they sailed on a warlike expedition, or when they celebrated a victory over pirates, they covered26
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
their vessels with flags. The poet Benoit de Sante-More tells us that it was in this fashion, covered with seven hundred banners, that Rollo brought his fleet back up the Seine to Meulan. The Middle Ages made use of all kinds of fanciful decorations for their vessels. During
O
ius, as a piece of metal was given to Benvenuto Cellini. ”
Sculptors, painters, and poets combined their talents to adorn a ship’s stern. A striking example of this artistic refinement in naval ornamentation was the Spanish galley constructed in 1568 by order of Philip II., for his brother, Don John of Austria, to whom he confided the command of the fleet intended to fight the barbarous Moorish States of Africa. The vessel’s cut-water was painted white, and emblazoned with the royal arms of Spain and with the personal arms of Don John. The prince being a Knight of the Golden Pleece, the history of Jason and of the good ship Argo was represented in colored sculpture on the stern, above the rudder. This pictured poem was accompanied with four symbolical statues, — Prudence, Temperance, Power, and Justice, — above which floated angels carrying the symbols of the theological virtues. On one side of the poop might be seen Mars the avenger, Mercury the eloquent, and Ulysses stopping his ears against the seductions of the Sirens ; on the other, Pallas, Alexander the Great, Argus, and Diana. Between these were inserted pictures, which conveyed either a moral lesson for the benefit
the Renaissance, this taste was renewed, and was an improvement upon the customs of antiquity, whence it drew its inspirations, and on those of the thirteenth century.
French Man-of-war of the Sixteenth Century.
From the Collection of Drawings in the National Library, Paris
A galley, says the learned M. Jal, “ was in those days a species of jewel, and was handed over for embellishment to the hands of gen-OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
27
of the young admiral, or a delicate eulogium on Charles V., his father, or on Philip II., his brother. All these emblems were chefs-d'oeuvre of drawing and sculpture, which the brilliancy of their gold, azure, and vermilion settings tended to enhance.1
The illuminated copies of Froissart’s f Chronicles,5 in the British Museum, present many curious illustrations of the manner of carrying flags at sea. Some of the vessels have a man at arms in the top holding on a staff the banner of the nation to which it belongs. One of the illu-
minations of the time of Henry YI. (1430-61) represents a ship with shields slung along her topsides, — a very ancient practice, which was continued by painting the arms and devices on the bulwarks, and from whence come the figure-heads and stern carvings of modern ships. Two trumpeters at the stern have standards blazoned with fleurs-de-lis, attached to their trumpets, and a similar standard is displayed from her masthead. In some instances, the banners of ships were consecrated. Baldwin, Earl of Flanders (1204), had one, and William the Conqueror, when he invaded England (1066), hoisted at the masthead of the Mora, the ship that conveyed him to its shores,
1 Le Croix’s Military and Religions Life in the Middle Ages.28
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
a square white banner. This banner was charged with a gold cross within a blue border, surmounted by another cross of gold, conse-
Her sail is painted in three stripes ; viz., red or brown, yellow, and red. All the ships of William’s fleet were painted in horizontal stripes, differently colored. The Mora was painted alternately brown and blue.
A variety of colors were borne by English ships in the fourteenth century. Besides the national banner of St. George, and the banner of the king’s army (which, after the year 1340, consisted of three lions of England quartered with the arms of France, — azure semee of gold fleur-de-lis), every ship had pennoncels with the arms of St. George and two streamers charged with the image of the saint after whom she was called, if she had not a Christian name, the streamers contained other charges. About 1346, one hundred and sixty pennoncels with the arms of St. George were made for ships. The standards of St. George had sometimes a leopard, i.e. the lion of England, in chief
In 1337, the St. Botolph and the St. Nicholas carried streamers with the images of those saints. These streamers were from fourteen to thirty-two ells long, and from three to five in breadth. Before the battle of Espagnols sur Mer, in 1350, two standards and two streamers were issued to all the king’s ships, those called after saints having their effigies. Some of the other streamers were peculiar. That of the Jerusalem was white and red, and contained white dragons, green lozenges, and leopards’ heads. That of the Edward had the king’s arms with an E, and the streamer and banner of the ship appointed for the king’s wardrobe was charged with his arms and a black key. Two gonfanons are stated to have once been supplied to ships, probably to distinguish the vessels that bore them, carrying ecclesiastics, from other vessels; also a streamer charged with a dragon.
The Mora, 1066.
crated by Pope Alexander II. expressly for the occasion. Her name, the Mira, or Mora, is supposed to mean Mansion. She was presented to the Conqueror by his duchess as a parting gift. A picture of her, from which our illustration is drawn, is preserved on the Bayeux tapestry.
Streamers were considered warlike ensigns. One of the requisitions made to the Mayor of Lyons by the French ambassadorsOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
29
appointed to carry the treaty of Montreuil into effect, was, that the masters of ships belonging to Lyons, who were going to those ambassadors in Hainanlt, should be forbidden to bear unusual streamers, or other signs of mortal war, until commanded to do so by the king, to avoid incurring the dangers mentioned in the eighth article of a convention agreed to before Pope Boniface the Eighth, for settling some disputes between the French and the inhabitants of Lyons, and of other maritime towns of England and of Gascony.
The banner of the admiral of a fleet was hoisted on board his ship ; and when any eminent person was a passenger, his banner was also displayed. In 1337, Sir John Roos, admiral of the northern fleet, was sent to convey the Bishop of Lincoln and the Earls of Salisbury and Huntingdon on their return to England from a foreign mission; and the Christopher was furnished with banners of the arms of Sir John Roos, of the Bishop of Lincoln, and of the Earl of Salisbury. These banners were one ell and three-quarters long, and two cloths wide. The Christopher also received a banner of the king’s arms, and two worsted standards, which were nine ells long and three cloths wide.
Besides streamers bearing a representation of the saint for whom a ship was named, his image was sent on board. When Edward III. embarked in his Cog, the Thomas, in 1350, before the battle with the Spaniards, an image of St. Thomas was made for that vessel; and an image of Our Lady, captured in a ship at sea by John de Ryngeborne, was carefully conveyed from Westminster to Eltham, and there delivered to the king, February, 1376. Targets and pavises or large shields, great numbers of which were placed on every ship, were sometimes painted with the arms of St. George, or with an escutcheon
of the king’s arms within the garter.1
On a manuscript relating the principal events in the life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, written by John Rous, a chanting priest of Guy’s Cliff, there is a representation of a ship having a main and miz-zen mast with the sail braced up for sailing on a wind, contrary to the earlier practice of sailing always before the wind. The streamer does not fly in accordance with the angle of the sail; but this anomaly by the priestly artist may be supposed to have arisen from his desire to
1 Sir N. Harris Nicolas’s History of the Royal Navy, vol. ii.30
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
make the best display of the armorial bearings on the streamer. From the following bill, the original of which is preserved in Dugdale’s ‘ Warwickshire/ it seems this streamer was made in 1437, viz.: —
“ These be the parcells that Will Seburg, citizen and peyntour of London, hath delivered in the month of Juyn [July], the xv yeer of the reign of King Harry Sext [1437], to John Ray, taillour of the same city, for the use and stuff of my Lord Warwick.
“ Item, for a grete Stremour for the ship of xl yerds lenght, and vij. yercles in brede, with a grete Bear and Gryfon holding a ragged staff', poudrid full of ragged staves, and for a grete crosse of St.
George, for the lymming and portraying	1. 6. 8.
“ Item, for a guiton for the shippe, of viij. yerdes long, poudrid full of ragged staves, for the lymming and workmanship	0. 2. 0.
“ Item, iij. Pennons of satyn entreteyned with ragged staves, for the lymming full of ragged staves, price the piece, ijs,	3. 6. 0.”
The gryfon mentioned in this account does not appear on the streamer; probably it was painted on the side not seen; with this exception, the streamer of the ship is identified with that described in the bill, and shows that the ship was equipped July, 1437. The use of streamers was confined to ships, and is continued in the narrow or coach-whip pennants of modern ships of war.
When Eustace, the monk, in 1217, put to sea from Calais with a fleet of eighty ships, besides galleys and smaller craft, intending to proceed up the Thames to London, and was descried off the coast of England, some one exclaimed, “ Is there any one among you who is this day ready to die for England ? ” and was answered by another, “ Here am I; ” when the first speaker observed, “ Take with thee an axe, and when thou seest us engaging the tyrant’s ship, climb up the mast and cut down the banner, that the other vessels may be dispersed for the want of a leader.” We may infer from this that the French commander of a fleet carried a distinguishing banner. Yet nothing has been found showing that the English admiral in the reign of Edward II. bore any distinguishing ensign by day. As the admiral and his vice-admiral certainly carried distinguishing lights by night, it is extremely probable that his ship was indicated by his banner at the masthead, which agrees with the fact that vessels were supplied with the banner of the admiral who sailed in them. In 1346, on an expedition against Normandy, Froissart says, Edward III. took the ensign from the Earl of Warwick, the admiral, and declared that he himself would be admiral on the voyage, and, running ahead, led the fleet.
On a rose nolle of Edward III., the king is represented as standingOF ANCIENT AND MODEKN NATIONS.
31
on a ship which carries at its masthead a pennon of St. George.1 On a rose noble of Queen Elizabeth, her Majesty is seated in the ship, which is charged with a Tudor rose, and carries at the bow a banner bearing an initial letter, — a Gothic E-
Henry VII. ordered built a great ship, such as had never been seen in England, which was finished in 1515, and called the Harry Grace cle
and top masts’ heads, and the bowsprit end (nine in all), are furnished with a streamer or standard bearing a cross of St. George at the luff, with the ends divided longitudinally by a red and white stripe, the red in chief. At three of the mastheads are St. George ensigns, and on the principal mast a flag or standard blazoned with the royal arms, and having a St. George cross in the fly. The poop, waist, and forecastle show a line of flags or banners, two of which are St. George flags with a blue fly bearing a fleur-de-lis, and one bearing a rose, also two plain blue flags charged with a fleur-de-lis and rose. Four are striped horizontally red and white, and four striped horizontally yellow and
A drawing of the same ship under sail, given by Allen, exhibits a banner with the royal arms at the main masthead, a blue banner bearing a rose on the mast next abaft it, and St. George flags, white with a red cross, at both the fore and mizzen mastheads. A large royal standard on the ensign staff at the poop, and seven streamers
1 For a description of this rose noble, see i The American Journal of Numismatics ’ for January, 1872, also Entiek’s ‘Naval History,’ published 1757. It was coined to assert King Edward’s title to France, his dominion of the sea, and to commemorate his naval victory over the French fleet in 1340, — the greatest that had ever been obtained at sea by the English, and the first wherein a king of England had commanded in person, and wherein the French are said to have lost 30,000 men.
The Harry Grace de Dieu, 1515.
Dieu. A drawing of her, preserved in the Pepsian collection at Cambridge, England, shows her at anchor profusely decorated with twenty-five flags and standards. The ship has four masts and the high poop and forecastle of those times. Each of the round tops at her lower
white.32
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
or standards of various colors and devices are scattered about the rigging.1
In the ancient picture preserved at Windsor Castle of the embarkation of Henry VIII. at Dover, May 31, 1520, the ship he is in —
supposed to be the Harry Grace de Dieu, or the Great Harry — is represented as sailing out of the harbor of Dover having her sails set. She has four masts, with two round tops to each mast, except the shortest mizzen; her sails and pennants are of cloth of gold damasked. The royal standard of England is flying on each of the quarters of the forecastle, and the staff of each standard is surrounded by a fleur-de-lis, or; pennants are flying from the mastheads, and at each quarter of the deck is a standard of St. George’s cross. Her quarters and sides, as also her tops, are fortified and decorated with heater-shaped shields charged differently with the cross of St. George azure, a fleur-de-lis or, party per pale argent, and vert a union rose, and party per pale argent and vert a portcullis or, alternately and repeatedly.
On the main deck the king is standing, richly dressed in a garment of cloth of gold edged with ermine, the sleeves crimson, and the jacket and breeches the same. His round bonnet is covered with a white feather laid on the upper side of the brim. On his right hand stands a person in a dark violet coat slashed with black, with red stockings; and on his right three others, all evidently persons of distinction; behind them, the yeomen of the guard. Two trumpeters are seated on the edge of the quarter-deck, and the same number on the forecastle, sounding their trumpets. On the front of the forecastle and on the
Ship of War in which Henry VIII embarked at Dover in 1520
1 A return of tlie Royal Shippes at Wolwiclge in the Ist year of Edwd. VI. names the “Harry Grace a Dien, 1000 tons ; Souldiers, 349 ; Marryners, 301 ; Gönners, 50 ; Brass Pieces, 19 ; Iron Pieces, 103.”OF ANCIENT AND MODEBN NATIONS.
33
stern are painted, within a circle of the garter, the arms of France and England, supported by a lion and a dragon, being the supporters then used by Henry VIII. The same arms are repeated on the stern. On each side of the rudder is a port-hole, with a brass cannon; and on the side of the main deck are two port-holes with cannon, and the same number under the forecastle. The figure on the ship’s head seems meant to represent a lion, but is extremely ill carved. Under the ship’s stern is a boat, having at her bow two standards of St. George’s cross, and the same at her stern, with yeomen of the guard and other persons in her.
On the right of the Great Harry is a three-masted ship, having her sails furled, and broad pennants of St. George’s cross flying. She has four royal standards on her forecastle. Between these two ships is a boat filled with a number of persons, having two pennants with armorial bearings at the bow, and two at the stern.
These two ships are followed by three others, each having pennants of St. George’s cross flying, their sides and tops ornamented with shields. On the forecastle of the nearest of these ships three royal standards are visible, a fourth being hid by the foresail. All these ships are crowded with passengers. Between these ships and the shore are two boats carrying passengers on board the ships. In the stern of one of them is an officer dressed in green, slashed, holding up an ensign or ancient of five stripes, — white, green, red, white, and green, — the same as displayed from the nearest fort.1
Francis I. had a magnificent carack constructed in Normandy,, so richly decorated, with such lofty decks and towers, that it was called the ' Great Carack.’ It was anchored in the roadstead of Havre de Grace, and was about to set sail at the head of a powerful fleet to meet the English monarch, when he was coming to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. On the eve of its departure, Francis I., desirous of inspecting the ship, went on board, accompanied by a numerous and a brilliant court. A collation had been prepared for him and his suite, the band was playing, salutes were thundering out in his honor, and he was in the midst of his inspection of the floating citadel, when an alarm was given, — a fire had broken out between decks, and before help could be efficiently rendered the whole of the rigging was in flames. In a few hours all that remained of the Great Carack was an immense hull half consumed aground on the beach, upon which the sea was casting up the corpses of those of its crew who were killed by the discharges of its cannons during the progress of the conflagration.2
1 Charnock’s Marine Architecture.	2 La Croix’s Middle Ages.
334
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
An engraving prefixed to Heywood’s description of the Sovereign of the Seas, built in 1637 by order of Charles I., and which “ was just as many tons burthen as the year of our Lord in which she was built,” shows that famous ship with four masts. A white ensign, cantoned with a St. George’s cross, flies from a staff on her bowsprit, and a St. George flag at the fore. A banner, blazoned with the royal arms, is at the main, and the union jack of 1606 at the mast next abaft.1
A picture of the same ship, painted by Yandevelde, exhibits her with only three masts, and under sail, with a union jack at the bowsprit. A banner, bearing the royal arms and supporters, is on the ensign staff, and flags at the fore and mizzen mastheads are blazoned with the crown and royal cypher surrounded by the garter and mottoes on ribbons.
Vessels in the Middle Ages, as in ancient times, frequently had golden-colored and purple sails. The sails of seigniorial ships were generally brilliantly emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of the seignior; the sails of merchant vessels and of fishing-boats, with the image of a saint, the patron figure of the Virgin, a pious legend, a sacramental word, or a sacred sign, intended to exorcise evil spirits, who played no inconsiderate part in the superstitions of those who went down in ships upon the great waters, — a custom which is still kept alive by the maritime people of China and Japan. Different kinds of sails were originally employed to make signals at sea; but flags soon began to be used for this purpose. A single flag, having a different meaning, according to its position, ordinarily sufficed to transmit all necessary orders in the daytime. At night, its place was taken by lighted beacons. These flags, banners, standards, and pennants, most of them embroidered with the arms of a town, a sov-
The Sovereign of the Seas, 1637, by Vandevelde.
1 “ A true description of His Majesty’s royal ship, "built this year, 1637, at Woolwich, in Kent, to the Glory of the English Nation, and not to he paralleled in the whole Christian world,” by Thomas Hey wood ; to which is prefixed a Portrait of the Ship.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
35
ereign, or an admiral, were made of light stuffs, taffeta, or satin; sometimes square, sometimes triangular, sometimes forked, each had its own use and significance, either for the embellishment of the vessel's appearance, or to assist in manoeuvring. The galleys were provided with a smaller kind of pennant, which was put up at the prow, or fastened to the handle of each oar. These were purely for ornamental purposes, and were often trimmed with golden or silk fringes.
Amongst the most celebrated flags and standards of the French navy was the baucents, a name that recalls the banner of the Knights Templar. These flags of red taffeta, sometimes sprinkled with gold, were only employed in the most merciless wars; for, says a document of 1292, “ they signified certain death and mortal strife to all sailors everywhere.” It is related of Philip the Bold, of Burgundy, in his preparation for the invasion of England, 1404, his ship was painted outside in blue and gold, and there were three thousand standards with his motto, assumed, no doubt, for the occasion, but which he afterward always retained: “ Moult me tcircle.” It was also embroidered on the sails of his ships, encircled by a wreath of daisies, in compliment to his wife. In 1570, Marco Antonio Colonna hoisted on his flag-galley a pennant of crimson damask, which bore on both sides a Christ on the cross, between St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Emperor Constantine’s motto, “ In hoc signo vinces.” The banner which Don Juan of Austria received at Naples, on the 14th of April, 1571, with the staff of supreme command over the Christian League, was made of crimson damask, fringed with gold, on which were embroidered, besides the arms of the prince a crucifix, with the arms of the Pope, those of the Catholic king, and of the Republic of Venice, united by a chain, symbolical of the union of the three powers “ against the Turk.”
A ship on the tapestry of the House of Lords, which has been destroyed by fire, exhibited the royal standard at the main, swallowtailed banners at the fore and mizzen, and a St. George ensign.
In a very old representation of the fight with the Spanish Armada, on the coast of England, all the ships wear ensigns, flags, and streamers.
The Venetian galleys of the fourteenth century carried blue banners and ensigns, blazoned with the winged lion and book of St. Mark, or.
A manuscript in the British Museum, of the time of Henry VIII., assigning directions relative to the size of banners, standards, &c., says : “ A streamer shall stand in the toppe of a shippe, or in the fore castle, and therein be putt no armes, but in mans conceit or device, and may be of the lengthe of twenty, thirty, forty, or sixty yardes, and it is slitte as well as a guyd homme or standarde, and that may36
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
a gentler man or any other have and beare.” This answers to the description of the modern coach-whip pennant, used to denote the commander of a single ship of war.
When William, Prince of Orange, sailed for England, on the 21st of October, 1688, with five hundred sail, he carried the flag of Eng-land and his own arms, with this motto : “ I vrill maintain the Protestant Religion ancl the Liberties of England.”
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA. — STRIKING FLAGS.
As early as the reign of King John, England claimed the sovereignty of the narrow seas surrounding her little island, and in the second year of his reign, 1200, it was declared by the Ordinance of Hastings, so called from the place where it bore date, “ That if any lieutenant of the king’s fleet, in any naval expedition, do meet with on the sea any ships or vessels, laden or unladen, that will not vail and lower their sails at the command of the lieutenant of the king, or the king’s admiral, or his lieutenant, but shall fight with them of the fleet, such, if taken, shall be reputed as enemies, and their ships, vessels, and goods be seized, and forfeited as the goods of enemies, notwithstanding any thing that the masters or owners thereof may afterwards come and alledge of such ships, vessels, and goods, being the goods of those in amity with our lord the king; and that the common sailors on board the same shall be punished for their rebellion with imprisonment of their bodies at discretion.”1
In the reign of Mary, 1554, a Spanish fleet of one hundred and sixty sail, having Philip, their king, on board, to espouse Queen Mary, fell in with that of England, of twenty-eight sail, under the command of Lord William Howard, lord high admiral, in the narrow seas. Philip had the flag of Spain flying at the maintop-masthead, and would have passed the English fleet without paying the customary honors, had not the English admiral fired a shot at the Spanish admiral, and forced the whole fleet to strike their colors and lower their topsails as an homage to the English flag, before he would permit his squadron to salute the Spanish prince.
In the reign of James I., in 1604, a dispute having arisen between the English and Dutch with respect to the compliment of the flag, a fleet was sent to sea under the command of Sir William Monson, who, on his arrival in the Downs, discovered a squadron of Dutch men-of-war, whose admiral, on Sir William Monson’s passing their squadron,
1 Kent’s Biog. Nau., vol. i. ; Burchet’s Naval History ; Macaulay.OF ANCIENT AND MODEKN NATIONS.
37
struck his flag three times. The English admiral, not satisfied with the compliment, persisted in his keeping it struck during his cruise on the English coast.
November, 1625, Sir Eobert Mansell fell in with six French men-of-war on the coast of Spain, and obliged their admiral to strike his flag, and pay him the usual compliments.
In 1629, the various disputes constantly arising respecting the honor of the flag, which the English claimed, induced Hugo Grotius to write a treatise called ‘ Mare Liberum,’ on the futility of the English title to the dominion of the sea, which he considered was a gift from God common to all nations.
When Sir John Pennington carried the Duke of Hamilton into Germany, in 1631, the Dutch ships which he met with in the Baltic Sea made no difficulty in striking their flags to him; and the same respect was paid by the Dutch admirals in the Mediterranean.
In 1634, Mr. Selden wrote a treatise in answer to Grotius, called £ Mare Clausum,’ in which he asserted that Britons “ have an hereditary and uninterrupted right to the sovereignty of their seas, conveyed to them from their ancestors, in trust for their latest posterity.” A copy of this book was ordered by the king “ to be kept in the Court of Admiralty, there to remain as a just evidence of our dominion of the sea.” A proclamation was published the same year, asserting the sovereignty of the sea, and to regulate the manner of wearing the flag.
In 1635, at the blockade of Dunkirk, the admiral of Holland always struck his flag to any English ship of war which came within sight. The same year, the combined fleets of France and Holland vauntingly gave out that they intended to assert their independence, and dispute that prerogative which the English claimed in the narrow seas; but as soon as they were informed an English fleet of forty ships was at sea, and in search of them, they quitted the English coast and returned to their own.
On the 20th of August, 1636, the Dutch vice-admiral, Van Dorp, saluted the English admiral, the Earl of Northumberland, by lowering his topsails, striking his flag, and firing of guns; and the same year, on the Earl’s return to the Downs, he discovered twenty-six sail of Spaniards from Calais, bound to Dunkirk, who, on their own coast upon his approach, paid him like marks of respect.
In the same ship (The Happy Entrance), Sir George Cartaret, the same year, carried the Earl of Arundel to Helvoet Sluice, where Yan Tromp, the Dutch admiral, was then riding at anchor, who took in his flag, although Sir George wore none, and saluted him with seven38
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
guns; but "in regard he was in a harbor of the States General, he hoisted it again.”
A French ship of war at Fayal, the same year (1636), struck her flag, and kept it in while a British ship of war wTas in sight; and another French ship of war, coming out of Lisbon, struck her topsails to Sir Richard Plumbly.
The memorable war with Holland, in 1652, was occasioned by Commodore Young’s having fired upon a Dutch man-of-war, on the 14th of May, 1652, which had refused the accustomed honor of the .flag. Young first sent a boat on board the Dutchman to persuade him to strike. The Dutch captain very honestly replied, that “ the States had to take off his head if he struck.” Upon this the fight began, and the enemy were soon compelled to submit. There were present two other ships of war and about twelve merchantmen, none of which interfered ; nor, after the Dutch ships had taken in their flags, did Commodore Young attempt to make any prizes.1
On the 4th of April, 1654, a peace was concluded between England and Holland, by which the Dutch consented to acknowledge the sovereignty of the sea to the English.
“ That the ships of the Dutch, as well ships of war as others, meeting any of the ships of war of the English Commonwealth in the British seas, shall strike their flags and lower their topsail, in such manner as hath ever been at any time heretofore practised under any forms of government.”
This is the first instance of England’s establishing her right by a formal treaty.2
In 1673, an order was issued to the commanders of his Majesty’s ships of war, that in future they were not to require from the ships of war of France the striking of the flag or topsail, or salute; neither were they to give any salute to those of the Christian king.3
On the 9th of February, 1704, another treaty was made with Holland, which stipulated that any Dutch ships of war or others meeting those of the King of Great Britain, “ in any of the seas from Cape Finisterre to the middle point of the land Yan Staten, in Norway, shall strike their topsail and lower their flag, in the same manner and with the like testimony of respect as has been usually paid at any time or place heretofore by the Dutch ships to those of the king or his ancestors.”
1	Burchet’s Naval History ; Naval Biography. London, 1800.
2	Andersonls Origin of Commerce, vol. ii.
3	Memoirs relating to the Navy.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
39
In 1704, a dispute arose at Lisbon respecting the ceremony of the flag, in which the English admiral, Sir George Eooke, the King of Spain, and the King of Portugal, were participators. The King of Portugal required that on his coming on board the adjniral’s ship in his barge of state, and striking his standard, the English flag might be struck at the same time; and that when his Catholic Majesty, with himself, should go off from the ship, his standard might be hoisted, and the admiral’s flag continued struck until they were on shore. This proposition was made from the King of Portugal to the King of .Spain. The admiral replied, “ That his Majesty, so long as he should be on board, might command the flag to be struck when he pleased; but that whenever he left the ship, he was himself admiral, and obliged to execute his commission by immediately hoisting his flag.” “ So the flag of England was no longer struck than the standard of Portugal.” 1
Only six years before our Revolutionary war, viz. in 1769, a French frigate anchored in the Downs, without paying the customary salute, and Captain John Hollwell, of the Apollo frigate, sent an officer on board to demand it. The French captain refused to comply; upon which Captain Hollwell ordered the Hawke sloop of war to fire two shots over her, when the Frenchman thought proper to strike his colors and salute.
Falconer’s ‘ Dictionary,’ published the same year, contains the regulations of the royal navy with regard to salutes, and says : “ All foreign ships of war are expected to take in their flag and strike their topsails in acknowledgment of his Majesty’s sovereignty in his Majesty’s seas; and, if they refuse, it is enjoined to all- flag-officers and commanders to use their utmost endeavors to compel them thereto, and not suffer any dishonor to be done his Majesty.” “And it is to be observed in his Majesty’s seas his Majesty’s ships are in no wise to strike to any; and that in other parts no ship is to strike her flag or topsail to any foreigner, unless such foreign ship shall have first struck, or at the same time strike, her flag or topsail to his Majesty’s ship.”
Instances of British arrogance in claiming this sovereignty of the narrow seas could be multiplied.
The present rule for ships of the United States meeting the flagships of war of other nations at sea, or in foreign parts, is for the United States vessel to salute the foreign ship first, if she be com-
1 Campbell’s Lives of the Admirals, vol. iii.; James’s Naval History; Lediard’s Naval History ; Entick’s Naval History ; Burchet’s Naval History ; Harris’s Hist. Royal Navy ; Schomberg’s Naval Chronology, &c.40
THE SYMBOLS; STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
manded by an officer his superior in rank, and he receives assurance that he wiH receive gun for gun in return. The national flag of the vessel saluted is displayed at the fore and the jib, hoisted at the first gun and hauled doawn at the last.
“ No vessel of the navy is to lower her sails or dip her colors to another vessel of the navy; but should a foreign vessel, or merchant vessel of the United States, dip her colors or lower her sails to any vessel of the navy, the compliment shall be instantly returned.”
THE STANDARDS OE SYMBOLIC MASONRY. — STANDARD OF
THE INDEPENDENT ORDER OF ODD FELLOWS. — STANDARDS OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR AND KNIGHTS OF ST.
JOHN.
Standards on Symbolic Masonry. — The standard designated as the principal or general standard of symbolic masonry is described as follows: —
The escutcheon or shield on the banner is divided into four compartments or quarters by a green cross, over which a narrower one of the same length of limb, and of a yellow color, is placed, forming what is called a cross vert, voided or; each of the compartments formed by the limits of the cross is occupied by a different device. In the first quarter is placed a golden lion in a field of blue, to represent the standard of the tribe of Judah; in the second, a black ox on a field of gold, to represent Ephraim; in the third, a man in a field of gold, to represent Reuben; and in the fourth, a golden eagle on a blue ground, to represent Dan. Over all is placed on a crest an ark of the covenant, and the motto is, “ Holiness to the LordBesides this, there are six other standards proper to be borne in processions, the material of which must be white bordered with a blue fringe or ribbon, and on each of which is inscribed one of the following words: Faith, Hope, Charity, Wisdom, Strength, Beauty.
In the royal arch degree, as recognized in the United States, there are five standards : —
The royal arch standard, for commandery use, is of scarlet silk, usually twelve by eighteen inches, with painted quarterings; viz., a lion, a priest, a bull, and an eagle.
The royal arch captain carries a white standard, emblematic of purity of heart and rectitude of conduct.
The standard of the master of the third vail is scarlet, emblematicOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
41
of fervency and zeal, and is the appropriate color of the royal arch degree.
The standard of the master of the second vail is purple, which is emblematic of union, being a due mixture of blue and scarlet, the appropriate colors of the symbolic and royal arch degrees; and this teaches to cultivate the spirit of harmony and love between brethren of the symbolic and companions of the sublime degrees, which should ever distinguish the members of a society founded upon the principle of everlasting truth and universal philanthropy.
The standard of the master of the first vail is blue, the peculiar color of the ancient craft or symbolic degrees, which is emblematic of universal friendship and benevolence.
In the royal arch degrees, as practised in the chapters of England, twelve standards are used, illustrating the twelve tribes of Israel, which are as follows :1—
1.	Judah, scarlet, a lion couchant.
2.	Issachar, blue, an ass.
3.	Zebulon, purple, a ship.
4.	Reuben, reel, a man.
5.	Simeon, yellow, a sword.
6.	Gad, white, a troop of horsemen.
7.	Ephraim, green, an ox.
The rabbins suppose that the standards of the Jewish tribes were flags bearing figures, derived from the comparisons used by Jacob in his prophetic blessing to his sons. Genesis xlix.2
The following-described banners are used in the lodges of the United States, viz.: —
The Persian banner, twelve by eighteen inches, with a sun and rays on the upper half, and three crescents on the lower half. This banner is usually blue.
1	Macoy’s Cyclopedia of Masonry.
2	In removing Cleopatra’s Needle, at Alexandria, Egypt, from its base for transportation to the JJnited States, in the latter part of 1879, Lieut.-Commander Gorringe, U. S. N., made the interesting discovery of the following masonic emblems under its base ; viz., a block of hewn syenite granite, 40 inches in the cube, representing a perfect masonic altar. Under this a white marble slab, representing the apron, 102 inches long and 51 inches broad and 25J inches thick, the upper half hewn into a perfect square. At the same level, and in the west angle of the foundation, another block of syenite granite, markedly regular in form, the surface of which represented rough ashlar steps, and the foundation of which was composed of white granite. Besides these four pieces were other less noticeable but equally significant emblems.—Boston Journal, Jan. 22, 1880.
8.	Manasseh, flesh color, a vine by
the side of a wall.
9.	Benjamin, green, a wolf.
10.	Dan, green, an eagle.
11.	Asher, purple, a cup.
12.	Naphtali, blue, a hind.42
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
A white silk banner. Motto at top, “ The ivill of Goda Maltese cross in the centre; a lamb and small pennant below. The cross on staff composed of four passion crosses.
A white silk banner, as above, with cock, shield, spear, sword, and trumpet, also an axe.
A white silk banner, with a nine-pointed star; in the centre of the star a Maltese cross, surrounded by the motto, “ Bex reegium, Bominus dominorum.”1
The regulation grand standard of masonic knighthood (Knights Templar) is of white silk, six feet in height and five feet in width, made tripartite at the bottom, fastened at the top to the crossbar by nine rings. In the centre of the standard a blood-red passion cross, edged with gold, over which is the motto, “ In hoe signo vincesand under, “ Non nobis, Bomine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam ! ” The cross is four feet long and seven inches wide. On the top of the staff is a gilded ball or globe four inches in diameter, surmounted by a patriarchal cross twelve inches in height.
The grand standard of the ancient and accepted Scottish rite is of silk, three and a half feet long by two and a half wide, edged with gold, gold fringe, and tassels. In the centre a double-headed eagle, under which, on a blue scroll, the motto, t( Beus meumgue jus.” In the upper part of a triangle irradiated over the crowned heads of the eagle are the figures 33 in the centre.2
The standard of the Bed Cross Knights is a green silk banner, suspended by nine rings on a stretcher. In the centre of the banner is a Geneva cross within a six-pointed star, with this motto around it, “ Magnet est reritas et prevalebit.” A trefoil cross heads the staff.
Another standard is a green silk flag, with triple triangles, and a passion cross in the centre of each triangle; a trophy below, composed of a spear, two crossed swords, a trowel, trumpet, and sash grouped. On the sash, “ Venici Imp. Trctta.” A Geneva-shaped cross on the top of the staff.1
Standard of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows of the United States. — At a meeting of the Grand Lodge of the United States, held in Baltimore, September, 1868, a committee, consisting of William E. Ford, of Massachusetts, Joseph B. Escavaille, and Fred. D. Stuart, submitted the following design for a flag, to be the flag of
1	Letter of Horstman Brothers & Co., Philadelphia, Jail. 8, 1880.
2	Maeoy’s Cyclopedia of Masonry.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
43
the order at the approaching celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of Odd Fellowship on this continent: —
“Resolved, That the E. W. Grand Lodge adopt for an Odd Fellows’ flag the pattern or design presented by the special committee appointed for that purpose; to wit, ‘ the flag to be manufactured of white material, either bunting, satin, or cotton cloth, as may be selected by those desiring one. The proportions to be 11-19 of the length to the width. The emblems to consist of the three links, to be placed in the centre of the flag, with the letters I. 0. 0. F., to be painted or wrought in scarlet color, and trimmed with material of the same color. Wherever the flag is to be used by the encampments there should be added two crooks.’
“ Resolved, That the R. W. Grand Corresponding and Recording Secretary be and he is hereby instructed to procure a flag of suitable size and proportions as above described for this Grand Lodge, to be used for the first time at the celebration of our fiftieth anniversary, on the 26th of April, and in addition to the emblems add the letters G. L. U. S.”
Mr. Havenner, of the District of Columbia, proposed that after the letters I. 0. 0. F. in the resolution there should be inserted, “ and the name of the State, District, or Territory using it;” and Mr. Ross of New Jersey moved further to amend, by adding that the letters “ I. 0. 0. F. and F. L. T. may be inserted in the links.” These amendments were agreed to, and the flag as thus amended adopted, Friday, Sept. 25, 1868.
At the meeting of the Grand Lodge in Chicago, September, 1871, it was voted that the crooks should b£ “ painted or wrought in purple.” It was subsequently proposed that this flag should be only used
for grand lodges and encampments, and that the subordinate lodges and encampments should have a smaller flag, — of scarlet, if only a lodge, and of purple, if an encampment; but it was considered by a select committee of five, reported against, and voted unnecessary.
The Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and of Malta. — As early as the middle of the eleventh century some merchants of Amalfi obtained from the Caliph of Egypt permission to
Knight of Malta.1
1 Fac-similé of a wood-cut in Jost Ammans, ‘Cleri Totius Romanæ Ecclesiæ Habitus.’ 4to. Frankfort, 1585.44
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
build a hospital at Jerusalem, which they dedicated to St. John, and in which they received and sheltered the poor pilgrims who visited the Holy Land. Godfrey de Bouillon and his successors encouraged this charitable institution, and bestowed upon it large donations. Pierre Gérard, a native of Provence, proposed to the brothers who managed the hospital to renounce the world, to don a regular dress, and to form an uncloistered monastic order, under the name of the Hospitallers. Pope Pascal II. appointed Gérard director of the new institution, which he formally authorized, took the Hospitallers under his protection, and granted them many privileges.
Driven out of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1191, they transferred their hospital to Margat, until the capture of Acre, in which they took part in 1192, when they established themselves there, and took the name of ‘ Knights of St. John of Acre/ Driven from their new residence by the Infidels, by permission of the King of Cyprus they established the central house of their order in the town of Limisso. Heavily taxed by the King of Cyprus at Limisso, and having to defend themselves from the Saracens, in 1306 the Hospitallers laid siege to Rhodes, which, after an investment of four years, was taken by assault in 1310, and thence became their home, and gave to them the title of ‘ Knights, of Rhodes’ for more than two centuries, or until 1522, when, Rhodes being taken by Solyman, they retired into Candia, thence into Sicily, and in 1530 removed to the Island of Malta, which was ceded to them by Charles V., and became the definitive residence of the order ; thenceforward they assumed the title of f Knights of Malta/ The
Emperor Paul of Russia declared himself grand master of the order, June, 1799; and the Czar of Russia has continued to be the grand master and patron of the order to the present time. The banner of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem was black, and charged with a white or silver cross of eight points.
Every country in Europe furnished its quota to the Order of Malta, which entirely replaced that of St. John, and was divided into eight tongues or nations, each under the direction of a grand prior. The regular dress of the order consisted in each nation of a black robe, with a pointed cape of the same color ; on the left sleeve of each robe was a cross of white linen of eight points, typical of the eight beatitudes they were always supposed to possess, and which, according to a man-
HospitaUer’s Standard.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
45
uscript preserved in the library of the arsenal, were: 1. Spiritual contentment; 2. A life free from malice; 3. Repentance for sins; 4. Meekness under suffering; 5. A love of justice; 6. A merciful dis-' position; 7. Sincerity and frankness of heart; and, 8. A capability of enduring persecution. At a later period, the regulations permitted the knight to wear an octagonal golden cross inlaid with white enamel, and suspended from the breast with black watered ribbon. This badge was decorated so as to distinguish the country of the bearer; namely, Germany, by an imperial crown and eagle; France, the crown and fleur-de-lis, &c.
All the insignia of the order were symbols. The pointed black mantle with its peaked cape, worn only on occasions of solemn ceremony, was typical of the robe of camel’s hair worn by St. John the Baptist, the patron of the order; the cords which fastened the mantle about the neck and fell over the shoulder were significant of the passion our Saviour suffered with such calmness and resignation; the girdle around his waist signified he was bound for the future by the vows of the order; the golden spurs on his heels were emblems that he was bound to fly wherever honor called him, and to trample under his feet the riches of this world. At his initiation, the knight brandished his sword around his head in token of defiance of the unbelievers, and returned it to its scabbard, first passing it under his arm as if to wipe it, as a symbol that he intended to preserve it free from stain.
In time of battle, the members wore a red doublet embroidered with an eight-pointed cross, and over it a black mantle with a white cross.
The Knights Templar originated twenty years after the establishment of the Hospitallers, in the piety of nine French knights, who in 1118 followed Godfrey de Bouillon to the Crusades. They were suppressed March 22, 1312. Baldwin II. granted them a dwelling within the temple walls, a circumstance which gave them the name of ‘ Templars,’ or ‘ Knights of the Temple.’ At first they led a simple and regular life, and, contenting themselves with the humble title of “Poor Soldiers of Jesus Christ,” their charity and devotion obtained for them the sympathy of the kings of Jerusalem and the Eastern Christians, who made them frequent and considerable donations. In the first nine years of their existence, from 1118 to 1127, the Templars admitted no strangers to their ranks; but their number having nevertheless considerably increased, they soon preferred a request to the46
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Holy See to ratify their order. At the Council of Troyes, in 1128, Hugues de Payens, with five of his companions, presented the letters
that the brotherhood had received from the Pope and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, together with the certificate of the founding of their
order. Cardinal Matthew, who presided over the council, granted them an authentic confirmation of their order; and a special code was drawn up for them under the guidance of St. Bernard.
St. Bernard, describing the Knights Templar in their early days, says: “They lived without any thing they could call their own; not even their fair will. They are generally simply dressed, and covered with dust, their faces embrowned with the burning sun, and a fixed, severe expression. On the eve ■'	of battle, they arm
themselves with faith within and steel without: these are their only decoration; and they use them with valor, in the greatest perils neither the number nor the strength of the barbarians.
A Knight Templar.
fearing
Their whole confidence is placed in the God of armies, and fighting for his cause they seek death. Oh, happy way of life, in which they can await death without fear, desire it with joy, and receive it with assurance! ” The oath they took on their entrance, found in the archives of the Abbey of Accobaga, in Aragon, was as follows : —OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
47
A Templar in Travelling Dress.]
“ I swear to consecrate my words, my arms, my strength, and my life to the defence of the mysteries of the faith and that of the unity of God. I also promise to be submissive and obedient to the Grand
Master of the Order. Whenever it is needful, I will cross seas to fight. I will give help against all infidel kings and jirinces ; and, in the presence of three enemies, I will not fly, but fight, if they are infidels.”
The Templars were bound to go to mass three times a week, and to communicate thrice a year. They wore a white robe, symbolical of purity, to which Pope Eugenius III. added a red cross, to remind them of their oaths to be always ready to shed their blood in defence of the Christian religion. Their rules were of great austerity. They prescribed perpetual exile, and war for the holy places to the death. The Knights were to accept every combat, however outnumbered they might be, to ask no quarter, and to give no ransom. The unbelievers dreaded no enemy so much as these poor soldiers of Christ, of whom
it was said that they possessed the gentleness of
_________ the lamb and the patience of the hermit, united
to the courage of the hero and the strength of the lion.
The Knights Templar carried at their head their celebrated standard, called the ‘ beauceant,’ or ‘seant/ which bore the motto, “Non nobis, Domino, non nobis, seel normni tuo cla gloriam ; ” 2 and after this they marche# to battle reciting prayers, having first received the holy sacrament. It was in 1237 that the knight who carried the beauceant in an action when the Mussulmans had the advantage, held it raised above his head until his conquerors, with redoubled blows, had pierced his whole body and cut off both his hands. The beauceant was of woollen or silk stuff, six feet in height and five feet in width, and tripartite at the bottom, fastened at the top to the crossbar by nine rings. The upper half of the standard was
A Knights Templar Standard.
1	Fac-simile from Jost Ammans, * Cleri Toitus Roman® Ecclesiae Habitus.’ Frankfort, 1585.
2	“Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to thy name ascribe the glory.”48
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
I
ft
Ü
black, and the lower half white. The illustration of this standard is
as it is represented in the Temple Church, at London. They also displayed above their formidable lance a second banner of their own colors, *white, charged with a red cross of the order, of eight points.
In 1309, the Knights Templar were suppressed, and by a papal bull, dated April 3, 1312, their order was abolished. Numbers of the order were tried, condemned, and burnt alive or hanged, 1308-10 ; and it suffered great persecutions throughout Europe ; eighty-eight were burnt at Paris, 1310. The grand master, De Molay, was burnt alive at Paris, March, 1314.
illililii!	
	
iililil	
	
	
The Beauceant
ANCIENT MILITARY STANDARDS.—THE EGYPTIAN, GRECIAN, HEBREW, ASSYRIAN, PERSIAN, STANDARDS.
Of Standards.
Ancient Military Standards consisted of a symbol carried on a pole. In more modern times, they were the largest and most important flags borne. Eixed on the tops of towers or elevated places, or on platforms, and always the rallying-point in battle, they obtained the name of ‘ standards,’ from being stationary. Ducange derives the name from standarum or stantccrum, standctvdum, standate, used in corrupt Latin to signify the principal flag in an army. Menage derives it from the German stander, or English stand. The standard might or might not have a banner attached to it. Although now the two words are used by custom without distinction, it is nevertheless true there might be a thousand banners in the field, but there could be but one standard of the king.
Egyptian Standards. — The Egyptians considered Osiris, the eldest son of the Nile, as their first king, and believed that his soul ascended into the sun, and adored him in that planet. His sister and wife, Isis, remained queen after his death, and established female power in Egypt. At her death she was reputed to have made her resurrection into the moon with her son Orus, the god of
Isis.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
49
futurity, and thus was established the Egyptian trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Orus, whose mysterious motto was, “ I am all that was, that is, and that shall be,” represented in a solar triangle. The annual feast of Isis, or Daughter of the Nile, was on the vernal equinox (March 21), which
was the annunciation of the opening of its navigation after a stormy winter. On that day her image — a statue of solid gold standing on a crescent and clouds of silver — was carried in solemn procession. She had a glory of twelve golden stars 4^ around her head, ^ ^ symbolic of the twelve lunar months; and her own shining face represented the thirteenth, which was the sacred moon, or the equinoctial month of spring.
In subsequent ages, when Egypt was conquered
by the Romans, the conquerors adopted the worship of Isis, and consecrated her equinoctial feast as “Nostrw Dominm Dies” (Our Lady Day), and qualified her the “Heaven's open gate;” Star of the Sea ; Queen of the Heavenly Spheres; and introduced the feast and labarum or banner of Isis and her legendary worship into all the conquered provinces of the Roman Empire. Her attributes remind one of the “ Queen of Heaven ” of the Chinese mythology of to-day, and Murillo’s paintings of the Yirgin Mary.
Egyptian Standards.50
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The invention of standards is attributed, with great probability, to the Egyptians, as they had the earliest organized military forces of which we have any knowledge, and it is equally probable that the Hebrews obtained the idea, or at least the use, of ensigns from the Egyptians. The wandering tribes of shepherds who conquered Egypt set one of their pastoral chiefs as king on the throne of Osiris: This warlike shepherd introduced into Egypt the annual oblation of an unblemished lamb or kid, sacred to their conductor, the Angel Gabriel, and bore a lamb as his standard.
When the Egyptians recovered their independence, under chieftains styled Pharo, or revenger, the lamb on their standards, arms, and coins was superseded by the face of Pharo, but the oblation of the lamb was continued. The illustration represents a group of Egyptian standards as they were used in the army in the time of Pharaoh.
According to Diodorus, the Egyptians carried an animal at the end of a spear as their standard. Sir G. Wilkinson, in his work on the 'Ancient
Standards of Pharaoh.

Egyptian Standards, from Wilkinson.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
51
Egyptians/ speaking of their armies, says: “ Each battalion, and indeed each company, had its particular standard, which represented a sacred subject, a king’s name, a sacred boat, an animal, or some emblematical device.” Among the Egyptian standards there also appear standards which resemble at the top a round-headed table-knife Or an expanded semicircular fan. Another of their ancient standards was an eagle stripped of its feathers, — the emblem of the Nile.
The Horse and the Grass hopper.
Greek Standards. — The Greeks set up a piece of armor at the end of a spear as a rallying signal, and Homer makes Agamemnon use a purple vail with which to rally his men.
A white horse was the standard of Cecropia, founded by Cecrops, the chieftain of an Egyptian colony. This badge recalled that the finest white horse had been brought by sea from Egypt into Greece. The tradition of the white horse arriving by sea was arranged into a sacred pedigree; viz., Neptune created a white war-horse to endow Athens. This swift animal was given to Mars, the god of war, for the defence of the country and the standard of Attica. The aborigines of Attica styled themselves the children of the earth, and boasted to be sprung from the soil; therefore they distinguished themselves from aliens by wearing in their hair a grasshopper of gold or silver, to signify that, like that insect, they were produced from the ground. The golden grasshopper was granted to any Athenian who had rendered the country eminent service, and was later assumed by the nobles of Athens, and it became a badge of Greek nobility. The Athenians also bore an owl, the emblem of Minerva, and the olive, on their standards. Other nations of Greece carried effigies of their tutelary gods and their particularly chosen symbols on the end of a spear. The Thessalonians adored the immortal sorrel horse Xanthus, who spoke to his master Achilles. The Corinthians bore a winged horse, or Pegasus, on their standard; the Messenians, the letter M; the Lacedemonians, the letter Z, in Greek, A. Alexander the Great, when he began to claim for himself a divine origin, caused a standard to be prepared, inscribed with the title of Son of Ammon, and planted it near the image of Hercules, which, as that of his tutelary deity, was the ensign of the Grecian host.
The standards and shields of the Thracians exhibited a death’s-head, as a signal to revenge the death of Thrax, the son of the nom-52
THE SYMBOLS; STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
inal father of the Thracians, a wandering people near the Black
Sea. This people settled north of Byzantium, the modern Romania, and named their new country Thrace. They soon took the city of Byzantium, which was dedicated to Diana, and united her symbol, f the crescent,’ to ‘ the death’s-head ’ of Thrax, to whom they paid divine respect. The death’s-head and crescent were afterward adopted crescent by the Romans, Turks, and other nations which invaded Thracia and Byzantium.
<
The Chaldeans adored the sun, and represented it on their standard. Heber, a Chaldean, gave his name to his descendants, who were called the children of Heber, or the Hebrews. The greater number of the Hebrews were born in Ur, a city of Chaldea, in which a perpetual fire and lamp were sacred to Baal, or the sun of Chaldea. The money ■of Hebron bore the type of Heber adoring the sun.1
Hebrew Standards. — In the time of Moses, the Hebrews had their emblems. * We find in the book of Numbers, 1491 b.c., 1st chapter, 52d verse, the children of Israel directed to “ pitch their tents every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard, throughout their hosts; ” and 2d chapter, 2d verse, “ Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch [camp] by his own standard, with the ensign of their father’s house : far off about the tabernacle of the congregation.”
In the wilderness, says Adam Clarke, they were marshalled according to their tribes, each tribe being subdivided into families. Every head of a subdivision or thousand was furnished with an ensign or standard, under which his followers arranged themselves according to a preconcerted plan, both when in camp and when on the march; and thus all confusion was prevented, how hastily soever the order might be given to proceed, or halt and pitch their tents. The four leading divisions — viz., Reuben, Ephraim, Judah, and Dan — were designated by the component parts of the cherubim and seraphim, — a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle.
Solomon, of the tribe of Judah, hoisted the standard of the lion in Jerusalem. According to the Talmudists, the standard of Judah had on it a lion painted, with this inscription, “ Rise, Lord, let thine enemies be dispersed, and let those that hate thee flee before thee.” They gave to Issachar an ass; to Zebulun, a ship; to Reuben, a river, and
1 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.
Death’s-head andOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
53
sometimes the figure of a man ; to Simeon, a sword ; to Gad, a lion ; to Manasseh, an ox ; to Benjamin, a wolf ; to Dan, a serpent or an eagle.
Standards and Devices of tlie Hebrews.
The ensign of Asher was a handful of corn, and that of Naphtali a stag. The cities of Samaria and Shechem, being in the land of the tribe of Joseph, the standard of Samaria bore the bough or palm of Joseph.
Allusions to standards, banners, and ensigns are frequent in the Holy Scriptures. The post of standard-bearer was at all times of the greatest importance, and none but officers of approved valor were ever chosen for such service; hence Jehovah, describing the ruin and discomfiture which he was about to bring on the haughty king of Assyria, says, “ And they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth.”
Assyrian Standards. — Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, had for its device an arrow, which represented the swiftness of the Tigris, whose waters washed its walls, — the Chaldean name, Tigris, expressing the swiftness of an arrow. Semiramis, the widow of Minis the son of Belus, its founder, having united Nineveh to Babylon, founded54
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
the first great empire of the world. Her subjects symbolized her by a turtle-dove, and that bird was stamped on the coins, with an arrow
on the reverse. Mossoul, built on the ruins of Nineveh, impressed on its goods the sign of an arrow and dove; and that badge, printed on a light stuff called muslin, has been exported to all modem nations.1
Among the sculptures of Nineveh which Layard brought to light are representations of the standards of the Assyrians carried by Assyrian standards.	charioteers. These sculptures
have only two devices: one of a figure standing on a bull and drawing a bow; the other, two bulls running in opposite directions, supposed to be the symbols of peace and war. These figures are enclosed in a circle, and fixed to a long staff ornamented with streamers and tassels. These standards seem to have been partly supported by a rest in front of the chariot. A long rope connected them with the extremity of the pole. In the bass-relief at Khorsabad this rod is attached to the bottom of the standard.
Persian Standards. — The standard of ancient Persia, adopted by Cyrus, according to Herodotus, and Xenophon, and perpetuated, was a golden eagle with outstretched wings painted on a white flag.
The standard of Koah, the sacred standard of the Persians, was originally the leather apron of the blacksmith Kairah, or Koah, which he reared as a banner B.c. 800, when he aroused the people and delivered Persia from the tyranny of Sohek, or Bivar, surnamed Deh-ak (ten vices). It was embroidered with gold, and enlarged from time to time with costly silk, until it was twenty-two feet long and fifteen broad; and it was decorated with gems of inestimable value. With this standard the fate of the kingdom was believed by superstitious Persians to be connected.
This standard was victorious over th§ Moslems at the battle of El User, or the battle of the bridge, a.d. 634, and was captured by them two years later at the battle of Kadesir, which the Persians call, of Armath, and the Moslems, “ the day of succor from the timely arrival of reinforcements.” To the soldier who captured it thirty thousand
1 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
55
pieces of gold was paid by command of Saad, and the jewels with which it was studded were put with the other booty. In this battle, which is as famous among the Arabs aS Arbela among the Greeks, thirty thousand Persians are said to have fallen, and seven thousand Moslems.1 Thus, after 1,434 years’ service, this standard was destroyed.
The Persians also employed a figure of the sun, especially on great occasions, when the king was present with his forces. Quintus Curtius mentions the figure of the sun enclosed in crystal, which made a most splendid appearance above the royal tent. To the present day the sun continues to divide with the lion the honor of appearing upon the royal standard of Persia.
Among the ancient sculptures at Persepolis are found other specimens of ancient Persian standards. One of these consists of a staff terminating in a divided ring, and having below a transverse bar, from which two enormous tassels are suspended. The other consists of five globular forms on a crossbar. They were doubtless of metal, and probably had some reference to the heavenly bodies, which were the ancient objects of worship in Persia. At the present day, the flag-staff of the Persians terminates in a silver hand.
THE ROMAN STANDARDS.
Romulus, in founding Rome, adopted the image of the she-wolf, his reputed foster-mother, as well as of his brother Remus. The Senate of Romulus assumed the eagle of Jupiter, which became the Roman standard, with the wolf. In the following ages, the Romans
increased their standards to as many as ten different badges. 1. The peacock of Juno. 2. The boat of Isis. 3. The cock of Mars. 4. The imperial elephant. 5. The dragon of Trajan. 6. The minotaurus of Crete. 7. The horse of Greece. 8. The pecus or sheep of Italy. 9 and 10. 4 The The Device of Romulus she-wolf and eagle of Romulus.2
Each legion of the Roman army was divided into ten cohorts, each cohort into three maniples, each maniple into two centurions, which would give sixty centurions'to a legion, the regular strength of which was therefore six thousand; sometimes the number of men in a legion varied. In the time of Polybius, a legion had but four thousand two hundred.
1 Irving’s Successors of Mahomet.
2 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.56
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
When the army came near a place of encampment, tribunes and centurions, with proper persons appointed for that service, were sent to mark out the ground, arid assigned to each his proper quarters, which they did by erecting flags (vexilla) of different colors. The place for the general’s tent was marked' with a white flag.
Each century, or at least each maniple, had its proper standard and standard-bearer. The standard of a manipulus in the time of Romulus was a bundle of hay tied to a pole. Afterwards, a spear with a cross-piece of wood on the top, sometimes the figure of a hand above, probably in allusion to the word manipulus; and below, a small
Roman Standards
round or oval shield, on which were represented the images of warlike deities, as Mars or Minerva, and in later times of the emperors or of their favorites. Hence the standards were called numina legi-onum, and worshipped with religious adoration. There were also standards of the cohorts. The standards of the different divisions of the army had certain letters inscribed on them, to distinguish the one from the other. The standard of the cavalry was called mxillum (a flag or banner), from being a square piece of cloth fixed on the end of a spear; and Caesar mentions it as used by the foot, particularly by the veterans who had served out their time, but under the emperorsOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
57
were still retained in the army, and fought in bodies distinct from the legion, and under a particular standard of their own. Hence these veterans were called vexillarii.
In the year 20 b.c., Phraates, the Parthian king, apprehensive that an attack was meditated upon his dominions, endeavored to avert it by sending to Augustus the Roman standards and captives that had been taken from Crassus and Anthony. This present was received with the greatest joy, and was extolled as one of the most glorious events of the emperor’s reign. It was commemorated by sacrifices and by the erection of a temple in the capitol to Mars, “ the avenger,” in which the standards were deposited.1
To lose the standard was always disgraceful, particularly to the standard-bearer, and was at times a capital crime. To animate the
soldiers, their standards were sometimes thrown among the enemy. After a time, a horse, a bear, and other animals were substituted for the bundle of hay, open hand, &c. In the second year of the consulate of Marius, 87 B.C., a silver eagle with expanded wings, on the top of a spear, with the thunderbolt in its claws, the emblem of Jove, signifying might and power, with the figure of a small chapel above it, was assumed as the common standard of the legion; hence aqiiilci is often put for legion. The place for this standard was near the ordinary place of Goodrich Court.	the general, in the centre of the army. When
a general, after having consulted the auspices, determined to lead forth his troops against the enemy, a reel flag was displayed on a spear from the top of the praetorium, as a signal to prepare for battle.2 The standard of Augustus was a globe, to indicate his conquest of
Roman Standard.
the globe.
Roman standards were also ornamented with dragons and
silver bells, as a trophy, after Trajan’s conquest of t^e Dacians, a.d. 106, as shown on Trajan’s column. The Etruscans were the first who adopted the eagle as the symbol of royal power, and bore its image as a standard at the head of their armies. From the time of Marius it was the principal emblem of the Roman Republic, and the only standard of the legions. It was represented with outspread
1	Lynam’s History of the Roman Emperors, vol. i. p. 28. London, 1828.
2	Flag-Officer Farragut, when lie ordered to pass the forts below New Orleans, April 23,1861, directed a red lantern should be hoisted as the signal for getting under way ; thus, repeating the old Roman signal for battle, perhaps without ever having heard of it.58
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
wings, and was usually of silver, till the time of Hadrian, who made it of gold. The double-headed eagle was in use among the Byzantine emperors, to indicate their claim to the empire both of the east and west. Erom the Roman standard is derived the numerous brood of white, black, and red eagles; with single or double heads, ydiich are
Roman Imperial Standards.
borne on so many of the standards of modern Europe.. The countries they represent claim to be fragments or descendants of the great Roman Empire. The changes of the Roman standard marked the epoch of their conquests, first of the Greeks, then of the barbarians. The double-headed eagle of Russia marks the marriage of Ivan I.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
59
with a Grecian heiress, the princess of the Eastern empire; and that of Austria, the investiture of the emperors of Germany with the title of ‘ Roman Emperor.’ The arms of Prussia are distinguished by the black eagle, and those of Poland bear the white.
The Laharuni of Constantine.
The Labarum, or imperial standard of Constantine the Great, which he caused to be made in commemoration of his vision of a shining cross in the heavens two miles long, has been described as a long pike, surmounted by a golden crown set with jewels, and intersected by a transverse beam forming a cross, from which depended a square purple banderole wrought with the mysterious monogram, at once expressive of the figure of the cross, and the two initial letters (X and P) of the name of Christ. The purple silken banner, which hung down from the beam, was adorned with precious stones, and at first was embroidered with the images of Constantine, or of the reigning monarch and his children. Afterwards, the figure or emblem of Christ woven in gold was substituted, and it bore the motto, “ In hoc signo vinces” — “ In this sign thou shalt conquer.” The labarum is engraved on some of the medals of Constantine with the famous inscription, ENTOTTI2NIKA. This banderole, which was about a foot square, judging from the height of the men carrying the standard on ancient monuments, says Mont-faucon, “ was adorned with fringes and with precious stones, and had upon it the figure or emblem of Christ.” Prudentius describes its glories with poetical fervor, and says, “ Christ woven in jewelled gold marked the purple labarum;” also, “that the monogram of Christ was inscribed on the shields of the soldiers, and that the cross burned on the crests of helmets.” The illustration given of the labarum is from a medal of Valentinan1 (a.d. 364-375). It will be noticed there is no crown on the staff.
A medal of the Emperor Constantine, which represents the banner of the cross piercing the body of the serpent, and surmounted with the monogram of Christ, with the motto, “ Spes Publico,,” expresses the hope of the Christian world from the conversion of the emperor. Upon the banner which hangs from the cross three circles are distinctly marked. As all the other objects upon this medallion have a symbolical meaning, it may be assumed that these three circles have one.
The labarum is believed to have been the first military standard
1 Appleton’s Journal, Dec. 28, 1872.60
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
emblazoned with the cross. It was preserved for a considerable time, and brought forward at the head of the armies of the emperor on important occasions, as the palladium of the empire. With it Constantine advanced to Rome, where he vanquished Maxentius, Oct. 27, a.d. 312.
The safety of the labarum was intrusted to fifty guards of approved valor and fidelity. Their station was marked by honors and emoluments ; and some fortunate accidents soon introduced an opinion that the guards of the labarum were secure and invulnerable among the darts of the enemy. In the second civil war, Licinius felt and dreaded the power of this consecrated banner, the sight of which in battle animated the soldiers of Constantine with an invincible enthusiasm, while it scattered terror and dismay through the adverse legions. Eusebius introduces the labarum before the Italian expedition of Constantine; but his narrative seems to indicate it was never shown at the head of an army till Constantine, ten years afterward, declared himself the enemy of Licinius and the deliverer of the Church. The Christian emperors who respected the example of Constantine displayed in all their military expeditions the standard of the cross; but when the degenerate successors of Theodosius ceased to appear at the head of their armies, the labarum was deposited as a venerable but useless relic in the palace of Constantinople.
The etymology of its name has given rise to many conflicting Some derive it from lobar; others from the Greek for reverence; others from the same, to take ; and others from the Greek for spoils. A writer in the ‘ Classical Journal ’ considers the labarum like S. P. Q. R., a combination of initials to represent an equal number of terms, and thus L. A. B. A. R. Y. M. will stand for Legionum aquila Byzantium anticjuci Borneo, urbe mutcovit. The form of the labarum and its monogram is preserved as the medal of the Flavian family.
The hand on the top of the Roman standard was an ancient symbol of Oriental or Phenician origin. It is found as a symbol in India and in ancient Mexico. A closed hand grasping the Koran surmounts the sacred standard of Mahomet. The present flag-staff of the Persians terminates in a silver hand.
Csesar has recorded that when he attempted to land his Roman forces on the shores of Great Britain, meeting a warmer reception than was anticipated, considerable hesitation arose
opinions.
The Hand.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
61
among his troops; but the standard-bearer of the Tenth Legion, with the Roman eagle in his hand, invoking the gods, plunged into the waves, called on his comrades to follow him, and do their duty to their general and to the republic; and so the whole army made good their landing.
The bronze or silver eagle of the Roman standards must have been of small size, not larger than the eagles on the color-poles of modern colors, since a standard-bearer under Julius Caesar, in circumstances of danger, wrenched the eagle from its staff, and concealed it in the folds of his girdle; and the bronze horse preserved in the collection at Goodrich Court is equally small, as will be seen by the engraving on a previous page, which represents it as half the dimensions of the original. Another figure, used as a standard by the Romans, was a ball or globe, emblematic of their dominion over the world.
STANDARDS OF THE TURKS AND MOSLEMS.
Turkish and Moslem Standards. — The basarac or sandschaki sheriff, or cheriff, is a green standard, which was borne by Mahomet^ and, being believed by his devout followers to haye been brought down from heaven by the Angel Gabriel, is preserved with the greatest veneration. It is enveloped in four coverings of green taffeta enclosed in a case of green cloth. It is only on occasions of extreme danger that this sacred symbol is brought from its place of deposit. It was formerly kept in the imperial treasury at Constantinople, but, latterly, deposited in the mosque of Ayyub, where the sultans at their investiture are guarded with the sword of the caliphate. In the event of rebellion or war, it is obligatory upon the Sultan to order the mullahs to display the banner before the people and to proclaim the Iihacl, or holy war, exhorting them to be faithful to their religion, and to defend the empire with their lives. The usual address is as follows: "This is the prophet’s banner; this is the standard of the caliphate. It is planted before you and unfurled over your heads, 0 true believers, to announce to you that your religion is threatened, your caliphate in peril, and your lives, your women and children and property, in danger of becoming a prey to cruel enemies ! Any Moslem, therefore, who refuses to take up arms and follow this holy Bair ok is an infidel amenable to death.” According to another account, it is carefully preserved in the seraglio, in a case built into the wall on the right-hand side as you enter the62
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
chamber in which is the grand seignior’s summer-bed. The standard is twelve feet high, and the golden ornament, a closed hand, which
surmounts it, holds a copy of the Koran written by the Caliph Osman III. In times of peace this banner is guarded in the hall of the Noble Vesti-ment, as the dress which was worn by the prophet is styled. In the same hall are preserved the sacred teeth, the holy beard, the sacred stirrup, the sabre, and the bow of Mahomet.1 Every time this standard is displayed, by a custom which has become law, all who have attained the
age of seventeen who profess the Mahometan faith are obliged to take up arms, those who refuse being re-mi _ , 0	garded as infidels
The Doseh.2	°
1	Aii English author, Mr. Thornton, has published, in his work on Turkey, copious details relating to this standard, which the Turks, who hold it in the highest veneration, believe to he the original Mahomet’s standard from the temple of Mecca, — a delusion carefully nursed by their modern rulers, though history describes many standards of various colors which have served in its place, the original of which was white, then black, and lastly of green silk.
2	Suspecting the above cut was an exaggeration of this Turkish ceremony, I wrote the the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., President of the Bangor Theological Seminary, and long a resident of Constantinople, who, under date Feb. 24, 1879, replied, “The engraving is anOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
63
■unworthy the title of Mussulmans, or True Believers. The unfurling of this standard is supposed to insure success to the Ottoman arms; and despite the many tarnishes its honor has suffered, the Turks continue to rally around it with implicit belief in its sanctity. So jealously is it watched over, that none but emirs may touch it, emirs are its guard, the chief of the emirs is alone privileged to carry it, and Mussulmans are alone permitted to see this holy trophy, which, touched by other hands, would be defiled, and if seen in other hands, profaned. The ceremony of presenting the banner is called cdciy, a Turkish word signifying triumph. The ceremonies consist of an open-air masquerade. All the trades, professions, and occupations of the inhabitants, seated in gaudy carriages, are represented and paraded in front of the assembled army, each trade performing in dumb show the manual operations of its art: the carpenter pretends to saw, the ploughman to drive his oxen, and the smith to wield his hammer. After these have passed, the sandschaki cheriff is brought out with great veneration from the seraglio, and solemnly carried along and presented to the army.1 The blessed banner, having thus been presented to the adoring eyes of the true believers, is carried back to its depository; and the troops, inspired with confidence and victory, set forth on their march to death and glory. The observance of this ceremony in the war between Turkey and Russia in 1768 was the occasion of frightful outrages upon the Christians. So long a period had elapsed since its last presentation, that much of the sanctity of the occasion had been forgotten, and the Christians, expressing a wish to observe the ceremony, found the Turks ready and eager to let windows and house-tops at high prices to the unbelievers, who accordingly mustered strong on the line of the procession to gratify their curiosity. A few minutes, however, before the starting of the banner, an emir appeared in the streets, crying: “ Let no infidel dare to profane with his presence the holy standard of the prophet; and
exaggerated representation of the Doseh ceremony. When the sacred standard is brought out, a scene is witnessed which no doubt resembles that represented in the wood-cut. The believers crowd all the narrow streets where it passes. They fall down before it, but not in this extended, stretched-out manner. It is the regular worship prostration; their heads do not often come very near the horse’s feet. Some of the excessively devout may throw themselves before the horse, but the trained, intelligent Arabian would no more tread upon them than a mother would tread upon her child. But of such a scene of universal worship and prostration, it is a very moderate stretch of the Greek fancy and fidelity to represent the horse and his attendants as travelling upon a compact pavement of living believers. Were there no greater exaggerations than this about Oriental affairs, one-half of our supposed knowledge of the East would be disposed of.”
1 Dictionary of Useful Knowledge.64
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
let every Mussulman, if lie sees an unbeliever, instantly make it known, on pain of punishment.” At this a sudden madness seized upon the people, and those who had let their premises to the greatest advantage became the most furious in their bigoted zeal, rushing among the amazed Christians, and with blows and furious violence tearing them from their houses, and casting them into the streets among the infuriated soldiery. No respect was paid to age, sex, or condition. Women in the last stages of maternity were dragged about by the hair, and treated with atrocious outrage. Every description of insult, barbarity, and torture was inflicted upon the unoffending Christians, the usual gravity of the Turk having on the instant given way to a fanaticism more in accordance with fiends than men. The whole city, as one man, was seized with the same furor; and if a victim managed to escape from one band of miscreants, he was certain to fall into the hands of others equally savage and remorseless.1
According to another account, this sacred standard of Mahomet is not green, but black; and was instituted in contradistinction to the great white banner of the Koraishites, as well as from the appellation okab (black eagle), which the prophet bestowed upon it. Mahomet’s earliest standard was the white cloth forming the turban which he captured from Boreide. He subsequently adopted for his distinguishing banner the sable curtain which hung before the chamber of his wife Ayesha, and it is this standard which is said to be so sacredly preserved and so jealously guarded from infidel sight. It descended first to the followers of Omar, at Damascus, thence to the Abassides, at Bagdad and Cairo, from whom it fell to the share of the bloodhound Selim I., and subsequently found its way into Europe under Amurath III. The device upon it is “Nctsrum min Allah, — “ The help of God.”
Besides their sacred standard, the Turks have the sanjak, which is a red banner; the alem, a broad standard ; and the tugh, consisting of one, two, or more horse-tails, the number varying with the rank of the person who bears it.
The title of ‘ pacha ’ is merely a personal one, denoting the official aristocracy, civil and military, of the Ottoman Empire, and is derived from two Persian words, signifying “ the foot of the king.” In former times, when the chief territorial divisions were called 'sanjaks,’ ruled over by beys, the larger sanjaks, or two or more smaller ones, were put under a pacha, and called ‘pachaliks.’ The military governors of provinces, who were only subordinate to the grand vizier, were
1 Baron Tolt’s Memoirs of the Turks and Tartars. Two vols. 1785.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
65
styled ‘beylerbeys,’ or ‘bey of beys.’ European Turkey was divided into two beylerbeyliks, — Eoumelia and Bosnia; the latter included Servia, Croatia, and Herzegovina. Constantinople and Wallaehia and Moldavia were not included in any of these jurisdictions. The archipelago was under the capitan pacha. The pachas consisted of three classes, and were distinguished by the number of horse-tails borne before them as standards, — a custom brought from Tartary, said to have originated with some chief, who, having lost his standard, cut off his horse’s tail and displayed it as a substitute. The governors of the larger districts were viziers, by virtue of office. Their insignia were the alem, a broad standard, the pole of which was surmounted by a crescent; the tugh, of three horse-tails, artificially plaited; one sanjak, or green standard, similar to that of the prophet; and two large ensigns, called bairak. Other pachas had but two tails, with the other insignia. A bey had only one, together with one standard. The sultan’s standard counts seven horse-tails, and the famous Ali Pacha, of Janina, arrogated to himself no less than thirteen. At the present day all this is much modified.
In the time of Omar, the General Mesiera Ibu Mesroud was given a black flag, inscribed “ There is no God but God. Mahomet is the Messenger of God.” 1
At the battle of Yermouk, Abu Obeidah, a Moslem general, erected for his standard a yellow flag given him by Abu Beker, Mahomet’s immediate successor, being the same which Mahomet had displayed in the battle of Khaibab. One of Mahomet’s standards was a black eagle.2 When Monwyah rebelled against Ali, the bloody garment of Othman was raised in the mosque at Damascus as the standard of rebellion.
The crescent standard, which has been set against the cross in so many battle-fields, representing the opposing force of Mahometanism, had its origin in the simple circumstance that the ancient city of Byzantium was saved from falling into the hands of Philip of Mace-don, from the approach of his army being betrayed to the inhabitants by the light of the moon. In consequence, they adopted the crescent, which the Turks, when the place came into their possession, found everywhere as an emblem, and retained, believing it to be of good omen; probably in its meaning they saw a promise of increasing power.3 The origin of the crescent as a religious emblem is as old, certainly, as Diana; in fact, the very beginning of history.
1 Burkhardt’s Notes on the Bedouins.	2 Irving’s Successors of Mahomet.
3 Appleton’s Journal.
566
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The standard with the star and crescent upon it was first hoisted by Mahomet II.,- after the capture of Constantinople, a.d. 1453. Prior to that event the sign was very common on the arms of English knights and esquires, but fell into disuse when it became the device of the Mahometans. The history of the device belongs to the Grecian, if not the more extensive, sphere of the Aryan mythology.1
At the commencement of the recent Russo-Turkish war, the sultan, in his dire need of help, resolved to call for volunteers, and arouse the loyal of Stamboul to arms, and that the aid of the Christian inhabitants should be asked. Thus for the first time in Moslem history a crimson banner, emblazoned with the cross and crescent, the symbols of two antagonistic religions, was paraded through the streets of Constantinople. It was heralded by weird playing upon pipes and the
monotonous note of a drum. There came first, pressing through the throng, a youth, whose quietest movements were those of a maniac. In his hands gleamed two long scimitars, on his head was the green turban which denoted his descent from the prophet; and as the noise of the musicians rose, he kept time and rhythm with head, hands, and feet; now turning round, and now jumping; now writhing
The Cross and Crescent united, 1876. as though in direful agony ; and then,
with a glance toward heaven, as though delivering an earnest petition, bending his head to the dust, and prostrating himself on the ground. Behind him were the reeds and the drum; in the rear marched a standard-bearer, and in his hands was borne aloft the flag which bore the emblems of the crescent and the cross. At sight of the lad the bystanders turned pale with excitement, and every minute some one, enchanted by the rough melody and the dancer, fell silently into the procession which followed the banner. A strange cortege, truly: Softas, Armenians, Old and New Turks, Greeks, and Roman Catholics, some with fez and others in turban, some with straw hats and others with bare heads, — all following the lead of the frantic youth. And when the air grew livelier, or his gyrations more rapid, when he raised his own voice and gave a loud cry of anguish, knives, pistols, sticks, swords, were lifted high in the air or flourished round by those more moved than the rest. When was such a spectacle ever beheld before in the city of the sultan, under the very shadow of the great
1 Notes and Queries, 4tli series, vol. viii., 1870, p. 405.OF ANCIENT AND MODEEN NATIONS.
67
mosque of St. Sophia? The device was successful, and band after band was forwarded to the seat of war.1
The great standard won by the King of Poland from the infidels in 1683, at Kalemberg, was about eight feet in breadth, rounded at the fly, and of a green and crimson stuff, of silk and gold tissue mixed, bearing a device in arabesque characters signifying, “ There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.” The ball on the top of the staff, about the size of a man’s joined fists, was of brass gilt. This standard was presented by the King of Poland to the Pope, who caused it to be suspended from the roof of St. Peter’s, by the side of another standard taken from the infidels at the battle of Ohotzen. Irving, in his ' Life of Mahomet/ says that the general always carried the standard into battle.
The pirates of Algiers and of the coast of Barbary are the only people who ever bore an hexagonal flag or standard. Theirs was a red flag with a Moorish head coifed with its turban, &c., designed as the portrait of Hali, the son-in-law of Mahomet, who ordered his effigy expressed on the standards of his followers, believing that the bare sight of his image would carry undoubted victory over the Christians. This device was remarkable, as the Koran forbids the making of any image or representation of any man; for they who make it will be obliged at the day of judgment to find souls for them, or be themselves damned. This superstition has been so modified, that Muley Abbas, the brother of the Emperor of Morocco, in 1863, sat for his photograph; and the sultan has allowed his portrait to be painted, at the request of the foreign ambassadors to his court.
The fashion of pointed or triangular flags came from the Mahometan Arabs or Saracens, upon their seizure of Spain, a.d. 712, before which time all the ensigns of war were square, and extended on cross-pieces of wood or yards like church banners, on which account they were called mxilla.
SLAVONIC STANDAEDS AND ENSIGNS. — DEAGON
STAND AEDS.
The Banners and National Colors oe Poland, &c. — In our research concerning religious and military ensigns, standards, and flags, one family, the Slavonic, mighty in renown, has disappointed our exertions. Greek writers knew them by no name that can be brought home, and the Eomans felt them more than they have described them.
1 Cor. London Telegraph, July 18, 1876.68
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
It is a question whether they were in full or at all included in the denomination of ‘Scythians.’ The military'achievements of the Ja-zyges, Dacians, Sarmatians, and other of the Slavonic race of later date, we find on Roman bass-reliefs of Roman triumphs over these barbarians. The civilized and sedentary nations have always shown the most anxiety to commemorate victories over enemies they could not subdue. The victories of Thosmes II. and III., and of Sesostris, over nations probably of Slavonic stock, painted on the walls of Thebes, are of this description. The columns of Trajan and Antonine show the Slavonic cavalry, and representations of the ensigns which those riding and migratory nations adopted for carrying on horseback, before the stirrup was invented. In China, Japan, and Tartary, west of Germany, dragon-shaped symbols, resolvable into some sort of flag, were adopted as military ensigns from the earliest age. In ancient times, the Southern and Western nations had effigy standards of statues or sculptured pbjects without cloth beneath them, or, at most, a knotted shawl or cloth. These dragon standards consisted of a metal or wooden head, representing the figure of a dragon, with the mouth open, and were perforated at the neck, to which a long bag, in the shape of a serpent, was fastened; the lower jaw was bored through, for the purpose of receiving the point of a spindle, whereon it turned according to the wind, which, blowing in at the open mouth, dilated the pendulous bag, giving it the appearance of a twisting snake. There were instances when tow and burning materials were placed in the mouth, to give the dragon an appearance of breathing fire. Indications of this practice occur in early Chinese works, and in the Tartar armies that invaded Europe. In the Teutonic armies, a dragon standard belonged to about every thousand men. In a letter, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius states his camp is invested by a German force of seventy-four dragons, forming an army of seventy-nine thousand men. When this form of ensign, adopted over so vast a territory, was so long in use, and so multiplied, it is evident, in order that friend and foe might discriminate each from other, that differences of form, color, and ornament must have been resorted to. Black, golden, and silver dragons were common in the far East. White, red, and green were more general colors among the Celtae; and the last was held in high respect by the Scandinavians. Slavonic nations caused their dragons to appear in that color, or introduced it in stripes, bands, or additional ribbons. All these modifications can be traced on the dragon ensigns of the Sarmatians and Daci of the Trajan column at Rome.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
69
As the Slavonic nations numbered many pagan tribes among them, to the middle of the thirteenth century, the solar worship typified by Thor, or the Bull God, originated effigies of the bull, his head, skull, or horns, as national ensigns ; others adopted the skull or figure of the horse. The Moxian’s national ensign was a horse-skin. The skull of a horse, with the tail hung behind it, was borne in the religious processions of the Rugii, and was known in Sweden as an attribute of Odin. There was a tribe of Bielsk which had for a standard a white bear-skin ; another carried a pair of urus’ horns ; the Ostii, the head of a wild boar. The Jazyges carried horse-tails. All these ensigns preceded Christianity in Poland. When Ringold, 1237, assembled the Poles, Lithuanians, and Samogitians to oppose the Tahtan Bati, each tribe received an ensign, made for the occasion, of red or black cloth, secured like a vexillum. In Poland, a black flag was the particular distinction of the court, the palace, and the royal person : it may be that this color was connected with the assertion of André Barden, that several Sarmatian tribes “portaient clans leurs bannières Vimage de la mort.” The Cossacks, when they shook off°the religious oppression which King Vladislaus VII. wanted to fix upon them, had on their ensigns no emblazonment, but only invocations and imprecations.
When serfship was introduced, about the tenth or eleventh century, all tribal symbols disappeared, or were appropriated by the nobles, who then began to imitate the feudal inventions of Western Europe.
Stephen the Saint, King of the Magyars, received a white patriarchal cross from the Pope, which was- carried on the top of a pole as a standard, and had a guard instituted to surround it. From that time, eagles’ or herons’ wings, the ancient ensigns* of the Huns or of the Onoguro, were left to adorn the lances of private warriors. Attila is said to have carried a hawk for his standard.
In Constantinople there was a monkish order 1 which wore a green habit and a scarlet mantle, with a patriarchal yellow or blue cross on the breast. This order spread westward, and constituted the guard of St. Stephen’s cross in Hungary. When Hedwega united Lithuania with Poland by her marriage with the Duke Jagillon in the fourteenth century, his national standard, a mounted warrior, in token of his conversion to Christianity, received in addition this cross on the shield of the horseman. It remained, however, a distinct banner in the Polish armies, — a double white cross bordered with gold, borne in a blue field. There is a legend that this cross was placed on the shield to commemorate a victory over the Teutonic knights.
1 The Fratres Constantinopolitani.70
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
A white eagle on a red ground was the cognizance of the kingdom of Poland in the eleventh century, and is coeval with the numerous eagles of the German Empire, originally all single-headed. Lipsius has a cut of one having two heads with wings displayed, as in modern heraldry, which he copied from the Theodosian column.
The Polish silver eagle on a red ground is of the same age as the golden eagle on a red field, the imperial ensign of the house of Saxony, and long impaled with the gold and sable bars traversed with a bend of green rue. Silesia, Moravia, and Prussia assumed eagles differenced in their structures or by particular marks on their breast. We have no knowledge when the two-headed eagle was assumed by Russia, but the mounted horseman of the Muscovites may be the original type of the Lithuanian ensign. In Western Europe at the time of the first crusade, and among the Moslems at the same date, standards» and ensigns were generally without charge or symbolic figures, unless it were the cross, which, whenever it occurs, was always an imitation of the cross mark, standing for the sign-manual of the person whose ensign it was. Thus, in England, the crosses on rough Saxon coins, commonly called ‘sciatta,’ are the mark of the sign-manual of the sovereign who caused them to be struck, and also the cross which he placed upon his banner; for in several it is represented in a flag upon the coins themselves.1
The black ensign of Poland, derived or imitated from the Tahtar standards, was older than the white eagle, or white cross on a blue field of the Gonesa, as the latter banner was called. It may have been plain, or marked with a skeleton Vimage cle la mort, and later with the cross or sign-manual of the reigning prince, until, diminishing in consideration, the St. Stephen’s patriarchal cross became the religious ensign. The arrow, consecrated by the blood of the martyr St. Sebastian, which formed part of the royal sceptre of Poland, may have had its symbolical figures on a banner. The name of Gonesa, given to the banner which united the devices of Lithuania and Poland, we find nowhere explained.
When the white eagle and horseman became national, other symbols were appropriated by the provinces. A list of the ensigns of the western Slavonic nations in the British Museum shows that the armorial ensigns of the provinces was borne on the breast of the white eagle, recognizing the allegiance of the provinces to the national standard.1
In a curious plan of the battle of Praga, near Warsaw, a.d. 1656,
1 United Service Magazine, October, 1844.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
71
there is in the foreground a representation by a Swedish artist of the Polish standards surrendered to Charles X., of Sweden, nearly all of which bear the symbols and distinctions of the great nobles.1
A custom among the Poles of bearing military signs attached to the backs of warriors deserves attention, because it,is of Mon-golic origin, and can be traced even to Mexico.2 3 The western Slavonians appear to have copied the custom from the Tahtars, who often bore a slight staff with a flag or bundle of feathers secured by straps in a scabbard between the shoulders. There exist copperplate etchings of these horsemen. In Poland, as late as the reign of John Sobieski, outspread wings of swans and eagles appear to have been secured to the backs of knights. A body of warriors thus equipped figured in a magnificent charge, when that hero relieved Vienna, and a similar device was attached to each side of the back of the saddles of the nobles at the surrender of Praga. This was in part of metal, and produced in galloping a crashing noise, designed to increase the terror of horses opposed to them, who encountered at the same moment the bewildering flutter of the small flags on the lances, which are still retained by modern uhlans, hussars, lancers, &c. In the magnificent Hall of Armor in Vienna is preserved the famous horse-tail standard of John Sobieski, who rolled back the tide of Moslem invasion.1
A fac-simile of the standard of ancient Poland, under which Sobieski defeated the Turks in 1673, was made in Philadelphia for the Polish association in 1863, and in 1876 was deposited in the National Museum at Independence Hall, Philadelphia.8
CHINESE, JAPANESE, JAVANESE, AND EAST INDIAN
STANDARDS.
Chinese Symbols and Standards. — At the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, China was seven hundred years old, and when Isaiah prophesied of her, she had existed fifteen centuries. She has seen the rise and decline of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, but remains a solitary and wonderful monument of patriarchal time, with a population which, roughly estimated, establishes the fact that every third person who lives upon this earth, or is buried in it, is a Chinese.
1	United Service Journal, October, 1844.
2	See Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, and Mexican Standards in this volume.
3	American newspaper.72	THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
According to Chinese cosmogony, Poankon, at the formation of the world, was the first man born from Chinese soil or clay. In his age the earth was inhabited by huge animals of greater size than the whale. Among these bulky monsters was a dragon, sovereign of the air by its wings, and, as a serpent, monarch of the earth by its swiftness. It preyed upon human flesh, was worshipped as a malevolent spirit, and human victims were immolated to appease its voracity.
Tien Hoang, a prince and legislator of China, abolished human sacrifices, together with the adoration of the dragon; but its idol was
preserved in the temples, and exhibited on the standard of the Chinese princes. In the following age, Tien Hoang was reported to have destroyed the dragon, and was depicted as killing the monster,1 just as St. George has been painted in modem times.
The type of the dragon is probably the sea-serpent or boa-constrictor, though the researches of geology have brought to light such a counterpart of f the lung ’ of the Chinese in the iguanodon as to make it probable it may have been its prototype.
According to the Chinese, there are three dragons; viz., the lung in the sky, the li in the sea, and Oictn in the marshes. But the first is the only authentic one, and has the head of a camel, the horns of the deer, eyes of a rabbit, ears of a cow, neck of a snake, belly of a frog, scales of a carp, claws of a hawk, and the palms of a tiger. On each side of the mouth are whiskers, and its head contains a bright pearl, its breath is sometimes changed into water and sometimes into fire, and its voice is like the jingling of copper pans.1
The dragon is allowed to be worn by Chinese noblemen or ^mandarins and vassals of the empire in various colors and postures, to distinguish families, accompanied by emblematical flowers, silk knots, and peacock’s feathers; but it is forbidden, under penalty of death, to have more than four claws to each foot, in order to distinguish the imperial dragon, which has five claws.2
The word ‘dragon/ in Greek, signifies a looker-on, or a watcher who guards an entrance. Most of the Oriental cities of old bore on their fortified gates the effigy of a dragon.
The exalted conception the Chinese entertain of the dragon has caused the name to symbolize the dignity and supremacy of the Chinese emperor. He is spoken of as seated on the dragon throne; to see
1 Williams’s Middle Kingdom.	2 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.
Tien Hoang and the Dragon.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
73
him is to see the dragon's face ; his standard is the dragon ; and the coat of arms embroidered on the breasts and back of his followers is a dragon. This monster is not regarded by the Chinese as a fabulous animal, but as a real existence, or rather as a power of nature pervading the air and ocean and earth, seen, perhaps, in water-spouts and clouds and bursting fountains.1
Imperial Standard of China. — The standard of the Emperor of China is of yellow satin with a red border, on which is worked a gold embroidered dragon. The fly is four feet in length by fourteen inches in breadth, and its edges are serrated or fringed. The Chinese characters on it simply signify "emperor/ The standard pole is about eight feet in length.
The standard of the empress is of the same size, shape, device, and material as that of the emperor, but it is all yellow, having no colored border. The inscription on this flag signifies " empress/
The standard of the empress-dowager is the same as the preceding, but made of white satin on which is worked a golden dragon.
The national flag, announced as such in 1872 to all foreign ministers, superintendents of trade, and foreign officials, is triangular in shape, and of deep yellow bunting, with a blue dragon with a green head snapping at a red pearl or ball in its centre. It is worn by Chinese war vessels and custom-house cruisers. Another Chinese flag is square, and red, blazoned with two blue fishes, for which of late a white ball has been substituted.
Whenever the governor-general starts on a warlike expedition, he must worship his flag. Whenever he sends any high military officer to fight the enemy, and whenever any high military officer is about to proceed to battle, the flag of his division or brigade must be worshipped. The worship is often performed on the public parade-ground in the suburbs, near the south gate of the city. The viceroy, or governor-general, sometimes chooses to sacrifice to the flag on his own parade-ground connected with his gamuns. The time usually selected is daylight, or a little later. However, the day, hour, and minute are fixed by a fortune-teller. Oftentimes high officials, civil and military, connected with the government, are present. It
1 Letter, S. Wells "Williams, LL.D., Dec. 3, 1879. For further account of the dragon, see Chinese Repository, vol. vii. In Chinese hooks the ancient Chinese flags are often figured. ‘Mémoires concernant les Chinois,’ printed last century in Paris, has a plate of three or four styles of military flags.74
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
is necessary that all the officers who are to accompany the expedition should witness the ceremony and take part in it. The same is true of the soldiers who are to be sent away, or are to engage in the fight. In the centre of the arena is placed a table having upon it two candles, one censer, and several cups of wine. The candles are lighted. An officer, kneeling, holds the large flag by its staff near the table. The officer who is to command the expedition, standing before the table and the flag, receives three sticks of lighted incense from the master of the ceremony, which he reverently places in the censer arranged between the candles. He then kneels on the ground, and bows his head three times. Some wine taken from the table is handed him while on his knees, which he pours on the ground. Then a cup of wine is dashed upon the flag, and the professor cries out, “ Unfurl the flag, victory is obtained; the cavalry advancing, soon it is perfected.” The whole company of officers and soldiers who had knelt and bowed their heads now rise up with a shout, and commence their march for the scene of action or appointed rendezvous.1
In 1854, the writer, while in command of the United States chartered steamer Queen, a little vessel of 137 tons, mounting four iron 4-pounders and a 12-pounder brass boat-howitzer, the latter loaned from the United States ship Macedonian, participated in an expedition — English, American, and Portuguese (guided by a Chinese admiral’s junk) — against the piratical strongholds at Tyho and Kulan, which resulted in the complete destruction of the piratical fleet and batteries. As one of the fruits of this expedition, he forwarded to the Navy Department at Washington twelve flags taken by his force from the pirate’s junks and batteries. These are believed to be the first flags ever captured from the Chinese by our arms. One of these trophies, a large white cotton flag, was inscribed in bold Chinese characters, “ The flag of Lue-ming-suy-ming of the Hong-shing-tong company, chief of the sea squadron,” and “ that he takes from the rich and not from the poor, and that his flag can fly anywhere.” The inscriptions on another large triangular flag were written with blood, and, translated, read, viz.: No. 1. “ The band of Triads.” No. 2. “May the Manchóos be overthrown and the Mings restored.” No. 3. “ Shouf the name of one of the five originators of the Triad society. No. 4. “ Let the seas be like oil swept of our foes,” or, “ We the Triads spring up in every quarter.” No. 5. On the fly, or extreme end of the flag, is a character which signifies “ Victory.” From these inscriptions it would
1 Doolittle’s Social Life of the Chinese.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
75
seem that this pirate was a rebel from the Mandarin or Manchoo authority, and a Triad.1
Rear-Admiral John Rodgers, in 1871, forwarded to the Navy Department at Washington twenty-one standards and pennants, together with four staffs from which the colors have been torn, — all of which were captured by the Naval Expedition to the Corea. The Secretary of the Navy forwarded them to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, to be deposited there with other trophies.
These banners present every variety of color and design, but still indicate some method and arrangement. The flag of the commanding general and those of the principal officers are of flowered silk, and those of the subordinate officers of cotton, the latter closely woven. The staffs are alike, from six to eight feet long, and shod at the foot with iron, that they may be driven into the ground. The head of each staff is ornamented with carved wood, painted in brilliant colors, and capped by a rim of brass. The middle of each staff is painted with a series of white and black rings, which, according to their number, seem to indicate some rank or station. The staves of the flags representing superior officers are surmounted by a bunch of pheasant’s feathers, those of a lesser rank by a flat piece of iron fancifully cut, and others have no mounting. The flags generally are a square of one color, surrounded by a border of another color. A few smaller, and which appear to be inferior, flags have two equal stripes of different colors. The interior squares of the superior flags bear representations of flying dragons, flying serpents, turtles, &c., printed in brilliant colors, and well drawn. The flag of the Corean commanding general is of fine yellow silk, with a figure representing a tiger rampant, and is surrounded by a border of green silk. Flag No. 2 is of plain blue silk bound with black, with a representation of a flying turtle. It is badly torn by shell and bullets. No. 3 is of yellow silk trimmed with brown; to its centre are sewed two cardboards with hieroglyphics covered with silk. No. 4 is similar to No. 3, but of plain light blue silk. No. 5 is of yellow silk, bound with pale red silk, and bears the representation of a flying serpent. This flag is much torn by bullets. The remaining flags are of cotton dyed in various colors. One has a Corean inscription, signifying it is “ The flag of the squad captain of the rear battalion of the regiment.” Another has a representation of an officer on horseback; another, of a flying serpent; another has a turtle; several are blood-stained. Accompanying the flags are four pennants of silk and cotton of vari-
1 These inscriptions were interpreted by S. Wells Williams.76
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
ous colors, printed with curious devices. Specimens of Corean spears, with little flags attached, resembling guydons, were also received at the Navy Department.
At the United States Legation at Pekin there is a banner obtained at Port McKee, an oblong cotton flag, blazoned with a winged tiger in red, having flames .around it. Winged animals or men are almost unknown in China and Japan, and Dr. S. Wells Williams informs me he could learn nothing about the meaning of this flag. On the 11th of September, 1878, a red-dragon flag was hoisted for the first time at the Chinese consulate at Nagasaki, Japan, and the day was one of festivity and rejoicing among the Chinese.
The Chinese had no national flag until their intercourse with foreign nations, since the treaties of 1858 and the residence of foreign ministers at Pekin, showed the government the necessity of adopting an ensign for their ships of war and merchantmen which would be recognized by other nations on the high seas, and serve to distinguish honest traders along the coast from piratical craft. It was made known to foreign ministers in a despatch of Oct. 22, 1862, and has gradually come to be used by all Chinese vessels and junks, if their owners or masters care to go to the expense, but is mostly hoisted on the foreign rigged and owned vessels. The government vessels in China have also had their flags to distinguish them. But a new regulation has been made, requiring a dragon flag triangular in shape, ten feet broad at its base for largest, and seven or eight feet for smaller vessels; length according to taste; the field yellow, with a dragon painted on it with head erect. Previous to its date, the imperial flag with a dragon was confined, under certain circumstances, to the land forces and to the guard of the emperor. The war junks usually hoisted yellow flags containing the full titles of the officer in command, and the junks bore distinctive banners, to mark their place or rank in the squadron. Every commander along the coast, from Ninchwang to Hainan, had a different flag, and none had blazonry of any kind. The ground was not always yellow, certain ranks having a white ground; the scalloped border, if used, was also of different colors.
The present army of China is divided into bannermen, which have eight corps, recognized by different flags, and the green-banner army, which constitutes the largest part of the paid forces. The flags of the bannermen are triangular, — plain yellow, white, red, or blue for the left wing, and the same with a colored border for the right wing. The uniform of the soldier shows by its color and facings theOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
77
banner which each man belongs to. The banners of both the army and navy have the official titles of the general or commander painted on them.
In the provinces, the G-overnor-general (Tsung-tuh) has command of all the green-banner (Luh-ying) army in his jurisdiction, and their disposal is in his hands. The Mantchoo force belonging to the eight banners is under the orders of an especial commandant, responsible directly to Pekin. A triangular plain green flag indicates the general army; the facings of the uniforms generally indicate the corps. It is probable that the use of the national flag, adopted in 1862, will gradually extend to the army raised in the provinces. The usage of restricting the disposition of regiments and divisions to the province in which they have been raised has tended to neutralize national pride among the soldiers.
In ancient times, the form, blazonry, and material of flags used by the sovereign, feudal princes, generals, and officials of every grade, was directed by special regulations, and continues to influence their use.
The “ dragon flag ” is usually regarded by the Chinese as indicating the person, the envoy, the property, or the special cognizance of the monarch, distinguished from the ordinary department or officers of his government; the latter are known more by the yellow color of the flag than the dragon.1
Private trading-junks adopt any flag they please, always excepting the prohibited ones, and consequently often adorn the masts with many and variously shaped pennons, signals, and flags, including some more religious than commercial, intended to secure the protection of the gods on the voyage. The difficulty of recognizing honest from piratical vessels along the coast has ofttimes led to the destruction of the former by foreign vessels of war; for, as they usually go armed, and their officers and men could speak no English or other foreign language and ascertain the truth of matters, they were led to return the fire of their assailants. In the despatch announcing the adoption of the present flag, Prince Kung extends its use to foreign-built as well as to all native-built vessels.2
The members of the imperial family are allowed to use the dragon embroidered on their robes, and to carry flags or pennons on their carriages, tents, or elsewhere. The empress distinguishes hers by a plain yellow flag, and the empress-dowager by a white flag, indicating her
1	Chinese Repository, yol. vii. p. 258.
2	See American Diplomatic Correspondence for 1863, part iii. pp. 848-863.78
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
widowhood. The emperor’s is a yellow flag with a fringed red border, and is similar to the yellow banner of the Mantchoos. All these are emblazoned with the dragon.1
Japanese Standards. — The old imperial standard of the Japanese, in their opinion, was something sublime and sacred, and only when assured that it would be treated with respect would they allow a drawing to be made of it.
Its threefold device symbolized several things. The triple lobes represent Sin-to-ism, the religion of the Kamis, Buddhism, and Con-
fucism. They also symbolized the three annual and three monthly festivals : 1st, The great New Year, which lasts a month; 2d, the feast of spring, held the third day of the third month, or that of the flowers and young maidens; and, 3d, the feast of neighbors, in the “ won’t go home until morning ” style. The three monthly oid imperial standard and Japanese festivals are: 1st, The day of the new Aims of Japan.	moon; 2d, the day of the full moon; 3d, the
eve of the new moon. The colors of this standard were white and purple.
Recently, the Emperor, or Tenio, has adopted the chrysanthemum for his emblem, having for supporters a dragon and phenix, typifying power and the reign of virtue, displayed on a round shield. The chrysanthemum, with sixteen petals, is used for outside imperial government business.
Another imperial device, the personal crest of the mikado, is the hiri (Paulownia imperialis), used for palace matters personal to the emperor.
It is remarkable that in Japan a serpent is considered the vilest of imperial Arms of Japan, i88o	animals, but a dragon is thought to be
of high birth and of great importance, the symbol of power and the badge of royalty.
The phenix is an omen of prosperity and felicity, and is thought to have appeared at different times to signalize the coming of virtuous rulers, and reascending to heaven after the performance of wonderful
1 Communicated by S. Wells Williams, LL.D.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
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works. A representation of this bird was formerly carried before the mikado whenever he made a journey.
All the nobles of Japan have a device or coat of arms, which is blazoned on their banners and on their tents, and worn on their shoulders and on the backs of their dresses. The naval flag recently adopted by the Japanese bears on the centre of a white field a red ball or globe, supposed to represent the sun.
The imperial standard has a golden sun in the centre of a crimson field, with a network of golden diamonds woven over it. The admiral's flag is the same as the naval flag, with a red, blue, or yellow border, in the order of their rank.
The Japanese bark, ‘Tu-Ju-Mara/ of six hundred tons, commanded by Captain Samuel A. Lord, formerly of Salem, Mass., and manned exclusively by Japanese sailors, arrived at San Francisco, Cal, Aug. 23, 1872, and for the first time in history displayed the Japanese flag at the masthead of a merchantman in American waters.
Javanese Standaeds. — Though the natives of Java have followed the customs of Europeans in the use of standards, yet their prince’s rallying-sign continues to be the payong, or par-a-sol, which is a peculiar object of respect and veneration among the Javanese bands. The tombak pussaka, or lances hallowed by age, which they have inherited from their ancient sovereigns, serve for the same purpose as the payongs, and are distinguished by the horse-tails which dangle from them.1
East Indian Standaeds and Ensigns. — The great banner of Mewar (whose prince was the legitimate heir of the throne of Rama), first of the thirty-six royal tribes, is blazoned with a golden sun on a crimson field; those of the chiefs bear a dagger. Amber displays the hanchangra, a five-colored flag. The lion rampant on an argent field is extinct with the States of Chanderi.2 The use of armorial bearings among the Rajpoot tribes has been traced anterior to the war of Troy. In the Mahabharet, or great war, B.c. 1200, the hero Bheesama exults over his trophy, the banner of Arjoona, its field adorned with the figure of the Indian Hanuman (monkey deity). The peacock was the favorite emblem of the Rajpoot warriors ; the bird is sacred to their Mars (Karnara), as it was to Juno, his mother, in the West. The emblem of Vishnu is the eagle. Chrisna w7as the founder of the thirty-six tribes who obtained the universal sovereignty of India, and lived
1 Colonel Pfiffer’s Sketches of Java. 2 Colonel Tod’s Annals of Eajahstan.80
THE SYMBOLS; STANDARDS; AND BANNERS
b.c. 1200. These thirty-six tribes had their respective emblems, as the serpent, the horse, hare, &c. One of these tribes, the Saceseni, supposed to be the ancestors of the Saxon race, settled themselves on the Araxes, in Armenia, adjoining Albania. These migrating tribes of course carried with them their respective emblems, and hence the identity of European and Asiatic devices. The blue eagle belongs to the ensign of Yishnu, the red bull to that of Siva, and the falcon to that of Rama. The ensign of Brahma bore a white lion. The sun rising behind a recumbent lion blazed on the ancient ensigns of the Tartars, and the eagle of the sun on that of the Persians. The humza, or famous goose, one of the incarnations of Buddha, is yet the chief emblem of the Burman banners.
The ensigns of the Bijala, reigning at Kalyan, were the lion, the bull, and the goose. The Tadu and the Silahara adopted a golden ‘ garuda’ or eagle on their ensigns. The Rattas tribe had the golden hawk and crocodile. A hymn to Camdeva, the god of love, has this line : —
u Hail, warrior, with a fish on thy banner.”
Sir William Jones says Camdeo, the Hindoo god, is represented attended by dancing girls or nymphs, the foremost of whom bears his colors, which are a fish on a red ground.1
The standards of the Indian princes, displayed over their chairs when Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, at Delhi, were of satin, and represented their ancestral arms; viz., Odeyporis, a golden sun on a red disk; the Guico war’s, a blue elephant; the Nizam’s, a full moon on a green standard; and the historic fish of the Begum of Bhopal.2
ELAG8 AND STANDARDS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS
AND PACIFIC ISLANDS.
Mexico, San Salvador, Sandwich Islands, Society Islands, New
Zealand, Peru.
Mexican Standards. — The ancient standard of Mexico, or rather of the Aztecs, which has been compared to the Roman standard, was an eagle pouncing on an ocelot, emblazoned on a rich mantle of feather-work; that of the Tlascalans, a white heron, the cognizance of the house of Xicontencatl. All the great chiefs of Mexico, in the time of Cortez, had their devices and banners. The standards
1 Journal Royal Asiatic Society.
2 Newspaper report.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
81
of the Aztecs were carried in the centre of the army. A golden net on a short staff, attached to the hack between the shoulders, so that it was impossible to be torn away, was the usual symbol of authority for an Aztec commander.1 The standards of the Tlas-calans were carried in the rear. The Rio de Vanderas (river of banners) was so named by Alvarado from the numerous ensigns displayed by the natives on its borders. Prescott says, “The Tlas-calans, allies of Cortez, led by Xicontencatl, fifty thousand strong, marched proudly under their great national banner, emblazoned with a spread eagle, the arms of the republic.” According to Clavigero, it was a golden eagle; but as Bernal Diaz speaks of it as white, it may have been a white heron which belonged to the house of the youthful leader. Elsewhere, Prescott speaks of the great standard of the Republic of Tlascala as a golden eagle with outspread wings, in the fashion of a Roman signum, richly ornamented with emeralds and silver work. Ellis, in his ‘ Antiquities of Heraldry,5 says the natural emblem of the Mexicans was a swan. The Spanish historian Sagahan relates that, about two centuries before their conquest by the Spaniards, the Aztecs were compelled to surrender their emblematical bird, the swan, to a neighboring kingdom that oppressed them.
In the Mexican Tribute Tables (Talegas), small pouches or bags of tasteful form, and ornamented with fringe and tassels, frequently occur, having a cross of a Maltese or Latin form woven or painted on each. It is a surprising circumstance that they were thus ornamented before the arrival of the Spaniards, when the religion of Christ and significance of the cross were unknown to them.2
The Mexicans counted by units, twenties, four hundred, and eight thousand; and these were sufficient to express any number; their hieroglyphics are in accordance with this numeration. The unit was represented by a small circle; twenty, by a standard, shaped as a parallelogram ; four hundred, by a feather; eight thousand, by a purse supposed to contain as many grains of cocoa; one to nineteen was represented by a number of small circles. The hieroglyphic of twenty was four squares, which, as they were colored, represented either five, ten, or fifteen. This mode of counting had a practical influence. Bernal Diaz, when speaking of the Indian armies, counts them as so many xiquipillis, or bodies of eight thousand men. It is not improbable they were divided into battalions of four hundred
1	Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico.
2	Don T. A. Lorenzard’s History of New Spain, Mexico, 1770 ; also, Historical Magazine, 1867.
682
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
men each; these again subdivided into squads of twenty men; and that the hieroglyphic for twenty originally represented the banner or standard of each of such squads.1
Our North American Indians were found by the early voyagers and discoverers to carry for their standard a pole full-fledged with the wing-feathers of the eagle.
The principal standard of Cortez, at his conquest of Mexico, according to Bernal Diaz, says Prescott, was of black velvet, embroidered with gold and emblazoned with a red cross amidst flames of blue and white, with this motto in Latin beneath: “ Friends, let us follow the cross, and under this sign, if we have faith, we shall conquerf — a legend which was doubtless suggested by that on the labarum of Constantine.
Another standard of Cortez, described by his follower, Bernal Diaz, as borne in the procession when Cortez returned thanks to
God, at Cuyoacan, for the capture of the city of Mexico, 1519, is now preserved in the National Museum of that capital. The authenticity of this, probably the oldest flag in existence, is sustained by a series of accounts, beginning with that of Bernal Diaz. I am indebted to the Hon. John W. Poster, our minister to Mexico, for the illustration of this banner, engraved from his pencil sketch, as framed, and for the following description of it: “ This standard is now deposited in the National Museum in this capital. The evidences of its authenticity are accredited by documents in the museum, and it is vouched for by Don Lorenzo Boturini, a learned Spanish gentleman contemporaneous with its recovery from the Tlascalan allies to whom Cortez gave it (see f Idea de una nueva historia general de la America Septentrional ’), and by Don Lucas Alaman, the distinguished Mexican historian and statesman (c Disertaciones sobre la historia de México,’ vol. i., Appendice, p. 19).
1 Gallatin, cited Ty Sir John Bowring in his Decimal System.

Banner of Cortez.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
83
“The standard has been placed in a frame and under glass for preservation, being much worn and faded. It is about one yard square, and is thus described by the authors cited: ‘ The standard is of red damask. On the front side is painted a most beautiful figure of the Most Holy Mary, with a crown of gold, and surrounded with twelve stars of gold, her hands joined as if in praying to her Most Holy Son to protect and strengthen the Spaniards in conquering the idolatrous empire to the Catholic faith. The image has a blue mantle and a flesh-colored tunic; the embroidery forming the border is green. On the reverse side are painted the royal arms of Castile and Leon. A more modern damask has been sewed on this side, in framing for preservation, so that the arms cannot be seen/ ”1
During the colonial government, on the anniversary of the surrender of Guatemozin, the 13th of August, 1521, a solemn procession was annually made around the walls of the city, headed by the viceroy, and displaying the venerable standard of the conqueror.2
San Salvador. — By a decree issued in 1865, the national flag and arms of the Republic of San Salvador are as follows: —
Article 1. The national flag will consist of five blue and four white stripes, running horizontally; each stripe shall be nine inches in width and from three to four yards long. At the superior angle, adjoining the staff, there shall be a square on a red ground of one yard each way, in which shall be placed nine white five-pointed stars, to represent the nine departments of the republic.
Article 2. The above-described shall be the merchant flag. The battle-flag shall be of the same design and size, with the difference that the square shall contain the coat of arms of the republic on the converse [obverse], and the nine stars on the reverse.
Article 3. The national coat of arms will be the same as that of the old confederation, with the following modifications, viz.: 1. In place of five volcanoes there shall be but one in eruption. 2. In the space above the volcano there shall appear nine stars, forming a semicircle. 3. At the base, the new flag of the republic shall be represented, running entirely across the shield. 4. The cap of liberty will be placed where the cornucopias meet. 5. The inscription, “ 15th September, 1821,” shall appear in the centre of the shield, and running across the cap of liberty. 6. Within the circle above the centre of the arms shall be placed the words, “ Republic of Salvador, in Central America.”
1	Letters, Hon. John W. Foster, Ang. 31, 1878, and Jan. 23, 1879 ; also Letter,, A. Nunez Ortega, Jan. 17, 1879.
2	Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico.84
THE SYMBOLS; STANDARDS; AND BANNERS
Sandwich Islands. — The flag of the Sandwich Islands has an English jack for a union; and for a field, nine horizontal stripes, — white, red, and blue alternately. This flag was given the islanders by the British Government, with an assurance that it would be respected wherever the British flag was acknowledged. The present flag has only eight stripes, the lowest blue stripe being omitted.
The royal standard has no union, but in the centre of the flag a white field, blazoned with the royal arms.
Eormerly, the Sandwich Islanders hoisted a white flag on the end of a spear, at each end of the enclosure of their ‘puhonas/ or cities of refuge. Whoever entered one of these enclosures, — the gates of which were always open, — whatever may have been his offence, it afforded him inviolable sanctuary.
A wag has suggested as an appropriate standard for the Sandwich Islands one having bread-and-butter stripes, with ham stars, on a groundwork of mustard, as a design that would readily suggest its nationality.
The Society Islands. — The flags of the gods, or the emblems of the Society Islanders, were carried in battle to inspire the combatants with confidence, and their martial banners were hoisted on board the different fleets, or carried by the bravest warriors in the centre of their armies. These flags were red, white, and black. They also used a flag of truce. A sacred flag was used in their processions, and regarded as an emblem of their duties.
March 17, 1829, Commander J. Laws> B.N., commanding H.B.M. ship Satellite, proposed for the Georgian and Society Islands a flag “red above, white in the middle, and red below,” which was adopted as a national flag by the chiefs.1
The present flag of the islands has the French tricolor grafted on this flag as a jack or union, emblematic of the French protectorate established in 1844.
New Zealand. — The flag of these islanders was granted them by British authorities as an emblem of sovereignty and independence. It is a white flag, charged with a red St. George’s cross. In the upper left-hand canton formed by this cross there is a blue union, divided by a similar red cross bordered with white, and each of its blue quarters has a five-pointed white star in its centre.
When this flag was given to the chiefs at the Bay of Islands, they
1 Ellis’s Polynesian Researches.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
85
were assembled, and told that as long as it was allowed to fly they were free and independent, but as soon as the flag of any other power was flown in its stead, they would be no longer free, but slaves. In 1844, fearing the French might take possession of the islands, the English hoisted their own ensign at the Bay of Islands, and the act led to a war between them and the natives, which lasted several years.
Peru. —Prescott, referring to Gomara, Sarmiento, and Velasco, as his authority for the statement, says that in the Inca army each company had its particular banner, and that the imperial standard, high above all, displayed the glittering device of the rainbow, the armorial ensign of the Incas, intimating their claims as children of the skies.1
The modern Peruvian flag and standard is composed of two red and one perpendicular white stripe, — the centre of the white stripe bearing the arms of the republic. The colors, red and white alternate, are said to have been suggested by the red and white feathers which were conspicuous ornaments of the head-dress or coronets of the ancient Incas.
THE STANDARDS AND FLAGS OF EUROPEAN STATES.
Italy, Denmark, Spain, Austria, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Greece, Holland, Portugal, Sweden and Norway.
Italian Standards. — About a.d. 1040, the Italians, who borrowed the idea from the Persians, who borrowed it from the Egyptians, invented, at Milan, the carriocium, or car standard, which was introduced into France about a.d. 1100. This pompous and cumbrous standard of the Italians consisted of a ‘banner royal’ fastened to the top of a mast or small tree, which was planted on a scaffold and borne by a chariot drawn by oxen covered with velvet housings, decorated with the devices or cipher of the prince. At the foot of the mast stood a priest, who said mass early every morning. Ten knights kept guard on the scaffold day and night, and as many trumpeters at its foot never ceased flourishing, to animate the troops. This cumbrous machine continued in use one hundred and thirty years. Its post was the centre of the army; and the greatest feats of daring were in attacks upon it, and in its defence. No victory was considered complete, and no army reputed vanquished, until it had lost its standard.
1 Prescott’s Conquest of Peru.86
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Alviano, the great champion of the Orsini family, when he took the city of Vitebro, caused to be embroidered on his standard a unicorn at a fountain surrounded by snakes, toads, and other reptiles, and stirring the water with his horn before he drinks: motto, “Venctna petto” — "I expel poisons/' — alluding to the property of detecting poison assigned to the horn of the unicorn. This standard was lost on the fatal day of Vicenza. Marc Antonio Monte, who carried it, being mortally wounded, kept the tattered remnant clasped in his arms, and never loosed his grasp until he fell dead on the field.
The Marquis of Pescara's standard at the battle of Eavenna had for device a Spartan shield, with the injunction of the Spartan mother to her son before the battle of Mantinea for a motto, “ Aid cum hoc, aut in hoc” — “Either with this, or on it." Pescara is buried in the church of Domenico Maggiore at Naples. Above his tomb hangs his torn banner, and a plain short sword, surrendered to him by Erancis I., at Pavia.
The ensign of the Eoman family of Colonna is a silver column, with base and capital of gold, surmounted by a golden crown, the grant of the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, in acknowledgment of services rendered by Stefano Colonna, who, when chief senator of Rome, crowned Louis in the Capitol contrary to the wishes of the Pope.1
The royal standard of the present kingdom of Italy is a square white flag bordered with blue, and has blazoned on the centre of its field the arms of Savoy, a cross argent on a red {gules) shield, surmounted by a regal crown, supported by an ermine mantle and by trophies of national flags.
The man-of-war flag of the United Kingdom of Italy is composed of equal green, red, and white vertical stripes, the green next the staff, the centre or white stripe being charged with the royal arms and crown. The merchant flag is the same, except that on it the crown is omitted.
The origin of the Savoy arms is this: In 1309, Eilles de Villaret, grand master of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, defended the Island of Rhodes against the Soldan, with the assistance of the Duke of Savoy, to whom, in gratitude for his timely help, they granted the badge of their order, a white cross on a red shield.2
The Magic Standard of Denmark. — The banner of Denmark, taken from the Danes by Alfred the Great, was a famous magical
1	Bury’s Historic War Cries and Devices.
2	Hospinan de Orig. Monacli, lib. v. p. 333.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
87
standard. According to Sir John Spelman, it had for a device the image of a raven magically wrought by three sisters, Hungar and Hubba, on purpose for the expedition, in revenge of their father Lode-brock’s murder. It was made, said the sisters, in an instant, being begun and finished in a noontide. The raven has been regarded from very early ages as an emblem of God’s providence,— probably from the record in Holy Writ of its being employed to feed Elijah in his seclusion by the brook of Cherith. The Danes believed it carried great fatality with it, and therefore it was highly esteemed by them. They believed that when carried in battle towards good success, the raven would clap his wings, or. make as if it would. That the raven was their standard is confirmed by the figure of that bird on the coins of Aulef, the Danish King of Northumberland.
The embroidery of flags afforded occupation and amusement to the ladies of the Middle Ages; thence their value became enhanced, and it was highly shameful for a knight not to defend to the death what his mistress’s hands had wrought.
When Waldemar II., of Denmark, was engaged in a great battle with the Livonians in the year a.d. 1219, it is said that a sacred banner fell from heaven into the midst of the army, and so revived the courage of his troops that they gained a complete victory over the Livonians. In memory of the event, Waldemar instituted an order of knighthood, called ‘St. Dannebrog,’ or ‘the strength of the Danes,’ which is the principal order of knighthood in Denmark. The truth appears to be, that King Waldemar, observing his men giving ground to the enemy, who had beaten down his standard, which bore an eagle, raised up a consecrated banner or silver cross, which had been sent him by the Pope, and under it rallied his troops, and ultimately gained the victory. This achievement caused the people to believe that the banner had been sent from heaven.1
The present royal standard of Denmark and man-of-war ensign and admiral's flag are red swallow-tailed flags, with a white cross, the colors of Savoy. On the standard, the cross is quadrate and charged with the royal achievements, the shield being encircled with the collars of the orders of the Elephant and Dannebrog. The quadrate of the cross in the admiral’s flag is blazoned with an oval shield, azure, bearing three golden crowns, surrounded by a border of gold, the whole encircled with a wreath of laurel. The flag for merchant ships is a square red flag with a white cross.
1 Newton’s Display of Heraldry. London, 1846.88
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Spanish Standards and Flags. — The standard of Fernan Gon-sales, Count of Castile, in the eleventh century, was a massive silver
cross, two ells in length, with Our Saviour sculptured upon it, and above his head, in Gothic letters, “I. N. R. I.; ” below was Adam awaking from the grave, with the words of St. Paul, "Awake, thou who sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life.” This standard is said to be still preserved in a Spanish convent.
The standard of the Cid was green, —
A Spanish Standard.
From the map of North Amer- u There were knights five hundred went armed before, ica, by Diego Honem, 1558.	And Bermudez 1 the Cid7s7 green standard bore.77
During the famous engagement between the forces of Aragon and Castile, called, from the field where it took place, cle la Espina, the brave Count of Candespina (Gomez Gonzalez) stood his ground to the last, and died on the field of battle. His standard-bearer, a gentleman of the house of Olea, after having his horse killed under him, and both hands cut off by sabre strokes, fell beside his master, still clasping the standard in his arms, and repeating his war-cry of f Olea.’1 This incident has been rendered in stirring verse by an American poet, — George H. Boker.
u Down on the ranks of Aragon The bold Gonzalez drove,
And Olea raised his battle-cry,
And waved the flag above.
“ Backward fought Gomez, step by step, Till the cry was close at hand,
Till his dauntless standard shadowed him, And there he made his stand.
u As, pierced with countless wounds, he fell, The standard caught his eye,
And he smiled, like an infant hushed to sleep, To hear the battle-cry.
u 1 Yield up thy banner, gallant knight!
Thy lord lies on the plain;
Thy duty has been nobly done;
I would not see thee slain.7
1 Mr. George, Annals of the Queen of Spain.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
89
u i Spare pity, King of Aragon,
I would not hear thee lie;
My lord is looking down from heaven,
To see his standard fly.7
“ 1 Yield, madman, yield! Thy horse is down j Thou hast nor lance nor shield.
Fly! I will grant thee time.7 — 1 This flag Can neither fly nor yield!7
u They girt the standard round about A wall of flashing steel;
But still they heard the battle-cry, —
1 Olea for Castile !7
u And there, against all Aragon,
Full armed with lance and brand,
Olea fought, until the sword Snapped in his sturdy hand.
u Among the foe, with that high scorn Which laughs at earthly fears,
He hurled the broken hilt, and drew His dagger on the spears.
u They hewed the hauberk from his breast,
The helmet from his head,
They hewed the hands from off his limbs, —
From every vein he bled.
u Clasping the standard to his heart,
He raised one dying peal, -That rang as if a trumpet blew, — i Olea for Castile l7 77
When Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Sept. 7, 1513, first touched the shore of the Pacific, at a bay which he named St. Michael, after the saint on whose day it was discovered, the tide was out, and so gradual was the incline of the strand that the water was full half a league distant. Nunez Balboa seated himself under a tree until it should come in. At last it came dashing on to his very feet with great impetuosity. He then started up, seized a banner on which was painted a virgin and child and under them the arms of Castile and Leon, and, drawing his sword, advanced into the sea until the water was up to his knees, — then waving the standard, he exclaimed with a loud voice : “ Long live the high and mighty monarchs Don Fernand90
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
and Donna Juanna, sovereigns of Castile and Leon, and of Aragon, in whose name I take real and corporal and actual possession
of these seas, islands, coasts, &c., in all time, so long as the world endures, and until the final day of judgment to all mankind! ” His followers having tasted the water, and found it indeed salt, returned thanks to God. When the ceremonies were concluded, Vasco Nunez drew his dagger and cut three crosses on trees in the neighborhood, in honor of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, and his example was followed by many of his soldiers.
Ferdinand and Isabella, in their Moorish wars, used a massive cross of silver, presented them by Pope Sixtus IV., as a standard, which Ferdinand always carried in his tent during his campaigns.
The ceremonials observed on the occupation of a new Spanish conquest, says Marineo, were for the royal ‘ alferez5 or ensign to raise the standard of the cross, the sign of our salvation, on the summit of the principal fortress, when all who beheld it prostrated themselves on their knees in silent worship of the Almighty, while the priests chanted the Te Deum Lauclamus. The ensign or pennon of St. James, the patron of Spain, was then unfolded, and all invoked his blessed name. Lastly, the standard of the sovereigns emblazoned with the royal arms was displayed, at which the army shouted as if with one voice, “ Castile! Castile! ” After these solemnities, a bishop led the way to the principal mosque, which, after rites of purification, he consecrated to the service of the true faith.
It was stated in ‘ All the Year Round/ in 1866, that the flag of Pizarro was then preserved in the Municipal Hall at Caracas, S. A.; enshrined in a glass case, it having been sent from Peru in 1837. “ All the silk and velvet are eaten off, but the gold wire with the
Banner of Balboa.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
91
device of a lion and the word Carlos remained. The flag is about five feet long and three broad, and being folded double in the frame, but one-half is seen. They will not allow it to be taken out.” Per contra, General San Martin, when he voluntarily resigned the reins of power at Lima, in his speech on that memorable occasion, said, “I keep as a record the standard which Pizarro bore when he enslaved the empire of the Incas.” In answer to inquiries which I instituted in 1879, concerning this flag, through the Hon. Richard Gibbs, U. S. Minister to Peru, Señor Camacho, a nephew of Bolivar, wrote Col. Manuel de Odnozola, under date, “ Lima, April 22,1879 : ” “ When I was Secretary of the Municipal Council of Caracas, in 1848, I saw in a glass case, kept in the Hall of Sessions, a banner, richly embroidéred, said to be Pizarro’s. I can see it now, embroidered in gold,—the lion, the red ground, the creases in the flag, and all the details of the standard, — which I understood was brought from Peru by the regiments ‘ Janin5 and f Caracas ’ on their return, this valuable present having been made to the Liberator Bolivar, by the government of that republic; but Doct. Lama, chief clerk in the Foreign Office, and my immediate chief, has assured me that it could not be Pizarro’s flag, as it never left Peru. Please clear up this point, as you have a great memory, and such abundant archives to draw from.”
To this note, Colonel Odnozola, librarian and keeper of the archives, who was over eighty years of age, replied, “April 23d:” “ I immediately answer your note of yesterday, stating that I and my contemporaries never saw any other standard than that which was brought out on the 1st and 6th of January, (Dia de los Beyesl1 in the grand procession of the alcaldes.” This standard was said to be, and all believed it to be, the one that Pizarro brought to the conquest of Peru. It was preserved in the municipal chamber, and was presented by that body to General San Martin, who, when he left the country, carried it with him, as he so stated in his valedictory address when he delivered the presidential scarf to the Constitutional Congress in 1822. By a clause in his will, he desired that the valuable relic should be returned to Peru; and the executor of the will in France delivered it' to Colonel Bolonese to bring it to Peru, who complied with the order, depositing it in the palace when General Pezet had supreme command of the republic. On the 6th of November, 1865, when the palace was sacked, it was carried off, and up
1 Lima was founded Jan. 6, 1535-36, King’s Day, by Pizarro (Dia de los Reyes), and afterwards, on that anniversary, the flag was always carried in the procession up to the time of the Independence of Peru, 1822.92
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
to the present time (1879) the thief remains unknown, or where it went to.”
“ In the work published in Buenos Ayres on the inauguration of the statue of General San Martin, there was printed or engraved a copy of the standard, drawn by Señor Balcacer, the son-in-law of General San Martin, previous to his delivering the original to Col. Bolonese.”
Señor Ricardo Palma also writes Señor Camacho : “ Pizarro’s standard was presented by the Corporation of Lima, in 1822, to General San Martin, who, when he died, willed that it should be returned to Peru. Balcacer, son-in-law of San Martin, carried out the instructions of the will, and the flag was deposited in the palace. According to some, Pezet presented this precious relic to the rear-admiral or some chief of the reinstating or ‘ revin cadera ’ of the Chincha Islands; by others, that it was stolen by the mob who sacked the palace, Nov. 6, 1865, when Pezet fell. The presentation of the standard to San Martin is recorded in the official gazette of the year of its presentation, and it is mentioned by later historians. I have often tried to follow up the track of the flag, with no better result than I have mentioned. In the processions of the alcaldes, January 6, it was carried by the ‘ alfarez real/ or royal ensign, to whose custody it was confided. The rich flag you saw in Caracas could not have been that of the ‘ conquestador/ When he commenced his daring enterprise he was not in a position to sport a valuable banner. Old men who saw the standard in 1822 have told me that it was of poor material, and badly used.”
The standard of Cortez, described and illustrated heretofore, is preserved in the city of Mexico.1
The present royal standard of Spain bears the arms of Catherine of Aragon, with those of Anjou in pretence displayed over its whole area. The man-of-war flag is yellow, interposed between two horizontal bars (each half its own depth) of red, and is charged towards its dexter with the arms of Castile and Leon impaled within a red circular bordure, and ensigned with the Spanish crown. The merchant flag is without the royal arms, and has a narrow yellow stripe at the top and bottom of the flag outside the two red bars.
Spain becoming a great kingdom on the union of Castile and Aragon, united as a national flag the arms of the two kingdoms. But long before that, Barcelona ships had worn the red and yellow stripes known as the ‘ bars of Aragon/ The tradition is, that in the year 878 Charles the Bald honored Geoffrey, Count of Barcelona, who had been mortally wounded in the battle against the Normans, by dipping his
1 Pages 82, 83.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
93
four fingers in the blood flowing from the Count’s wounds, and drawing them down the Count’s golden shield. The story is, however, a pure fable, as the stripes on the Spanish flags are not so old by two hundred years. They are simply a pun on the name of Barcelona, — ‘barras longas.’ Afterwards, as Barcelona merged into the kingdom of Aragon, its arms were adopted for those of the kingdom. From the first greatness of Spain, her ships wore the Castilian flag, — quartering Castile and Leon. It was this, as the national flag, that was worn by the ships of Columbus, — noteworthy in the history of navigation as the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean.	%
On the accession of Charles Y. to the kingdom of Spain, he introduced the Burgundian flag, — the red raguled saltire on a white ground, — which was to some extent used for two hundred and fifty years. The ships of the Armada, in 1588, bore the Burgundian cross. In a series of maps of the actions, preserved in the British Museum, the Spanish fleet is as distinctly marked by the red saltire as the English by the red cross.
There seems to be no doubt whatever that, during the latter half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, the Spanish flag was white, with the red Burgundian cross; and a memorandum drawn up at Toulon, in 1662, says that, “ During the war with Spain, our ships always wore in battle a red ensign at the stern, to distinguish them from the Spaniards, who wore a white; but in the last war with the English they (the French) wore white, as different from the English red.” 1
To the Bourbon marriage must be attributed the introduction of a white flag, bearing the royal arms, similar in effect to the French standard. The old one, however, was not entirely abolished; and an order, dated Jan. 20, 1732, systematizes the complexity: —
“ The king, having resolved that the ships of the fleet are to be divided into three squadrons, and that each of these shall belong to one of the ports already established in Spain, orders that every ship is to carry at the stern a white ensign, with the royal arms, as now in use. And to distinguish the different squadrons, those ships which belong to Cadiz shall wear as masthead flags or pennons, or at the bowsprit cap, white, with the royal arms. Ferrol ships shall wear white, with the Burgundy cross, charged at each of its four corners with an anchor; and Carthagena shall wear violet (morado), with the shield of the castles and lions.” 2
1	Jal : Abraham Du Quesne, vol. i. p. 588.
2	Disquisaciones Nauticas, por el Capitan de Navis, C. F. Duro, p. 271.94
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
In the engraving in Anson’s fVoyage Around the World’ of the Spanish galleon, ‘ Nostra Seignior a de Cabadongct,’ captured by him near the Philippine Islands, in May, 1843, she is shown with the Burgundian ensign at the stern, and a blue or violet flag with the shield of the castles and lions at the main.1
The ships that fought under Navarro, off Toulon, in 1744, belonged to Cadiz; those that formed the squadron off Havana, in 1748, were from Ferrol. The Spanish contingent of the allied fleet that invaded the channel in 1779 consisted of the Cadiz and Ferrol squadrons, with possibly some ships from Carthagena. Throughout the war of American Independence, no distinctive squadrons were fitted out from that port, and the head-quarters of the grand fleet were throughout at Cadiz.
During these wars of the eighteenth century, the white flag was found to be inconvenient, from its closely resembling, at a little distance, the white flag of France, and the shield bearing white flags of Naples and Tuscany. It was resolved, therefore, to alter it; and, after examining twelve patterns which were submitted, the existing flag was ordered, by a decree dated May 28,1785. In this, the flag is defined as being in three horizontal stripes : the top and bottom red, each one fourth of the whole breadth; the middle yellow, and on it the simple shield of Castile and Leon, quarterly, surmounted by the royal crown. The merchant flag was at the same time defined as having the yellow stripe in the middle without the shield, one-third of the whole width, each of the remaining parts being divided into two equal stripes colored rqd and yellow alternately.2 There is no doubt the red and yellow then adopted was derived from the Aragon bars, being also the colors of the arms of Castile; but the Aragon arms are vertical. It is a coincidence that the arms of Admiral Cordova, at that time commander-in-chief of the Spanish navy, were barry of seven or, and gules.
Such as it was appointed in 1785, the Spanish flag has remained, with the exceptions of the short-lived change during the reign of Joseph Bonaparte, and at the time of the disturbance of 1868 to 1875, when the revolutionary ships flew any flag they thought best, with a preference for a plain red one, denoting the Commune; sometimes a tricolor of violet, white, and red.
1	Anson’s Voyage Around the World, &c., by Richard Walter, p. 373.	1 vol. 4to.
Printed for the author, 1748. Mr. Laughton says, in the plate in Harris’s Collection of Voyages, the masthead flag is white.
2	Duro, p. 273.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
95
The red, yellow, red flag of 1785, but without shield or crown, was ordered by King Alfonzo XII. to resume its place as the national ensign, on the 6th of January, 1875.1
Austrian Standard and Flags. — The field of the imperial standard of Austria is yellow, with an indented border of gold, silver, red, and black, and displays the eagle of the empire. The national or man-of-war flag is formed of three equally wide horizontal divisions, the central one white, and the two others red; on the central division towards the dexter is a shield charged as the flag itself, having also the imperial cipher within a narrow golden border, ensigned with the imperial crown. The flag of the merchant service is the same, except that the flag is additionally blazoned with the Hungarian arms, and for the outer half of the red stripe green is substituted, indicating the union of the Kingdom of Hungary with Austria, and also its independence.
The national colors of Hungary are red, white, and green, arranged horizontally, — the green in chief, and the red at the base. The imperial eagle of Austria is claimed to be the successor of the eagle of the German emperor, which succeeded the eagle of ancient Rome; and bears two heads, which symbolize the eastern and western Roman empires.
Since 1495, according to an official return, two thousand and thirty-three colors and standards have been taken by Austrian troops from the enemy, and nine hundred and sixty-nine Austrian standards and colors captured.
Russian Standard and Flags. The imperial standard of Russia is yellow, blazoned with a double-headed eagle, surmounted by the
imperial crown; each of the eagle’s heads is also crowned, and in each of the eagle’s beaks and in each claw is borne a chart, supposed to represent the Caspian and Black Seas, the White Sea, and the Baltic. On the breast of the eagle there is a red shield charged with a St. George on horseback spearing a dragon under the horse’s feet. Pendent from the necks of the eagle and surrounding the shield is the collar and badge of the order of St. Andrew, established by Peter the Great in 1698.
1 ‘The Heraldry of the Sea,’ a lecture delivered by J. K. Laughton, A.M.R.N., Lecturer on Naval History at the Royal Naval College, Feb. 28, 1879, before the Royal United Service Institution.
Royal Standard of Russia.96
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The Czar of all the Russias bears on his standard the double-headed eagle, as an assured successor of the Roman Caesars. Its two heads, however, might denote his own eastern and western empires, —Asiatic and European Russia.
The merchant flag has three horizontal divisions, the uppermost white, the central blue, and the lowermost red. The man-of-war flag is white, with a blue diagonal cross; and this flag is charged in the dexter chief quarter of the larger flags with stripes of red, white, and blue, for the three squadrons of the Russian navy.
The original ensign seems to have been borrowed by Peter the Great who originated it, from the Dutch, and is merely the Dutch
flag upside down. Afterwards, as a further distinction, the white was charged with a small blue St. Andrew’s cross. During the greater part of the last century, the Russian navy wore a white, blue, or red ensign, the latter bearing the blue cross in a white canton.
The annexed engraving is a fac-simile of the banner under which the Russians conquered the Tartars in 1386, and is a curious specimen of the banners of
the fourteenth century. A fac-simile of the banner was presented to the Russian Legion in 1876.1
'Scribner’s Monthly,’ for February, 1880, has an engraving of a
Russian Flag, 1386.
1 London Graphic, Oct. 28, 1876.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
97
military flag of Peter the Great’s time, representing a warrior on horseback, with a drawn sword; but the magazine does not give any description of the flag, or state where it is preserved.
In the Russian navy they pay honors and a respect to their national flag that other nations would do well to follow. The ensign is lowered with great formality at sunset. The officers are assembled on the quarter-deck, with the band in position, and the crew in their places. As the flag begins to descend, the national air is played, and the officers and crew stand uncovered before the emblem of the nation’s sovereignty. It is hoisted with similar ceremonies. In 1871, the Emperor of Russia presented new flags to those regiments of his army which had reached their centenary, inscribed “ 1771-1871.”
The Belgian Standard and Flag. — The Belgian colors — black, yellow, and red — are those of the Duchy of Brabant. They were formed into a national flag in 1831, clearly on the French model. The standard is composed of equal bars of black, yellow, and red, arranged vertically, the black next the staff. The royal arms — a golden lion on a black shield with the supporters and crown — are charged on the central yellow division. The national ensign is the same flag without the arms. The admiral's flag is also the same, but has four white balls in the upper part of the black stripe. The vice-admiral's has three balls, and the rear-admiral's two. Commodores' pennants are like the ensign, but swallow-tailed.
Greece has adopted the colors of Bavaria, from which she got her first king.
The merchant flag of Greece has a blue union with a white cross cantoned on the ensign, the field of which is white, with five blue bars; that is, it has nine alternate stripes of blue and white.
The man-of-iuar flag has a yellow crown in the centre of the cross. The Alexandros, the first vessel bearing the Greek flag that ever arrived at a port of the United States, entered the port of Boston, Mass., in August, 1835. She was built for a brig of war, but was owned by her commander; and her officers and crew were all Greeks. She was laden with Samos wine, which, from her being a pioneer vessel, was admitted free of duty.
Standard and Flag of the Netherlands. — The national flag is of three equal stripes or bars, red, white, and blue, horizontally arranged, the red in chief, and white in the centre.98
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The standard has the royal achievement of arms charged upon the white, with the motto, “ Je maintiendray." The three colors were given to the Dutch by Henry IV., of Trance, on their requesting him to confer on them the national colors of his country. They have ever since continued the colors of the Dutch Republic, and its successor, the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The admiral's and lieutenant-admiral's flags are the same as the national ensign, but bear in the upper or red stripe four white balls. The flag of the vice-admiral has only three balls, and a rear-admiral but two.
Holland, as an independent State, had no existence till the latter part of the sixteenth century. Before that time, it had followed the fortunes of the Duchy of Burgundy, and had become incorporated in the dominions of the King of Spain, — with them it had the Burgundian flag; and as the different ports were in the habit of using flags of their own, these were rendered illegal by a decree of 1540, and as early as 1475 all ships were ordered “to carry the arms and standards of the Duke,” and again, in 1487, “ to carry the banners and pennons of the admiral, in addition to any other local or special flags.” 1 It is certain, therefore, that from these dates to the outbreak of the War of Independence the Dutch ships carried the Burgundian flag, — the red raguled saltire on a white field; but from the very first discontent the Gueux adopted the colors of the House of Orange, — orange, white, and blue, — which was at first to be worn promiscuously or haphazard, though very shortly, to the cry of f Oranje boven !' — f Up with the orange! ’ They were arranged in horizontal bars, with the orange uppermost; but the number and order of the bars continued a matter of fancy until 1599, when the flag was definitely fixed as orange, white, and blue, in three horizontal stripes, although even then, and for a hundred years afterwards, this was not unfrequently doubled, and contained six stripes, but in the same order; and in the jacks on the bowsprit, or rather at the head of the spritsail-top-mast (jack staff), the three colors in no certain order radiated from the centre. When standing into Gibraltar Bay to annihilate the Spaniards, on the 25th of April, 1607, Heemskirk wore an orange scarf, and in his hat a large orange plume. Fournier, writing in 1643, speaks of the Dutch flag as red, white, and blue; so that possibly the change was natural, from the similarity of colors, and had then well begun. But De Jonge, speaking from much official information, and from old records and contemporary pictures, considers that the change did not
1 J. C. de Jonge : “Over den Oorsprong der Nederlandsche Vlag.” In Rey, vol. ii. p. 512.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
99
begin till 1653, and then very gradually effected between that date and 1665; and that the battles of the first war with England were fought under the orange, and that in the second war the colors were as now, — red, white, and blue; as, indeed, they have continued ever since. During a few years consequent on the French Revolution, the flags of ships of war were distinguished by a white canton charged with a figure of Liberty, armed with pike in hand and lion at feet. This flag was worn by the Dutch ships at Camperdown. In 1806, after a dangerous mutiny, it was considered expedient to restore the old flag; but by some omission the ships of the Texel and Zuyder Zee wore the old flag, whilst the ships of the Zealand squadron wore the new, with Liberty in the canton, — a curious irregularity, which continued until July 17, 1810, when Holland and her flag were suppressed and absorbed into the French Empire.
On the 18th of February, 1653, Van Tromp wore the lion flag at the stern, the orange, white, and blue at the main; De Ruyter, the lion at the stern, the tricolor at the fore, and a white flag at the main; Evert-zen, a blue flag at the main, the national colors at the mizzen, and the States arms at the stern.1
Standard and Flag of Portugal. — On the 25th of July, 1139, Affonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, with thirteen thousand sol-Ejfa	diers, including a band of English and French
knights, on their way to the second crusade defeated a Moorish army, commanded by five kings, and consisting, according to the lowest estimate, of two hundred thousand men. The night before the battle, as the Count was meditating in his tent on the vast superiority of the enemy’s numbers, a hermit entered, and commanded him in God’s name to go forth in the morning when he heard the bells toll for mass,
Old East India Flag of Portugal -i ,.	,	,	< ttti -lti
& and to turn towards the east. He did as told, and within a halo of clouds beheld the image of our crucified Lord, who promised him not only victory but a crown, and a succession of sixteen generations to inherit his sceptre.2
Another version of this legend is that Affonso was much encouraged by opening his Bible at the defeat of the Midianites by Gideon, and that a hermit visited him and promised him a sign of victory.
1	J. K. Laughton’s Heraldry of the Sea, 1879, pp. 20, 22.
2	Camoen’s Poems.100
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Accordingly at daybreak, as the matin bell sounded, there was a luminous cross seen in the sky, such as had been seen by Constantine ; and an assurance given him that he should be a king, and that his children to the sixteenth generation should reign in Portugal. His army did in fact salute him king before the battle; and he rode forward on a white horse, followed by enthusiastic troops, who won a most brilliant victory, and Portugal became a kingdom.1
In commemoration of this victory, Affonso Henriques changed his arms, which he had received from his father, viz. argent, a cross azure, and substituted for them the present arms of Portugal; viz., five shields disposed crosswise on a white shield, in memory of the Lord’s five wounds, each shield charged with five bezants, in commemoration of the five Moorish kings who were slain in the Camp d’Ourique.
This tradition was never questioned until Herculano, giving an
•
account of the battle, endeavored to show the legend was unheard of in the twelfth century, and that the battle was of inferior importance. On the other side, Pereira de Piguerado, in an earlier treatise, disposes, by anticipation, of most of the later historian’s arguments.2
This formed the flag of the early discoverers, — the flag that slowly pushed its route down the coast of Africa, and led the way around the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies. With it, Vasco de Gama also carried the armillary sphere given him specially by King Dom Manoel; and this flag, with the sphere, in gold or red, was long known as the flag of Portugal in the Indies. The present flag, adopted in 1815, is a modification of the old and glorious flag of Prince Henry the Navigator.
The present royal standard of Portugal is a red banner, charged with the royal arms and crown in its centre. The arms are argent, five escutcheons, each charged with as many plates in saltire, arranged in a cross azure; the whole in a border gib, upon which are seven castles or; the outer shield having an or border.
The man-of-war and merchant ensigns are half inhale, blue and white, vertical, the blue next the staff, with the same emblazoned shield as the royal standard, surmounted by a crown, the shield half in the blue and half in the white stripe. A clear and handsome flag.
Sweden and Norway. — The national flag of Sweden is blue with a yellow cross, and that of Norway is red with a blue cross, having
1	Charlotte M. Yonge’s Christians and Moors of Spain.
2	Handbook for Travellers in Portugal. London, 1856.Page 101	PL.nr
STATES
HAMBURG
SAXONY
OLDENBURG
FRANKFURT
BADEN
HANOVER
BAVARIA
MAN OF WAR ENSIGN
MERCHANT FLAGOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
101
a white fimbriation. These two flags are combined to form a united ensign, after the manner of the union jack of Great Britain, and the united flag is cantoned in the national ensigns. The man-of-war flag is swallow-tailed, and that of merchantmen square. The admiral’s flags are the same as the man-of-war flag, only smaller. Commodores’ pennants are triangular.
The royal standard is charged with the royal arms, crown, and supporters.
The prominent part Sweden once played in European history has been brought home by the discovery in the war office at Stockholm of a work prepared by Charles XI., to commemorate her triumphs. This is an illustrated manuscript in twenty volumes, containing upwards of two hundred pages of drawings, with copies of numerous flags and standards captured by the Swedish armies in battle or siege down to the year 1697. Olof Hofman received six hundred and forty rix dollars for its execution. A great part of the original trophies actually exist in the Ritterholm Church, which does duty as the metropolitan cathedral on great occasions. The king ordered an investigation to be made of the vast stores of such relics laid up there, reported to number six thousand, but which were found not to exceed four thousand. Of these, the most remarkable are to be restored, in the same manner that similar neglected relics have been restored in Germany and Switzerland.
The Swedish flag seems to be merely the Danish, with the colors altered, in 1523, when Sweden won her independence. The Norway flag is clearly the Danish flag, with a blue cross superimposed; for, though it is described as blue fimbriated with white, the authorized border is too wide. The Swedish-Norwegian union, in the canton, was devised in 1817, when the two countries were united under one king.
The Standaed and Flags of Geemany. — The most recent flag added to the family of European nations is the black, red, and gold flag of the North German Empire, which is said to have originated in the time of Barbarossa. When that emperor was crowned, a.d. 1152, ruler of Germany, in the Frankfort Cathedral, the way from the Dom to the Romer Palace, where the festivities were held, was laid with a carpet representing the colors black, red, and gold. After the coronation, this carpet was given to the people, and every one tried to cut off a piece, which was carried by them about the city as a flag. In the year 1184, at the Reichstag at Mayence, these were recognized102
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
as the true German colors, and were retained until Napoleon put an end to the empire in 1806. Since that time, the Burschenschaften have kept the old colors in memory. In the revolutionary year, 1848, the German colors were once again brought to light by the National Assembly at Frankfort. There was considerable discussion as to which color had the precedence. f Freilgrath ’ said: “ Powder is black, blood is red, and golden flickers the flame, that is the old imperial standard.’7 Frederic Wilhelm II., however, was the author of the motto bearing the meaning of the German standard, —
u From night, through blood, to light.’7
This flag supersedes and covers not alone the black eagle flag and the standard of Prussia, but the flags of all the lesser states and principalities and free towns which are united under the new German Confederation, viz.: 1, Hamburg; 2, Bremen; 3, Mechlenburg; 4, Saxony ; 5, Hanover; 6, Brunswick; 7, Oldenburg; 8, Lubec; 9, Hesse Cassel; 10,Frankfort; 11, Baden; 12, Bavaria; 13, Nassau; 14, Hesse Darmstadt; and 15, Wurtemberg.
The imperial standard of Germany is orange, charged in each of its four quarters with three black eagles and an imperial crown. The arms of a Maltese cross, silver and black, extend across the entire field of the flag, bearing on its arms the motto, “ Gott mit %ms, 1870,” — Gott in the upper arm, mit on the left hand, uns on the right hand, and 1870 on the lower arm. The centre of the cross bears a golden shield blazoned with the black eagle and the imperial arms.
The man-of-war flag is white, with a black eagle in the centre of a circle, from which are extended the arms of a black cross, bordered first with a narrow white and then a narrow black stripe. In the upper canton next the staff formed by the cross there is a black Maltese cross, edged with white, set in the centre of three horizontal stripes, — black, white, red.
The merchant flag is composed of three horizontal stripes or bars, of equal width, — black, white, red, — the black uppermost. The pilot flag is bordered with a broad band of white.
The Emperor William, in 1873, ordered all the Prussian regiments to state in detail the history of their regimental colors, and to send in carefully prepared drawings and paintings of them, designing a history of all the Prussian colors should be compiled under his own supervision.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
103
FRENCH SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND FLAGS.
The Standards of the Franks and Gauls. — Ancient and Modern French Standards, Banners, and Flags.
The Standards of the Franks and Gauls.The emblems of the barbarian hordes which, rushing upon the Roman Colossus, overrun and subdued Gaul, and established themselves in place of the aboriginal inhabitants, are so numerous and diverse, it is impossible to determine with precision the ensigns of each. To the Franks are ascribed the half-moon, toads, serpents, and the lion; the last is supposed to be the parent of the seventeen Belgic lions. According to many authorities, the Sicambri bore a bull’s head; the Suevi, a bear; the Alani, a cat; the Saxons, a horse; the Cimbri and most of the Celts, a bull. The military ensign of the Goths was a cock.1
The old Swiss cantons of Uri and Yalais, the purest popular government known, have existed for more than a thousand years. Every spring, the little army of Uri, bearing a banner of ‘ the bull’s head,’ marches to a green meadow among the mountains; all the men of lawful age following on foot, the magistrates on horseback, and the chief magistrate wearing a sword. Reaching the meadow, the people gather around the chief ruler; there is a brief pause of silent prayer; and then and there, in the general assembly of the people, the magistrates resign their trusts, the chief magistrate delivers up the sword of his office, leaves the chair, and takes his place with the other citizens. If he has served them well, they bid him take the chair again; for there is no rule that he may not be re-elected.2
French Standards, Banners, and Flags. — To the reign of Louis XIY, the banner of the King of France was blazoned with his own device; thus, Charles IX. had ‘pillars;’ Henry II., ‘a half-moon;’ Henry III., ‘three crowns;’ Henry IY., ‘a Hercules club;’ Philip Augustus chose ‘ a lion; ’ Louis YIII., ‘ a boar; ’ St. Louis, ‘ a dragon; ’ Philip the Bold, ‘an eagle;’ Charles the Fair, ‘a leopard;’ John, ‘ swans; ’ Charles V., ‘ greyhounds and a dolphin ; ’ Charles VII. and VIII., the ‘ winged stag; ’ Louis XII., the gentlest of sovereigns, ‘ a porcupine ; ’ Francis I., ‘ the salamander.’ Our illustration of a conse-scrated banner, presented to Charlemagne by the Pope, is from a mosaic in the Triclinium of San Giovannis de Laterno, built under
1 United Service Journal.	2 G. W. Curtis’s Lecture, October, 1872.104
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Charlemagne by Pope Leo, which has been partially destroyed, and is ill restored. The full mosaic represents St. Peter presenting Leo III. with the insignia of the popedom, and giving the standard of war to Charlemagne, who is represented as kneeling.1
For many centuries it was customary to choose for a military standard the colors of the saint in whose intercession the most confidence was placed. Often being charged with the custody of some relic of the saint, its sanctity was increased.
The ancient kings of France carried St. Martin’s blue hood or cap for their standard for six hundred years. The legend of St. Martin is that he divided his cloak with a naked beggar whom he found perishing with cold at the gate of Amiens. This cloak, miraculously preserved, long formed one of the holiest and most valued relics of France; when war was declared, it was carried before the French monarchs as a sacred banner, and never failed to assure certain victory. The oratory in which this cloak or cape — in French, chape — was preserved, acquired the name ‘ chapelle,’ and the person intrusted with its care was termed chapelain ; and thus, according to Collin de Plancy, our English words ‘ chapel ’ and ‘ chaplain ’ are derived. The canons of St. Martin, of Tours, and St. Gratian had a lawsuit for sixty years about a sleeve of this coat, each claiming it as their property. The Count Larochefocault put an end to the proceedings by sacrilegiously committing the contested relic to the flames.2 St. Martin, the son of heathen parents, was born in Hungary, a.d. 316. He was elected Bishop of Tours, 374, and died a.d. 397 or 400. He was the first saint to whom the Roman Church offered public veneration. St. Martin’s standard was the richest of all the flags borne by the ancient kings of France. It was made of taffeta, and painted with the image of the saint, and was laid upon his tomb for one or more days to prepare it for use.
The counts of Anjou, as grand seneschals of France, were the first flag-bearers of the ensign of St. Martin. Beneton de Peyrins says the cape of St. Martin was kept at Argenteuil, and was carried in a casket which enclosed it; but that the banner of St. Martin was of the form of other banners, resembled the ancient labarum, and was carried by a chosen warrior, and not by a priest.
1 Deodorus’s Christian Iconography.	2 Chambers’s Book of Days.
Banner presented to Charlemagne “by the Pope.OF ANCIENT AND MODEKN NATIONS.
105
St. Martin’s standard was succeeded by the famous Auriflamme, or Oriflamme, of St. Denis, which in turn gave place to the 'Cornette Blanche.’ This sacred banner of Clovis, fabled to have been brought
by an angel to St. Denis, was originally the banner of the Abbey of St. Denis, suspended over the tomb of that saint, and was presented by the lord protector of the convent whenever it	became necessary to
take up	arms for	the preserva-
—Representations of the Banner of St X)enis: No lt the oldest, is from a window in the "f" ~J /\yj r\-f*	-p-j ,-y T~\ 4-q n -p rl YinQQP Q
Cathedral of Chartres; No 3, the latest, is from a Manuscript of Froissart, No 2644, in the
National Library (the original which it represents was carried at the defeat of Artevelde at'	*	T j	n	/»	n •
Bosebecgue) ; No 2. Drawing from the Library of the Celestum. preserved by Montfancon.	SIOUS. J-tj WHS maCle 01 reCl SllK,
with	flames	of	gold	worked	in	gold	thread upon	the silk,	and was fixed
on a	golden	spear,	in	the	form	of	a	banner.	Its end	was cut into
five points, each adorned with a tassel of green silk.
Guillaume Guiart, who wrote in 1306, describes it as “a banner made of silk stronger than guimp of flaring cendal, and that simply without any figure upon it; ” and adds, that he had recently seen it. Later, it was powdered with golden flakes of fire, as represented in the 'Indice Armorial’ of Louvain Geliot, 1635, where it is thus described: —
u L’Oriflambe estoit faite de sendal.
C’est-à-dire de taffetas ou tissu de soye rouge, Aucunefois semée de flammes d’or d’où elle Prenoit de nom de oriflambe.”1
The Orijlamme was red, — for all the banners of the churches dedicated to martyrs were red, — and fringed with green, the one color
indicating suffering, the other hope. The illustration, representing Henry of Metz receiving the Ori-flamme from the hands of St. Denis, is from a painted window in the church of Notre Dame de Chatres. Another account2 says the color of the Oriflamme was purple, azure, and gold; the two colors producing orange were separated in the Oriflamme, but united in its name. The Oriflamme borne at Agincourt was an oblong red flag, split into five points. Sometimes it bore upon it a saltire wavy, from the centre of which golden rays
The Oriflamme.	diverged.^
1	Herald and Genealogist, vol. iff. 1866.
2	Fairholt’s Dictionary of Terms of Art.
3 Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas.106
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The Oriflamme was intrusted by the community of St. Denis to the kings of France, who ranked themselves as vassals of the abbey, as counts of the Vexin.
When the kings of France were threatened with doubtful wars, and obliged to have recourse to the oriflamme, they paid their first devotion in the church of Notre Dame of Paris, then repaired to St. Denis, where, having been solemnly received, they descended, without hood or girdle, with the oriflamme, to the vaults under which rested the relics of the saint, and placed the sacred banner on the altar. In 1382, the remains of St. Louis were placed beside those of St. Denis. The abbot celebrated Mass, and, to heighten the devotion of the king and his standard-bearer the Count du Yexin, admonished him of the request of St. Denis. While the Count was on his knees, bareheaded, and without a girdle, between the king and the abbot, the king received the Oriflamme from the abbot, blessed by his prayers, and delivered it over to the custody of the Count du Yexin.
After the earldom of Du Vexin was joined to the crown, under Louis le Gros, any noble whom the king wished to honor was made its standard-bearer, who kept it unfurled. Sometimes the king placed it around his neck, awaiting the encounter of battle, and when it was unfurled, attached it to the end of a lance. The chosen standard-bearer, before receiving it, confessed, partook of the eucharist, and solemnly vowed to guard it faithfully with his life. The war ended, the Oriflamme was carried back to St. Denis by the king himself.
Louis le Gros was the first king who took the Oriflamme to battle, a.d. 1124,1 and it appeared for the last time at Agincourt, a.d. 1415,2 others say at Monterey, a.d. 1465.
At Bouvines, in 1214, the bine royal flag was carried at the head of the French knighthood, while the red oriflamme was the standard of the commoners.
The Oriflamme was borne against the Flemings in the battle of Rosbecq, 1382, in which Philip van Arteveldt was slain. Says Froissart: “ It was a most excellent banner, and had been sent from heaven with great mystery. It is a sort of gonfanon, and is of much oomfort in the day of battle to those who see it. Proof was made of its virtues at this time; for all the morning there was so thick a fog that with difficulty could they see each other, but the moment the knight had 'displayed it, and raised his lance in the air, the fog instantly disappeared/’ (See illustration of it, p. 105.)
1 Henault.
2 Du Tillet.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
107
In an inventory of the treasury of the church of St. Denis, taken in 1534, the Oriflamme is described as " a standard of very thick silk, divided in the middle like a gonfanon, very frail, fastened around a stick covered with gilded copper, and a long pointed spear at the end.”
This banner of St. Denis was said to have been destroyed when the tombs of the kings of France in the abbey were desecrated and despoiled, at the time of the first French revolution; but a writer in 1867 asserts that it “ is still suspended from an eminence at the eastern extremity of the venerable abbey church of St. Denis, beyond the high altar.” The monks of old were in the habit of assuring the people that this banner was brought to the abbey by an angel, at the time of the conversion to Christianity of old King Clovis; and tradition assigns an age of thirteen hundred and eighty years to this silken remnant of monastic superstition and imposition.
The cornette blanche, a plain white banner, emblematic of the purity of the Virgin Mary, succeeded the oriflamme in the fifteenth century.
The fleur-de-lis, with which it was subsequently powdered, are supposed to represent the flower of the lily, and may be a rebus
signifying the flower of Louis. Mr. Planche says that Clovis is the Frankish form of the modern Louis, the C being dropped, as in Clothaire, which is now written Lothaire, and Clovis may have assumed the fleur-de-lis as his rebus, from his favorite clove-pink or gillyflower.
Ancient heralds tell us that the Franks had a custom, at the proclamation of their king, to elevate him upon a shield or target, and place in his hand a reed or flag in blossom, instead of a sceptre; and from thence “ the kings of the first and second race in France are represented with sceptres in their hands, like the flag with its flower, and which flowers became the armorial figures of France.”
The Bourbon Royal Standard
Respecting this device there are many legendary tales: — that a banner, embroidered with golden fleur-de-lis, came down from heaven; that St. Denis personally bestowed the lily as an heraldic device upon the royal family of France; that a banner semee of fleur-de-lis was brought by an angel to King Clovis after his baptism; and that such a banner was delivered by an angel to Charlemagne. Such are some108
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
of the tales accounting for the origin of the fleur-de-lis as the device of the French royal family, from the time of Clovis to Charles X.1
The fleur-de-lis was first borne on a royal seal by Louis VII., a.d. 1137-80. Edward III. was the first English monarch who quartered the French fleurs-de-lis on the Great Seal of that kingdom, a.d. 1340, and they were not removed from the English shield until 1801.2
Under Philip Augustus, the French banner was white, and semee-de-lis, that is, strewn with golden lilies; hut from the time of Charles VI., a.d. 1380, it invariably consisted of three golden fleurs-de-lis on a blue field, with a white cross in the middle.3
It is singular that the old English name for the iris, or fleur-de-lis, is ' flag.5 Does the flower derive its name from the standard, or vice versa ? The lily is an old device, and forms one of the most frequent decorations of Solomon’s Temple, the Hebrew word fsusa’ or ‘susiana’ being the same. The word c shushan ’ stands for six,‘ the perfect number/ in Hebrew. Two interlaced fleurs-de-lis make the lily, each having three prominent leaves, or both together, the perfect number. The name of ‘ susa ’ and its changes are derived from the Hebrew for a lily.
At the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims, the Oriflamme was the only royal banner. The white flag was the personal banner of Jeanne d’Arc.
A French national flag is a modern idea. Under the feudal system, every lord had his own personal coat of arms.
Sieur de Aubigny, marshal of France, one of the most experienced commanders in the service of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., as a relative of James IV., bore the red lion of Scotland on a field argent, which he caused to be ' semee of buckles/ signifying that he was the means of holding united the kings of Scotland and France against England, with the motto, “Distantici jungit” — “It unites the distant.”
Charles III., seventh Duke of Bourbon, the celebrated constable, had displayed near his tomb at Gaeta his great standard of yellow silk embroidered with flying stags and naked flaming swords, with the word ‘ esperance? in several places ; meaning, he hoped to revenge himself by fire and sword upon his enemies.
The banner of Robert de la Mark, the Great Boar of Ardennes, had a figure of St. Margaret with a dragon at her feet.4
1	Newton’s Heraldry.
2	Fairholt’s Dictionary ; Recherches sur l’Origine du Blason et en particulier sur la Fleur-de-lis, par M. Adalbert de Beaumont, avec xxii Planches gravees. Paris, 1853.
3	Fairholt’s Dictionary.
4	Mrs. Bury Palliser’s Historic Devices, Badges, and War Cries. London, 1870.OP ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
109
A French military author, who served and wrote in the time of Charles XIV., intending to express the importance of preserving the colors to the last, observed that, on a defeat taking place, the flag should serve the ensign as a shroud; and instances have occurred of a standard-bearer, who, when mortally wounded, tore the flag from its staff, and died with it wrapped around his body. Such a circumstance is related of Don Sebastian, king of Portugal, at the battle of Alcaza, and of a young officer named Chatelier, at the taking of Taillebourg, during the wars of the Huguenots. It also had a parallel during our civil war.
After the establishment of a permanent militia, every regiment carried the color of its colonel; and down to 1789 many of them had preserved their own particular banners. The white being the royal color, however, superseded them all, from the fact that, when Louis XIV. suppressed the functions of colonel-generals, whose distinctive sign1 was a white standard, such a standard was retained as an emblem of command; hence it became a sign of the regal power, and displaced all others. The royal flag was, in reality, the national flag of the eighteenth century.
As late as 1543, there is a royal order for “all ships in the service of the king to carry the banners or ensigns of the admiral of France/5 2 Annebault, who was admiral of France from 1543 to 1552, commanded the fleet which invaded the Channel in 1545, and his arms, gules a cross vair, were probably worn by French ships. It is probable that with these were worn the blue flag with the white cross, and others, provincial and local. There is, notwithstanding all that has been written, no trace of the white flag as a national ensign before the time of Henry IV., though it is undoubtedly true a white flag was borne by Joan of Arc, with a picture of the crucifixion. The Catholic army wore first red, then green, the color of Lorraine, and after the murder of the Duke and Cardinal of Guise, black, until the death of Henry III., when they resumed the green. But the Protestants, from 1562, wore white, as an emblem of their superior purity, which they continued when Henry III. joined them, when it became royal. The principal standard of the League, captured at Ivry, 1590, was black charged with a crucifix, and the device, “ Auspice Christo;55 but it had green tassels. The royal flag was blue, with golden lilies, though white was the party color. Everybody knows that the king —
u Bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest;77
1 Dependens.
2 De Bouille, Les Drapeaux Français, p. 221.	1875.110
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
and also that he cautioned his followers, —
u And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well lie may,
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,
Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,
And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.”
The wars of the League and the battle of Ivry were not naval, but they mark the introduction of the white flag, which became from that time royal and national, and supplanted the provincial and town flags, though the old blue flag continued to be worn by merchant ships.
M. dTnfreville, Intendant of Toulon, in 1665 wrote: “ The Saint Philippe is so richly gilt, that, to be in keeping with such splendor, she ought to have a new flag of crimson damask, bearing the arms of France, and powdered with fleurs-de-lis, and crowned L L’s in embroidery. The old one, which was made at Paris for the Archbishop of Bordeaux, twenty-eight years ago, at a cost of 12,000 livres, is torn awTay to half its size, and is quite a rag.”1
In 1669, an order wTas given reducing the chaos of flags to something like regularity. On the 6th of November of that year, it was decreed that “ the ensigns at the stern are to be blue, powdered with yellow fleur-de-lis, with a large white cross in the middle, without distinction of peace or war, voyage or battle. Merchant ships may wear the same ensign as our ships of war, with the escutcheon of their province or town in one of the corners. The pavesades are to be blue, powdered with yellow fleur-de-lis, bordered with two broad white bands.”
On the 3d of December, by a new order, “ the ensigns of the stern are to be in all cases white.” Merchant ships the same, with the escutcheon as before.2
Thus, under the wffiite flag the French squadron served in the allied fleet in 1672-73, and all the naval battles for more than a century. All through the eighteenth century the three squadrons of the French line of battle were distinguished, — the centre by a white flag at the main, the van by a blue and white* flag horizontally divided at the fore, and the rear by a blue flag at the mizzen. Occasionally these three flags were worn at the main, subordinate officers wearing their flags at the appropriate mast; there being also a particular instruction which provided, “ If the commanders of divisions are not
1	Abraham chi Quesne et la Marine de son Temps, par A. Jal, tom. i. p. 350.
2	Du Quesne, par A. Jal, tom. i. p. 588.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
Ill
general officers, they may carry for distinction a swallow-tailed flag of the color of the squadron, longer and narrower than a flag of command, but shorter and broader than a pennant/’1
After the battle off Ushant, M. d’Orvilliers reported that the flag of the blue division worn on that occasion caused mistake and confusion, in consequence of two out of the three British admirals wearing blue flags and ensigns. It was therefore modified by the réintroduction of the old white cross, which was worn during all the subsequent events of that war, and especially in the West Indies against Rodney.2
In the navy, both blue and red were originally hoisted, then blue alone. Louis XYI. reserved the white flag for his ships of war, allowing merchant vessels to employ it, coupled with some distinctive badge. In the eighteenth century, merchant vessels wore the white flag, and also a blue flag with a white cross. The galleys flew a red flag.3
The flag of the French admiral, the Duc de Penthièvre, was the red flag of the galleys semée of fleur-de-lis, with a blue shield in the centre of its field, surmounted by a ducal crown, and blazoned with three golden fleurs-de-lis, — two and one, — the shield supported by two crossed anchors.4
With the revolution, the spirit of change seized on the flag as on every thing else. The National Assembly, Oct. 24,1790, decreed that the tricolor should be adopted by the navy, thus : —
“ The flag on the bowsprit (jack) shall be composed of three equal bands placed vertically ; that next the staff shall be red, the middle white, and the third blue.
“ The flag at the stern shall carry in its upper quarter the jack above described ; this shall be exactly one-fourth of the flag, and shall be surrounded by a narrow band, the half of which shall be red and the other blue ; the rest of the flag shall be white. This shall be the same for men-of-war and for merchant ships.
“The flags of command shall carry in their upper quarters the three vertical bands, — red, white, blue ; but the rest of the flag shall be, as heretofore [a curious mistake], red, white, and blue ; the National Assembly having no desire to change in any way those dispositions which have been made to distinguish the three squadrons of the fleet.”
1	Tactique Navale, par Le Vicomte Moroques, p. 107.
2	Rey, Histoire du Drapeau, tom. ii. p. 578.
3	M. Desjardins, Recherches sur les Drapeaux Français. Paris, 1874.
4	La Croix’s Middle Ages.112
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
On the 15th of February, 1794, the convention abolished this hag, as savoring of royal tendencies, and decreed: —
“ The flag prescribed by the National Assembly is abolished.
“ The national flag shall be formed of the three national colors in equal bands, placed vertically, — the hoist being blue, the centre white, and the fly red.”
Such has been the French tricolor ever since, and the French national flag, except during the reign of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., when the white Bourbon flag and standard were resumed. In the picture by Loutherbourg, in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, the French ships in Lord Howe’s action of the 1st of June, 1794, are represented as wearing the ensign suppressed on the 15th of February preceding, — either a mistake of the artist, or it may be that the fleet sailed from Brest before new flags could be made for it, and therefore fought under that flag.
In 1814, on the return of the king, and again in 1815, as we have said, the tricolor was replaced by the white flag, which continued until the abdication of Charles X., in 1830, when the tricolor was restored. In 1848, March 5, the Provincial Government, on the flight of Louis Philippe, ordered the colors to be blue, red, and white, — the blue at the staff and white at the fly; but two days later, the opposition to it was so strong that the order was cancelled.1 There is no flag on the ocean so easily distinguished or more beautiful than the French tricolor.
The golden eagle of Napoleon, on an azure field, surrounded by a swarm of golden bees, succeeded the white standard and golden fleur-de-lis, which for so many centuries were identified with the heraldry and standards of France.2 The first and second republics had no standard. One of the principal standards borne by the insurgents, June 20, 1792, was a pair of black breeches, with the inscription, “ Tremblez, tyrans ! void les sans-culottes.” The standard and arms of the second empire were the same as those of the first.
The flag of Elba, presented by Napoleon to the National Guard of Elba, 1814, and used by him on his return to France the following year, is on exhibition in the collection of Madame Tussaud & Sons, London. It is composed of tricolored silk, and the whole of the ornaments are elaborately embroidered in silver. The reverse side has exactly the same ornaments, with the inscription, ‘ Champs de
1	The notes respecting the French naval flags have been compiled principally from Laughton’s Heraldry of the Sea, 1879.
2	Boutell’s Heraldry, Historical and Popular.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
113
Mai/ where it was presented by the Emperor to his gnards, before they marched for Waterloo, when it was taken by the Prussians, and sold by them to an English gentleman, who brought it to England.1
Pietro Alessandro Garda, the man who, when Napoleon returned from Elba, hoisted the tricolored flag on the Tuileries while the palace was still occupied by the Royal Guards, died at Turin, Jan. 11, 1880. He was, after the return from Elba, attached to Napoleon’s staff, and fought at Waterloo. Since then he has been director of an English mining company in Peru, a volunteer with his friend Garibaldi, and a gentleman of leisure, living quietly in his own chateau.
The standard of the first regiment of the old Imperial Guard, which Napoleon embraced at Fontainebleau in 1814, on taking leave of the army, was preserved by General Petit, and presented to King Louis Philippe. It is deposited at the Invalides with the sword of Austerlitz, presented by General Bertrand. The colors are much faded by time and service, and are inscribed, “ Garde impériale VEmpereur Napoléon au premier régiment cle Grenadiers à pied, vieille Garde ; ” on the reverse side is, “ Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Wagram, Moskwa, Vienne, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow.”
The French tricolor is supposed to be a union of the blue banner of St. Martin, the red banner of St. Denis, and the f cornette blanche,’ there being evidence that those colors have been regarded as the national emblem for centuries. Yet the choice of the tricolor as the emblem of liberty at the time of the Revolution was purely accidental. Blue and red, the ancient colors of the city of Paris, were at first assumed, and the citizens mounted guard in a blue and red cockade ; but the National Guard, which was not unfriendly to the throne, admitted the white of the Bourbon standard, and thus reproduced the tricolor as the standard of the French nation.
A correspondent2 of London ‘ Notes and Queries,’ which has several communications on the origin of the French tricolor, says : “ In 1789, after the defection of the French guards, it was determined to raise a city guard of forty thousand men, each district to contribute a battalion of eight hundred men. The name of the guard was the ‘ Parisian Militia ; ’ their colors the blue and red of the city, mixed with the white of their friends. This Parisian militia became the National
1	Madame Tussaud’s Catalogue.
2	Andrew Steinmetz, vol. vi., 2d series, p. 164.
8114
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Guard, and their colors the tricolor, from the union or fraternization.” Another correspondent says : “ In or about 1356, during the captivity of John of France in the Tower of London, and the regency of the Dauphin Charles, the states-general of Paris effected great changes in the mode of government. Paris became, in fact, republic, and the municipality governed the estates, and, in truth, all Prance. At this time it was decided that the city of Paris should have colors of its own, and under the authority of Etienne Marcel a flag was selected, half blue and half red, with an agrafe of silver, and the motto,' A lonne Jin! Shortly after, when Etienne Marcel was murdered with sixty of his followers, the colors of the city were suppressed, and remained in obscurity until 1789. Upon the accession of Charles V., he erected the Bastile St. Antoine on the very spot where Étienne Marcel had been slain, as a monument of defiance on the part of the crowm against the capital, which remained for centuries a state prison, and symbol of despotism. By a singular coincidence, the Bastile was destroyed on the anniversary of the day upon which the ancient colors of Paris — the colors of Étienne Marcel — became victorious over royalty. On that day, July 14, 1789, Lafayette restored the colors of the city to the people, adding thereto the royal emblem, white, and thus composed that tricolor which, according to Lafayette’s prophetic words, ' Devait faire le tour du monde!
" At first, the French revolutionists adopted a green cockade, which was quickly discarded, when it was remembered that it was the livery of the Counts d’Artois, the most detested of the royal family. On the night of the 11th of July, after the dismissal of Necker, at the first meeting of the populace in the Palais Royal, they were harangued by Camille Desmoulins, who told them 'there w^as no resource but to fly to arms, and take a cockade by which to recognize each other.’ He was rapturously applauded, and, snatching a poplar leaf from the garden of the Palais Royal, he held it up before the excited crowd, and exclaimed, ' What colors will you have ? Cry out ! choose ! Will you have green, the color of hope ? or the blue of Cincinnatus, the color of liberty, of America, and of democracy ? ’ The people cried, ' The green, the color of hope ! ’1
Still another correspondent of 'Notes and Queries’ says, "The tradition in France concerning the adoption of the tricolor is that it was originally the field of the arms of the Orleans family, which was made up in fact of the red of the ancient oriflamme, which was gules, semée of lys, or ; of the arms of Yalois, azure, semée in like manner ;
i H. F. H.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
115
and of Bourbon, argent, semée of the same. As the Orleans claimed descent from all thrée branches, they took for the field of their escutcheon their three tinctures, and blazoned them, 'tierce in pale azure, argent, and gules, semée of fleur-de-lis or! The tradition is, when Philip of Orleans threw himself into the arms of the republicans, and called himself L’Égalité, he caused the fleur-de-lis to be erased from the escutcheons which were stuck up in the Palais Royal. The field being left, it was identified with his name, and by degrees became the republican flag.”1
The tricolor did not at once replace other emblematic signs. Only a few of the ninety battalions of the Parisian militia which took part in the fête of the Confederation combined the three colors, and not one of them was designed according to the present fashion. The famous flag of the Twelfth Brigade, which General Bonaparte led across the bridge of Arcole, was not a tricolor, and the flag of the Fifth Half Brigade, carried by Augereau, had republican ornaments on a white ground.
The imperial standard of Napoleon I. was the tricolor, semée of golden bees, and charged with the eagle of the empire upon the central division of the white field.
In the guard-chamber of Windsor Castle, England, suspended over the marble busts of the Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, hang two little French flags of peculiar significance. The one a white flag of the Bourbons, spotted with fleur-de-lis ; the other, the tricolor. These flags are presented annually, by the Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, to the reigning sovereign of Great Britain on the anniversaries of the battles of Blenheim and Waterloo, and are the tenure of service by which the noble dukes hold the estates of Blenheim and Stratfieldsaye, settled on them by Parliament. The banner rendered by the Duke of Marlborough was formerly suspended in Queen Anne’s closet at Windsor, where she first received intelligence of the victory of Blenheim.2
When King William IV. was on his death-bed, and awoke on June 18, he remembered it was the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, and expressed a pathetic wish to live over that day, even if he were never to see another sunset. Calling for the flag which the Duke of Wellington always sent him on that anniversary, he laid his hand upon the eagle which adorned it, and said he felt revived by the touch.
The flags and standards taken in battle, which were removed from
1 A. A.
2 Guide to Windsor.116
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
the Hotel des Invalides on the approach of the Prussian army in 1870, and placed in safety at Brest, were in 1871 restored to their old places about the tomb of Napoleon I., or in the chapel. Their number is but small, for in 1814 the governor of Les Invalides ordered the whole collection to be burnt, to save it from the enemy. At that time, the chapel alone contained sixteen hundred of these trophies of the triumphs of Napoleon I!
On the night of the 30th of March, 1814, all the banners which hung under the dome of the Invalides were taken down, and formed into a pile in the court-yard; the banners with their lances, surmounted by Russian, Prussian, and Austrian eagles. Upon them were thrown other trophies, such as the sword and regal insignia of Frederick the Great. The ashes of this pile were swept up and thrown into the Seine. The next day, after the entry of the allies, a Russian officer came to seek the banners, and General Darmaud showed him where they had been, and told him they had been burnt the night previous.1 2 It has been said that the ashes of these trophies were thrown into a cask of wine, and that the veterans drank the mixture to the health of the Emperor; and that the sword of Frederick the Great was concealed in the cupola of the Invalides, and is now in the possession of a private gentleman.
In 1829, an American ship entering the port of Havre with a tricolored flag at her masthead was ordered to take it down. The three colors were not to be displayed in a French port, even as a signal flag.3
In 1830, the United States government was officially notified "that the tricolored flag has been ordered to be hoisted on all French ships of war as well as commerce; ” and in a circular letter dated “ Navy Department, Oct. 22, 1830,” United States navy officers were ordered “ to recognize the same as the flag of the French nation, and respect it accordingly.” From that time to the present (1880) — through the reign of Louis Philippe, King of the French, the second republic, the second empire, and now the third republic — the tricolor has continued to be the national ensign of France.
The eagles introduced into the French armies as regimental standards by Napoleon the Great, and which were revived by Napoleon III., were wrought from pure gold, and had an intrinsic value of about two thousand dollars. The ribbon attached to them was of silk, five
1	London Times and New York Tribune, July, 1871.
2	Independence Beige, 1872.
3	Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, August, 1829.OP ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
117
A French Eagle.
inches broad, three feet long, and richly embroidered. During the
war of 1870, it was a prize much coveted by the soldiers of King William’s army, who, it is claimed, captured nearly two hundred of them in the successive disastrous defeats of the French.
After that war, the regiments contented themselves with provisional flags. On the 2d of June, 1871, the war minister ordered the standards then in use to be handed over to the artillery, which was to destroy the silk of the old flags, and send the eagles and gold fringe to the domain office. In exchange, small flags without inscriptions were served out provisionally. In 1876, the army owned only a few Napoleonic eagles, with the ‘ N ’ cut out, and some common woollen flags. In that year, by a decree of President McMahon, all of the infantry and cavalry regiments received white, blue, and red silk standards, in the centre of which, surrounded by a cornette of laurel and oak leaves, was embroidered the once celebrated ‘E. F.’ (Eépublique Française). The streamers bore the name of the regiment, division, and army corps, and number, also the device, “ Honneur et patrie”
In June, 1878, the minister of war ordered for the colors of the infantry, and standards of the cavalry and artillery, of the French army, a blue staff, surmounted by a small rectangular block, like the pedestal for the Eoman eagle, bearing on one face the number and designation of the regiment, and on the other the letters fE, F.’ In place of the imperial eagle a gilt laurel wreath surmounts this, traversed by a golden dart. The flag is of silk, with a fringe of Head of a French gold. The colors were presented in September, 1878, standaid, 1878. a great national festival, to the troops composing
the garrison of Paris, and to delegates from the territorial forces.118 THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
THE HOYSIi .SUM'S OF EWGLAKD.
1066 to 1880.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.	119
BRITISH SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND FLAGS.
The Standards and Banners of Ancient Britain, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Great Britain, from the Roman Conquest, AND UNDER THE SAXONS, DANES, AND NORMANS, TO THE
Reign of Queen Victoria.
Julius Caesar, having, B.c. 55, conquered the southeast of Britain, sent to the Roman senate the standards of seven British kings. From Latin records, traditions, and ancient pictures it is ascertained that the allied petty kings fought under ensigns exhibiting the figures of animals abounding in their provinces. The ram, ewe, hind, and grouse, which abounded in the southeast of the island, were the typical signs on the standards of that region. The stag, goat, cormorant, and the golden eagle of the mountains of Cambria, represented the southwest. The wTolf, beaver, and black eagle were the characteristics of the northeastern provinces. The wild boar, bear, vulture, and raven were the symbolic tokens of the woody countries of the northwest. These badges were represented on targets and quivers, made of osier twigs covered with white leather, and were hoisted as ensigns. Such were the primitive standards of the ancient Britons.
Cacibelan, King of Colchester, b.c. 54, being vanquished by Caesar, became tributary to Rome, and presented Caesar with a brigandine, or royal coat of arms, ornamented with pearls of the country, which was sent to Rome and consecrated to Venus. That war-dress, imitated from the Oriental coat of mail, with scales, exhibited shells and fishes, a brigantine, a boat, and a beaver, emblems of the Brigantes, who also depicted a bear on their targets. The British pennons, banners, and flags of this time were of woollen cloth or white leather. Emblems were also engraven on iron arms and wuoden weapons, as clubs and staves. These last have been the type of a staff' or mace bearing the royal arms, which is still carried by British peace-officers.
A Roman prefect governed London, a.d. 44, assisted by a prsetor or judge. These magistrates had over their Arms of Loudon, tribunal or judgment-seat a Phrygian cap, bearing the monogram, S. P. Q. R.; the staff which supported the cap was blue, the color of the Roman people and army, and purple, representing the Roman senate and nobility; these colors were dis-120
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
posed like two twisted ribbons. By putting on the ‘ liberty cap/ the prefect was empowered to free any slave. The ‘ sword of mercy ’ and club of Hercules also figured in the armorial bearings of the city under the Roman prefects.
The Emperor Trajan, waging war in Gurgistan, a.d. 98 to 117, captured a standard exhibiting a dragon struck down by a horseman. He adopted it as his ensign, and had it hoisted in all the provinces of his empire. The Georgian chevalier trampling on the dragon was hence borne on the ensign and on the breastplates of the Roman officers, and waved on citadels and towns all over Britain. The Emperor Yalentinian III., A.D. 426-440, having recalled his legions from the south of Britain to resist an invasion of barbarians, the Saxons raided upon the southern coasts, and the forlorn Britains armed in self-defence, and hoisted the standard of Trajan, which they consecrated to Albion, the first patronal god of the isle. Thence Albion was depicted as a chevalier on a white horse, trampling on the dragon; and many cities adopted that badge as an emblem for their fortified gates.
The Hibernian or Irish harp was adopted by Constance Chlorus on his return from the conquest of Hibernia, a.d. 301.
The evacuation of the Romans was followed by the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons and Jutlanders, a.d. 449, under Hengist, whose brother Horsa was killed on the field of battle. Horsa had adopted for his ensign the war-horse of Odin, the northern god of war; and Hengist set up the ambling horse of Odin as his standard over a newly conquered city, which received the name of Canterbury, and became the capital of the kingdom of Kent, of which Hengist was the first king. The horse rampant, an attitude known as the f canter/ or ‘ Canterbury gallop/ has been ever since the ensign of the county of Kent.
The city of Glastonbury, a.d. 408-510, bore the standard of the Roman dragon, of a red color, allusive to Tor, the god of fire.1
In the Anglo-Saxon poem of ‘Boewulf/ supposed to have been written in the tenth century, we read, “ Then to Beowulf he gave a golden banner/’ St. Oswald, who fell fighting in defence of Christianity against Penda, Lincolnshire, was buried at Bardney Abbey, a.d. 642, gorgeously enshrined, with a banner of gold and purple, paly or, bendy, suspended over his remains. The Piets regarded with reverence the banner called Brechannoch, from its association with St. Columb, their spiritual father. The keeper of this sacred relic had lands assigned him for its custody.
1 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
121
Ossian mentions the standard of the kings and chiefs of clans, and says that the king’s was blue, studded with gold, and having on it a white horse. The Anglo-Saxon ensign was very grand: it had on it a white horse, as the Danish was distinguished by a raven. William the Conqueror sent Harold’s standard, captured at the battle of Hastings, which bore the device of a dragon, to the Pope. His own standard was sumptuously embroidered with gold and precious stones, in the form of a man fighting. When he sailed “for England, the white banner, consecrated by Pope Alexander II. expressly for the occasion, was hoisted at the masthead of the ship on which he was embarked. The device assigned Arthur, the mythic king of Britain in the sixth century, is azure, — three crowns proper, — and over this the motto, "Trois en un! King Arthur’s shield forms the centre of the star of the Bath.
Arthgal, the first Earl of Warwick, is said to have been one of the knights of the Round Table. "Arth,’ or "Narth,’ signifies a bear, and one of his descendants is said to have slain a giant who encountered him, with a tree torn up by the roots; hence the cognizance of the "bear and ragged staff,’ which is at least as old as the fifteenth century. The House of Orleans and Dukes of Burgundy bore the same device.
A particular account of the standards of the successive rulers of Britain may be found in Sir Winston Churchill’s curious work, " Divi Brittanici,’ also in Brunet’s " Regal Armorie of Great Britain.’
The origin of the standard of the three saxes or swords of Essex, A.D. 530, is thus explained: The Roman Empire was invaded
in the second century by a tribe of Goths wearing a crooked sabre called " saex,’ from which the tribe derived the name of " Saxons.’ These Saxons conquered that part of Germany washed by the Elbe, which they named " Saxony.’ Then, uniting with the Jutes and Angles, they became powerful pirates or The Three Saxes or Swords of Essex. sea-kings, and conquered three cantons-
in Britain, which they erected into kingdoms, named " South-Sax,’ "East-Sax/ and "West-Sax,’ — that is to say, the Saxons of the south,, east, and west, — whose contractions are Sussex, Essex, and Wessex. The chiefs or kings of these cantons having formed an alliance, hoisted a standard bearing three saxes or swords as an emblem of their triple* union and common origin. The three swords of the Saxon standard122
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
were damascened with Gothic hieroglyphics, and their type has been preserved in the armorial bearings of Essex.
Edilfrid, a.d. 592-616, a Saxon king of Bernicia, in the north of Northumberland, had a standard called the 'tufa/ which exhibited a bear, a Roman emblem of the polestar and the ancient ensign of Warwick, the capital of Bernicia. The bear was also the device on the streamer of Bangor, in Wales.1
The Anglo-Saxons" established eight kingdoms in Britain, but Edwin, the successor of Edilfrid, united the kingdoms of Bernicia and Decia, by the name of the kingdom of Northumberland, and assumed the title of Bretwalda, or ruler of Britain, as presiding at the Witen-agemote, or parliament of the heptarchy. The standard of the Bretwalda was a bear, which was stamped on a coin that had currency all over Britain.1 He was the first Christian king of Northumberland, and, falling in battle, a.d. Oct. 12, 633, was canonized, and became St. Edwin. Not only in war was his standards (i¿exilia) borne before him, but in peace he was preceded by his ‘ signifier,’ and also when he walked the streets had a standard borne before him which the Romans called ‘tufa,’ and the Angles, ‘turef,’ being a tuft of feathers affixed to a spear.2
A great battle was fought, A.D. 742, at Burford, in Oxfordshire, when the golden dragon, the standard of Wessex, was victorious over Ethelbald, the King of Mercia.
Egbert (a.d. 827-837), King of Wessex, who dissolved the heptarchy and temporarily united the seven kingdoms in one, assumed the title of ‘ King of the Anglo-Saxons,’ and spread the red dragon of Wessex as the national standard throughout his whole dominion. This reputed standard of King Arthur, as dear to the Anglo-Saxons as to the Britons, became the standard of Winchester, the capital of Egbert’s kingdom.
Among the Saxon kings of England there were two who were reputed saints : Edmund the Martyr, a.d. 975, and Edward the Confessor, a.d. 1042; and these, with St. George, are the three patron saints of England. The banners of these saints accompanied the English army, and waved over the fields where the Edwards and Henrys fought.
St. Edmund’s banner is considered to have been azure, three crowns or, two and one, the same as the badge assigned Arthur; but, from the description by Lydgate, two banners were appropriated to him, of which drawings are given in that writer’s work, — one of them that mentioned above.
1 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.
2 Stevenson’s Notes.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
123
u Over lie [the king], seyde Lady Hevene Quene,
Myn own baner, with here shall be.”
11 This other standard, feeld stable off colour yude,
In which off Gold been notable crownys thre,
The first tokne in cronycle men may fynde G-raunted to hym for Royal dignyte,
And the second for virgynyte;
For martirdam, the thrydde in his suffryng To these annexyd ffeyth, hope, and charyte,
In tokne he was martyr mayde and kyng.
These thre crownys Kyng Edmund bar certeyn,
Whan he was sent be grace off G-oddis hond At Geynesburnh for to slen Kyng Sweyn.”
u By which myracle men may understond Delyvered was from trybut all thys lond Mawgre Danys in full notable wyse;
For the hooly martyr dissolvyd hath that bond,
Set this Region ageyn in his franchise.”
u These thre crownys history aly t’ aplye. Applicaeio By pronostyk nobally sovereyne To sixte Herry in fygur signefye How he is born to worthy crownys tweyne,
Off France and England, lynealy t? atteyne In this lyff heer, afterward in hevene The thrydde crowne to receyve in certeyne For his merits above the sterry swene.”
The other represented Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the serpent tempting her.
“ The feeld powdered with many hevenly sterre
And halff cressantis off gold ful bright and cleer;
And when that evere he journeyde nyli or ferre,
Ny in the feeld, with hym was this baneer.”
u This hooly standard hath power and vertu To stanche fyres and stoppe fiawmys rede By myracle, and who that kan take heede God grantyd it hym for a prerogatyff.”
u This vertuous baner shal kepen and conserve This lond from enmyes dante ther cruel pryde Off syxte Herry, the noblesse to preserve It shall be borne in werrys by his syde.” 1
1 Retrospective Review, 2d series, vol. i.124
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
The banners of St. Edmund or St. Edward do not occur in any of the illuminations of the chronicles or other manuscripts in the British Museum; and the only proof of their being used so late as the reign of Henry V., other than the allusion to the banner of St. Edmund, by Lydgate, who wrote in the reigns of Henry Y. and VI., are the statements of contemporary chroniclers. Le Eevre, Seigneur de St. Henry, in his account of the battle of Agincourt, informs us that Henry had five banners; viz., the banner of the Trinity, the banner of St. George, the banner of St. Edward, and the banner of his own arms. This list enumerates but four, the fifth was probably one of the banners of St. Edmund. The banner of the Trinity, we infer from a painting .of the arms of the Trinity in Canterbury Cathedral, was “ Gules an orle and pale, argent, inscribed with the Trinity in Unity.” Lydgate says the fifth banner alluded to by St. Remy was that of the Virgin Mary. After enumerating the banners of St. George, the Trinity, and St. Edward, he adds: “ The device on the banner of St. Edward the Confessor was, without doubt, the cross and martlets, as they are carved in stone in Westminster Abbey, where he is buried, and which Richard II. impaled with his own, as may be seen by the banner of that king on the monumental brass of Sir Simon de Eelkrig, his standard-bearer, at Felkrig, in Norfolk.” 1 Arms were invented for Edward the Confessor in the time of Edward I. The Anglo-Norman heralds were probably guided in their choice by a coin of that monarch, upon the reverse of which appears a plain cross with four birds, one in each angle. The arms as then blazoned are azure, a cross flory, between five martlets or, and formed the standard of St. Edward as usually displayed by the English monarchs down to the fifteenth century.2
The Danes, a.d. 1000, under the command of Sweyn, conquered England, and unfurled their standard of the raven. A black raven was exhibited on the royal shield and banner on a silver ground.
Canute, King of England and Denmark, having conquered Norway, hoisted the Norwegian lion, — a golden lion rampant, with a battle-axe, represented on an azure shield, strewn with red hearts, and bearing the three crowns of England, Denmark, and Norway.
Edward the Confessor, on his accession, a.d. 1040, changed the royal seal bearing a black raven to a white falcon. The king kept a tame falcon, which was represented on his sceptre, and has since been converted into a dove.
The ensign of Rolla, the first Duke of Normandy, bore a leopard,
1 Boutell’s Heraldry.	2 Retrospective Review, 2d series, vol. i.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
125
the emblem of the Northmen. When Maine was annexed to Normandy, a second leopard was added to the Norman standard, and unfurled at Mans, the capital of Maine. William the Conqueror, in 1066, introduced the two leopards as the royal standard of Britain; his personal standard represented a man fighting. The dragon, the standard of the West Saxons, was Harold’s standard at Hastings; a winged dragon on a pole is constantly represented near his person on the Bayeux tapestry. And Bichard I. (Cceur de Lion), in 1190, seeing that no Western nation had adopted the legend and name of St. George and the dragon, selected it as the type of his intended exploits, and on his return from the crusade, 1223, instituted the festival of St. George. Henry III, 1264, at the battle of Lewes, and Edward I., in Wales, fought under the dragon. It w7as borne in the battle between Canute and Edmund Ironsides, 1016. Edward III., also, at the battle of Cressy, 1346, had a standard “ with a dragon of red silk, adorned and beaten with very fair lilies of gold.” And Henry VII.’s standard at Bosworth, 1485, was a red dragon upon a green and white silk.
The banners of the sovereigns of England, from the Conquest up to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, bore their family devices, when the last brilliant relics of the feudal system, the joust, the tournament, and all their paraphernalia, fell into disuse.
The standard of William Rufus, 1087, bore a young eagle gazing at the sun, with the motto, “ Perfero,” — “ I endure it.”
Pope Urban II., in 1096, proclaimed the first crusade, and gave as a war-cry, “ Dim le veut,” — “ God wills it.” In that holy war, the noble crusaders, wearing cuirasses and iron masks, which concealed their features, adopted various ensigns for recognizance on the field of battle. These standards, bannerolls, and streamers exhibited suggestive figures and rebuses for rallying the troops; and these mottoes or war-cries from that time became surnames, and, with the devices, were exhibited on the crests of helmets and on various parts of the armor. Until this century, the Oriental armorial bearings adopted by the nations of Western Europe were only worn by kings, princes, dukes, and marquises, or displayed upon the fortified gates of cities. On the return of the first crusaders they were introduced and propagated among the nobility, clergy, and gentry, who called them family arms. Thus originated the modern system of heraldry.
Stephen of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror by his daughter Adel, 1135-1154, adopted for his banner the sagittary, an emblem of hunting, and the ensign of the city of Blois, whence he derived his title of Count of Blois.126
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Henry II., 1154-1189, snrnamed ‘ The Plantagenet,’ succeeded Stephen, and adopted the green broom, or Plante Genet (“ II $ortoit ung G-ennett entre cleux Plantes cle Geneste”), for his device. The surname came from his father, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, who, having committed a crime, punished himself by flagellation with birches of green broom, and wore a branch of it on his helmet in sign of his humility and penance. Henry II. married Eleanor of Guy-enne, who brought him the duchy of that name. The arms of Bordeaux, its capital, having a golden lion, that charge was marshalled with the two leopards on the escutcheon of England. From the conquest of Ireland by Henry II., 1172, up to Henry VIII., the kings of England styled themselves f viceroys of Ireland.’
Richard I., 1189-1199, bore several devices on his shields and banners ; viz., a star, probably of Bethlehem, issuing from the horns of a crescent, in token of his victories over the Turks; a mailed hand holding a shivered lance, with the motto, “ Labor vivis convenit; ” a sun or, and two anchors, — motto, “ Christo duce.”1 Engaging in the third crusade, he carried a white Latin cross on his banner. The Christian nations of Europe, following that crusader, carried either Grecian, Armenian, or Latin crosses on their banners; viz., France, a red cross; Flanders, a green cross; Germany, a black cross; Italy, a yellow cross. On assuming the title of 'King of Jerusalem,’ Richard hoisted the banner of the lion of that holy city, — the dormant lion of Judah, the badge of David and Solomon,, kings of Jerusalem from the tribe of Judah. Thenceforth Richard obtained the surname of ‘ Coeur de Lion,’ either for his lion, or his great achievements against the infidels. On the second seal of this king is the first representation of the three lions or leopards, which from that time have continued on the royal arms and banners of England.
In 1838, the tomb of Richard was discovered in Rouen cathedral. The recumbent effigy of the king has a dormant lion at his feet. The armorists of later centuries, ignorant of the Norman leopards, represented Richard with three lions passant.
John and Henry III., 1199-1272, bore the star and crescent, and John was the first to add Dominus Hibernice to the royal titles. When
1 Boutell’s Heraldry, and Historical Badges and Devices.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
127
Isabella, the sister of Henry III., married Frederic II., Emperor of Germany, the Emperor sent Henry a live leopard in token of the British armorial bearings, which were still the two leopards of William the Conqueror. Henry III. then altered the standard of his father John by adding a third leopard, as a device of his imperial
alliance. When, later, Henry was beaten at Guyenne and fled to England, the French made rebuses, in which the weak monarch was represented as a retreating leopard. When Henry the Third’s daughter Margaret was married to Alexander, of Scotland, in 125^, her robe was embroidered with three leopards on the front and three on the back.1
A mandate of Henry III. to Edward Fitzode, in 1244, directed him to cause a dragon
Margaret, Daughter of Henry III, in her Wedding to be made in the fashion of a Garments, 1252.	,	^	i	it
standard, of red silk, sparkling all over with gold, the tongue of which should be made to resemble flaming fire, and appear to be continually moving, and the eyes of sapphires or other suitable stones, and to place it in the church of St. Peter, at Westminster, against the king’s coming there; and the king being informed of the cost, it should be defrayed.2 This standard is mentioned in Dart’s f History of Westminster Abbey.’
That this standard was sometimes sent forth to battle may be presumed, as it is stated that at the battle of Lewes, 1264, a dragon standard was borne before King Henry III.; and at a much earlier battle, between Edmund Ironside and Canute, it is stated, “ Regis locus erat inter Rraconem et standarum.3
Edward I., 1272-1307, was the first English monarch who assumed a rose for his device, a golden rose, stalked proper or vert. When Eleanor, the wife of Edward I., followed him to the last crusade, Edward hoisted the three leopards of his father, Henry III., whilst
1	Brunet, Boutell, Harlean MS., &c. I have a photograph of Isabella II., of Spain, in which her dress is covered with castles and lions.
2	Excerpta Historica; or, Illustrations of English History. London, 1833.
3	Retrospective Review.128
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS



Eleanor unfurled the banner of the lion in repose, — an emblem of Leon, in Spain, which was her birthplace.
The chronicler of Caerlaverock describes the royal banner of Edward I. after this characteristic manner: “ On his banner were three leopards, courant, of fine gold, set on red; fierce were they, haughty and cruel, thus placed to signify that, like them, the king is dreadful to his enemies. For his bite is slight to none that inflame his anger; and yet, towards such as seek his friendship or submit to his power, his kindness is soon rekindled.” 1
The royal banners of England, from the time of Edward, have borne the same blazonry as the royal shield. Edward III. placed on his
standards his quartered shield at their head, and powdered them with fleur-de-lis and lions. Drawings of many of these banners and standards are preserved in Herald’s College. The English sovereigns, in addition to the banner of their royal arms, used banners and standards charged with their badges. The royal banner of arms charged their insignia upon the entire field without accessories, until the time of the Stuarts, when the arms were sometimes associated with other devices, or the flag bore the entire royal achievement charged upon the centre of its field. Examples of royal standards thus emblazoned appear in the pictures at Hampton Court, representing the embarkation of Charles II., in 1660, and of William III., in 1688. Of late years the royal standard is a square flag, blazoned with the arms of the United Kingdom over the whole field.
Standard of Edward III., 1337.
Edward III., 1327-1377, bore silver clouds proper, with descending rays; also a blue boar, with his tusks and his fclies’ and his members of gold. He was the first monarch that used the English vernacular dialect in a motto. His standard, as given by Sir Charles Barker, is the lion of England in a field semee of rising suns and crowns; motto, “ Dieu et mon ciroit.”
He first quartered the fleur-de-lis of France, 1337, with the three leopards of England, and for the first time the lion passant gardant bearing a crown as a crest, as it is continued on the royal standard and arms. His standard erected at Cressy was of red silk embroidered with lilies of gold. When Edward III. did homage to Philip VI.,
1 Siege of Caerlaverock.OF ANCIENT AND MODEKN NATIONS.
129
of France, at Amiens, 1329, for the dukedom of Guyenne, he wore a robe of crimson velvet, with three leopards embroidered in gold and silver. The King of France wore a blue robe. When Edward assumed the title of £ King of France/ he wore a robe and mantle of blue, and created a pursuivant or herald, called ‘ manteau bleu,’ or blue mantle.
It is a matter of familiar liis^pry that Edward III., on laying claim to the French crown, quartered the French lilies with the English lions; and that, from some affectation which we may wonder at but cannot interpret, he placed the lilies in the first, or honorable, quarter. That the lions were heraldically put in the secondary place is certain. Macaulay has elegantly interpreted the position thus : —
u Look how the lion of the sea lifts up his ancient crown,
And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down.
So stalked he when he turned to flight, on that famed Picard field, Bohemia’s plume, G-enoa’s how, and Caesar’s eagle shield;
So glared he when, at Agincourt, in wrath he turned to hay,
And crushed and torn beneath his claws the princely hunters lay.”
Edward the Black Prince bore for his device “a sunne arysing out of the cloudes, betokening that, although his noble courage and princely valour had hitherto been hid and obscured from the world, now he was arysing to glory and honnor in France.”
The cherished and popular belief is that the crest and motto of the Prince of Wales was won by the Black Prince at Cressy.
u There lay the trophy of our chivalry
Plumed of his ostrich feathers, which the Prince Took as the ensign of his victory,
Which he did after weare, and ever since The Prince of Wales doth that achievement heare,
Which Edward first did win hy conquest there.” 1
u From the Bohemian crown the plume he wears,
Which after for his credit he did preserve To his father’s use, with this fit word, 11 serve.1 ” 2
But this tradition is not supported by history, for the crest of the blind King of Bohemia was not a plume of ostrich feathers, but the wings of a vulture expanded. On the other hand, an ostrich feather argent, its pen gules, was one of the badges of Edward III., and was, with slight difference, adopted by the Black Prince, and by all his sons and their descendants. The Black Prince used sometimes three feathers, sometimes one argent His brother, John of Gaunt,
1 Alleyne.	2 Ben Jonson.
9130
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
three or one ermine, the stems or, on a sable ground. A single feather was worn by his brother, Thomas of Gloucester, and by their
nephews, Edward, Duke of York, and Richard, Duke of Cambridge. It is more than likely that Edward I. adopted this crest at the battle of Poitiers, joining to the family badge the old English word, Icclen (Theyn), I serve, in accord with the words of the Apostle, “ the heir, while he is a child, cliffereth nothing from a servant.” crest of the Black Pnnce. ]qie feathers are placed separately upon the
tomb of the Black Prince, in Canterbury Cathedral. This feather badge was also used by Richard II. and by Henry IV., before and after he came to the throne; by his brother Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, and all the members of the Beaufort branch. Henry VI. bore two feathers in saltire. Three or one was adopted as a cognizance by his son, Prince Edward, and was worn by Warwick at the battle of Barnet.1
In 1344, during the reign of Edward III., the order of the Garter was instituted, but was not fully organized, nor were its knight companions chosen, until 1350. The companions were twenty-five, the sovereign making the twenty-sixth, with authority to nominate the others. At first, the queen and the wives of the knights shared the honors of the fraternity, and were called ‘ Dame de la Fraternité de St. Georgewearing robes and hoods adorned with the garter. Charles I. attempted to revive this usage, but was unsuccessful. The original number of knights remained unchanged until 1786. In that year a statute was passed fixing the number at twenty-six, exclusive of the princes of the royal family or illustrious foreigners on whom the order might be conferred. The Prince of Wales, having been a knight of the original institution, is reckoned among the twenty-six companions. From time to time special statutes have admitted foreign sovereigns. Extra knights have also been admitted by statute. The meetings are held on St. George’s day (April 23),2 in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, where installations take place, and the banners of the knights are suspended.
The motto adopted for this order, “ Honi soit qui mal y pense,” Edward III. placed upon a scroll at the top of his standard, and it
1	Boutell’s Heraldry ; Hist. Badges and Devices ; Ellis’s Heraldry ; The Retrospective Review ; Brunet’s Regal Armorie.
2	The 23d of April is otherwise noted as the anniversaries of the birth of Shakspeare and of his death.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
131
has since remained upon the scroll of the British shield, as well as on the garter of the sovereign, and of the knights of the order.
Richard II., son of Edward the Black Prince, 1377-1399, adopted a white hind, couchant on a mount, under a tree proper, the banner of his mother, Joan, surnamed the Fair Maid of Kent, which appertained to her arms previous to her marriage.
After the suppression of the insurrection led by Wat Tyler, King Richard changed the hind into a white hart, gorged with a royal crown around his neck, ornamented with the fleur-de-lis of France, and a loose golden chain. On the marriage of Richard with Anne of Luxemburg, all the royal plate of England was engraved with this device. In 1396, on his second marriage, with Isabella of France, he adopted a lion and a hart as supporters of the royal shield, and he is the first monarch whose supporters are authenticated, — a golden lion gardant stood on the right hand, a silver hart affronte, on the left of the shield, with horns and hoofs or, bearing a crown around its neck, and a golden chain hanging down. The three leopards were also then changed into three lions leoparde, or spotted. Richard’s standard was a hart with two suns. He also used as supporters to his own arms two angels blowing trumpets.
Henry IV., of Bolingbroke and Lancaster, 1399-1413, introduced the red rose of Edmund of Lancaster, whose daughter was his mother,
and which became ever after the badge of the Lancastrians, as opposed to the white rose of York. The red rose of Lancaster was blessed by the Primate of England when he anointed Henry IV. wTith the holy oil from the sacred ampulla. He also had for cog-standard of Henry iv., of Bolingbroke nizances the antelope and the silver' and Lancaster.	swans of the De Bohuns. The stand-
ard of Henry IV. of England had a swan and a large rose, the field semee of foxtails, stocks of trees, and red roses, per fesse argent and azure, the livery colors of the Lancastrians having at the head the red cross of St. George on a white field.
Henry V., 1413-1422, had for devices an antelope or, armed, crowned, spotted, and horned with gold, a red rose, and a silver swan. His supporters were a lion and antelope, — an antelope argent being substituted for the white hart, as a companion to the lion of Aquetain. His standard, exhibiting the antelope gorged with a crown and a golden chain pendant, was carried at the battle of Agincourt, in 1415.132
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
When Henry Y. entered the lists against Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, his caparisons were embroidered with the antelope and swan; Henry’s antelope appeared also at his interview with King Charles at Melun.
“ The king of England had a large tente of blue velvet and green, richly embroidered with two devices : the one was an antelope drawing in a horse mill; the other was an antelope sitting on a high stage with a branch of olife in his mouth, and the tente was replenished and decked with this poysie: ” ■—
u After busie laboure commith victorious rested
He also used, at times, a beacon or cresset, a fleur-de-lis crowned, and a fox’s tail. When Henry Y. made his entry into Rouen, a page carried behind him, in guise of a banner, a fox’s tail attached; and when presented to Katherine he wore in his helmet a fox’s tail ornamented with precious stones. After the victory of Agincourt he assumed the motto, “ Non nobis, domine.”1
After his marriage with Katherine, daughter of Charles YI., of France, Henry Y. assumed the title of ‘ King of France,’ and hoisted the French standard, — a blue flag in imitation of the Oriflamme, strewed with fleur-de-lis of gold, bearing in the middle a cross of scarlet cloth.
In later times, the Oriflamme of England was stripped of its golden fleur-de-lis, but the blue flag with a red Latin cross was preserved as the flag of the British nation.2
The accession of Henry Y. was remarkable for the revival of the Knights of the Bath, when the knights attending the king at the Tower of London bathed themselves in the Thames with great solemnity, and were afterwards arrayed in a white garment, as an emblem of their revived innocence.
Henry YI., 1422-1461, was anointed and crowned at Paris when only nine years old. His badges, devices, and supporters were the same as his predecessor’s. On his banner were antelopes and roses. He was the first sovereign to use the motto, “Dim et mon Droit.” He also had for his devices a panther passant gardant argent, spotted with many colors, with vapor issuing from his mouth and ears, and two feathers in saltires, the sinister argent surmounted by the dexter or.
According to historic traditions, the vjhite and red Boses of York and Lancaster — “ the fatal colors of our striving houses ” — were first
i Harlean MSS.
2 Brunet.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
133
chosen during the momentous dispute about 1450, between Somerset and the Earl of Warwick, in the Temple garden, when Somerset, to collect the suffrage of the bystanders, plucked a red rose, and Warwick a white rose, and each called upon every man present to declare his party by taking a rose of the color chosen by him whose cause he favored. This was the prologue to the great national tragedy which ended in the extinction of the royal line and name of Plantagenet.
u This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deathly night.77
King Henry VI., Part I. Act ii. sc. 4,
But the roses were only renewed. Both Edward I. and his brother Edmund of Lancaster wore the red rose, which was taken by John of Gaunt on his marriage with Blanche, the heiress of Lancaster. When John of Gaunt adopted the red rose, his younger brother, Edmund Langley, Duke of York, assumed the white (derived from the Castle of Clifford), which he transmitted to his descendants, the House of York. Mr. Planche inclines to derive the rose originally from Eleanor of Provence, queen of Henry III.
Edward IV., 1461-1483, adopted for his badge a white lion and a white rose, snpported by a lion and a bull. The sun in splendor and
sable bull was another of his devices. He also placed the white rose en soldi on his standard in commemoration of his victory at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, 1471, when, before the battle, it is said, the sun appeared to Edward, then Earl of March, iC like three suns, and suddenly it joyned altogether in one; for which cause some imagyne that he gave the sun in its full brightness for his badge or cognizance.”134
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
u Edward. — Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?
Richard. — Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun)
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But sever’d in a pale clear-shining sky.
See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
As if they vow’d some league inviolable:
Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun!
In this the heaven figures some event.
Edward. — ?Tis wondrous strange; the like yet never heard of.
I think it cites us, brother, to the field;
That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet,
Each one already blazing by our meeds,
Should, notwithstanding, join our lights together,
And overshine the earth, as this the world.
Whate’er it bodes, henceforward will I bear Upon my target three fair shining suns.”
Henry VI., Part III. Act ii. sc. 1.
The honor of bearing Edward TV’s standard at the battle of Tow-ton devolved upon Ralph Vestynden, afterwards first yeoman of the chamber, who had, for his services at the battle, an annuity of ten pounds granted to him, “ yerely, unto the tyme he be rewarded by us of an office.” Edward’s standard at that battle was “the bull settle, corned and trooped or ” It was used by him on other occasions, and others of the House of York, being the cognizance or device of the Clares (Earls of Gloucester),' from whom the House of York was descended.
In 1378, Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, fourth son of Edward III., on being created Duke of York by his nephew, Richard II., assumed the badge of a fetter-lock, shut, bearing a falcon within it, emblematic of the succession to the crown, which was locked up from all hope to him. Edward IV., of the race of York, unlocked this golden fetterlock, and in 1474 gave this badge, unlocked and open, to his second son, Richard, Duke of York, implying the hope of succession open to his posterity. There is a description of three standards of Edward IV. in ‘ Excerpta Historica,’ taken from a manuscript in the College of Arms, marked as compiled between the years 1510 and 1525.
Richard III., 1483-1485, had for his standard at the battle of Bosworth a dun cow. Having a blue boar in his coat of arms when he was Duke of Gloucester, he introduced it as a supporter of the royal shield, but changed it into a white one. This boar argent, with the bristles and hoofs or, was placed on the left side, opposite the lion gardant. The other charges of his escutcheon, when king, were the three leopards, the fleur-de-lis, and the white rose, rayonnee of the House of York.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
135
Henry VII., 1485-1509. Richard III. having been killed at Bosworth, in the fourteenth battle between the two roses, Henry Tudor, of the Lancastrian race, the conqueror, was proclaimed king, by the name of Henry VII. He married his cousin Elizabeth, of York, the daughter of Edward IV., and by this union the two rival parties became reconciled and the roses united. In the marriage procession, each partisan of the Lancastrian house gave his hand to a lady of the York party, holding a bouquet of two roses, red and white, entwined. Henry VII. introduced into his arms a branch of hawthorn, allusive to the battle of Bosworth, where the crown of Richard III. was found on a hawthorn bush. On the birth of Prince Henry, subsequently Henry VIII., the armorists composed a rose of two colors (the leaves alternately red and white), as an emblematical offspring of the marriage. Horticulturists also forced nature into an act of loyalty, and produced the party-colored flower known to the present day as the rose of York and Lancaster.
Hutton says, Henry VII., after the battle of Bosworth, offered at St. Paul’s three standards. The first, and chief, bore the figure of St. George; the second, a red dragon on white and green sarcenet; and the third, a dun cow upon yellow tartan, — and erected them in the church; also, that Henry VII.’s standard at Bosworth was a red dragon upon green and white silk, — the red dragon of Gadwallader, “Red dragon, dreadful.-” Henry claimed an uninterrupted descent from Arthur, Uther, and Caradoc, the aboriginal princes of Britain. His grandfather, Owen Tudor, bore a dragon for his device, in proof of his descent from Cadwallader, the last British prince and first king of Wales, a.d. 678. The dragon being Henry’s, it is reasonable to consider the other two were Richard’s standards. Henry VII. also carried for his badge a portcullis, and the red and white roses combined, emblematic of the union of the rival houses.
Henry VIII., 1509-1547, and Edward VI., 1547-1553, used the same cognizances. The former sometimes displayed a greyhound courant and collared, and at others, after the siege of Boulogne, a white swan, the arms of that city. Mary, 1553-1558, before her accession, adopted the red and white roses, but added a pomegranate, to show her descent from Spain. On assuming the sceptre, she took “ winged time drawing truth out of a pit,” with this motto, “ Veritas temporis filial The eagle and lion were her supporters. The badges of 'good’ Queen Bess were the white and red roses, the fleur-de-lis, and Irish harp, all ensigned by the royal crown, to which James I., 1603, added the Scotch thistle. Elizabeth had for her supporters a lion and a136
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
dragon, and James L, 1603-1625, took for his the lion and unicorn, which have continued the supporters of the royal arms ever since.
Standards of Henry VIII.
From the picture of his embarkation at Dover for the Field of Cloth of Gold, 1520.
At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 1520, the front of the tent of Henry VIII. was adorned with the gigantic figure of an English archer, bearing this motto, in Latin, “He prevails whom I favor” suggestive of the purpose of the interview. It was called thef Field of the Cloth of Gold ’ on account of the numerous tents being ornamented with armorial bearings and banners of cloth of gold. Our illustration of Henry VIII.’s standard at the siege of Boulogne, 1544, is from a coarse painting preserved at Cowdry, in Sussex, the seat of Lord Viscount Montague.
The city of Boulogne having been restored to France in 1550, the swan was erased from the British arms; but the badge has continued
a popular sign in England. Henry VIII. was the first English monarch who took the title of ‘King of Ireland,’ 1509.
The following interesting description of royal standards is from a manuscript, A.D. 1590, in the College of Heralds: —
Edward III.—The cross of St. George. Per fess azure and gules. A lion of England imperially crowned, in chief a coronet of crosses, pate, and fleurs-de-lis, between two clouds irradiated proper; and in base a cloud between two coronets, — Dieu et Mon. In chief a coronet, and in base an irradiated cloud, — Droyt. Quarterly, 1 and 4 an irradiated cloud, 2 and 3 a coronet.
Kichard II. — The cross of St. George, argent and vert; a hart
Standard of Henry VIII. at tlie Siege of Boulogne, 1544.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
137
lodged argent, attired, unguled, ducally gorged and chained or, between four suns in splendor, — Dieu et Mon. Two suns in splendor,
—	Droyt. Four suns in splendor.
Henry V. — The cross of St. George, argent and azure. A sw7an with wings displayed argent, beaked gules, membered sable, ducally gorged and chained or; between three stumps of trees, one in dexter chief, and two in base of the last, — Dieu et Mon. Two stumps of trees in pale or, — Droyt. Five stumps of trees, three in chief and twro in base.
Another of Henry Y. — The cross of St. George, argent and azure ; an heraldic antelope at gage argent, maned, tufted, ducally gorged, and chained or; chain reflexed over the back, between four roses gules,
—	Dieu et Mon. Two roses in pale gules, — Droyt. Five roses in saltire gules.
Edward IV. (see illustration1 2). — The cross of St. George. Per fess azure and gules; a lion of England imperially crowned, between three roses gules in chief, and as many argent in base, barbed, seeded, and irradiated or, — Dieu et Mon. In chief a rose gules, and in base another
argent, — Droyt. In chief two roses gules, and in base as many argent.
__ •
Henry YII. — The cross of St. George, argent and vert; a dragon
gules, between two roses of the last in chief, and three in base argent,
—	Dieu et Mon. A rose gules in chief, and another argent in base,
—	Droit. In chief three roses gules, and in base two argent. On another standard of Henry YII. appears a greyhound courant argent, collared gules; the whole being sernee of Tudor roses, portcullis, and fleurs-de-lis or?
Mary Stuart, 1559-1587, the only child of James Y, of Scotland, and Mary de Guise, claimed the crown of England in right of her grandmother, Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII., of England, and wife of James IV., of Scotland. Assuming the title of Queen of England, France, and Scotland, she marshalled the arms of the three kingdoms, and exhibited it on her banners, furniture, equipage, and liveries.
James I., son of Mary Stuart, 1603, on his accession to the throne of England, discontinued the Norman leopards, considering them a badge of slavery under the Norman race, and substituted three golden lions passant gardant on the British shield and banner, and introduced the royal unicorn of Scotland, “ argent, gorged with a golden
1	Ante, p. IB3.
2	See also ‘ Excerpta Historica ’ for a description of the standards borne in the held by peers and knights in the reign of Henry VIII., from a manuscript in the College of Arms, I. 2, compiled between the years 1510-1525.138
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
coronet bearing fleurs-de-lis and crosses patees, to which was appended a loose golden chain,” as a companion to the English lion, supporting the shield of Great Britain. The standard of the unicorn, introduced to Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, had been brought into Scotland by the English driven from England by William the Conqueror. The red lion rampant of Scotland was also marshalled by James I. on the left quarter of the British shield.
The Commonwealth, 1648-1658. — After the execution of Charles I., the royal arms were defaced, the standard altered, and the ancient mottoes superseded by a maxim setting forth the supremacy of the people. The national seal, six inches in diameter, represented the House of Commons sitting, w7ith the speaker in the chair, encircled by this legend, “ The first year of freedom, by God’s blessing, restored, 1648.” On the reverse was a map of England and Ireland, the sea studded with ships. The flag of England bore the British cross, also that of Ireland, and the national harp of that country.
Oliver Cromwell, being proclaimed Lord Protector of the Republic, 1653, had his family arms marshalled with those of the national government ; viz., a lion rampant on a shield, supported on the right side by a crowned lion, and on the left by a gryphon, with a crowned lion sta-tant for a crest. His motto was “Pax gumritur Bello.” After his victory over the Scotch and English royalists at Worcester, having annexed Scotland as a conquered province to England, he added the cross of St. Andrew to the badges of the republic. After the death of Cromwell, and the resignation of his son Richard, the Commonwealth added as supporters to the republican shield two angels, — the ‘ conductor ’ angel of Britannia, and the ‘ guardian ’ angel of the land, — holding a laurel crown over the shield, and bearing in the other hand a palm branch and a branch of laurel.1
The flag of the Commonwealth was azure; in fess a double shield, that is, two shields conjoined, like those on the front of the public acts of the Commonwealth or, the first being argent; a cross gules for England, the other being azure; the harp or, stringed argent; these within a label or scroll, like a horseshoe, but forming three folds argent, in Roman letters sable, “ Floreat — res : Pvblica ; ” without this two branches of laurel, stalked and slipped or, leaved vert, and placed in like form as the scroll, fringed or and azure? The standards displayed at the funeral of the Protector afford a curious example of republican armory.3
1 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.
3 See illustration, ante, p. 17.
2 See Prestwick’s Respublica.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
139
The great banner of the States, called ' the Union/ as displayed at the funeral of Oliver Cromwell, was parted per pale gules and azure, having in the dexter chief points the Roman letter 4 0/ and in the sinister chief point the Roman letter 'P/ in gold,— that is, for 'Oliver, Protector; ’ between these letters, in middle chief, an imperial crown of gold proper, beautified with lilies, roses, and crosses pattee; under the above, a royal mantle of estate displayed, being ermine and gold, with tassels of gold, and thereon two shields of the arms of the Commonwealth, — one for England, the other for Scotland; viz., first shield argent, a cross gules, for St. George of England; second, azure, a saltire cross argent, for St. Andrew of Scotland; beneath the mantle, or in base, a scroll of silver, and thereon, in Roman letters of gold, the motto : “ Pax Qweritvr Bello.”
The great banner of the States or Commonwealth, displayed at the same funeral, was quarterly, the four banners of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; viz., first and fourth, argent, a cross gules, for England and Wales; second, azure, a saltire argent, for Scotland; and third, azure, a harp or, stringed argent, for Ireland. Over all, in fess, in an escutcheon of pretence sable, a lion rampant argent, for the name and family of Cromwell.1 2
The admiral's flag, during the Commonwealth, was the cross and harp. Off Portland, on the 1st of February, 1653, Blake, on board the Triumph, carried the cross and harp at the main; Monk, who was admiral of the white division, at the fore; and Penn, who commanded the blue division, at the mizzen.
The Covenanter s banner, of Scotland, was first unfurled in 1638, and was displayed at the battle of Drumclog, 1679, and at Bothwell bridge the same year. This old emblem is cherished with peculiar reverence by the Scotch people. One of these banners is preserved by the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh, and another is shown at the MareschaTs College, at Aberdeen. It is of white silk, with the motto, “ Spe expectof in red letters, and underneath, in English, “ For Religion, King, and Kingdom.” The banner is much torn, but otherwise in good preservation.
u The limbs that fought, the hearts that swelled, are crumbled into dust,
But that frail silken flag, for which and under which they fought,
Survives, a tattered, senseless thing, to meet the curious eye,
And wake a momentary dream of hopes and days gone by.77 2
1	Prestwick’s Respublica. See also illustration, ante, p. 17.
2	New Monthly Magazine.140
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
At the tercentennial celebration of Presbyterianism, in Philadelphia, Nov. 20, 1872, at the rear of the pulpit of the Seventh Presbyterian Church was displayed the American flag crossed with the Covenanters’ flag of blue silk, with a red cross of St. Andrew, and the motto, “ Covenants, Religion, King, and Kingdom.”1
The Covenanters’ blue banner has been suggested as the possible origin of the blue field in the union of our stars and stripes.
The Blue Blanket. — This ancient standard, the banner of the Edinburgh craftsmen, and probably the origin of the blue banner of the Covenanters, is still held in great honor and reverence by the burghers of Edinburgh. It was presented to the trades of Edinburgh by James III., of Scotland, in 1483, “ as a perpetual remembrance of their loyalty, and having power to display the same in defence of their king, country, and their own rights.” It was borne by the craftsmen at the battle of Elodden, 1513, and displayed for the purpose of assembling the incorporated trades to protect Queen Mary, after her surrender to the confederated states at Carberry Hill. It was brought out on the occasion of the rescue of James YI. from a rabble that assailed him in the old Tolbooth. Pennycriek’s history of it, published in 1722, was reprinted, with plates, in 1826. A handsome carved oak case, in which to preserve it, was, in 1869 or 1870, presented to the convener of the incorporated trades of Edinburgh.2
William Ill’s standard, hoisted on board the frigate Brill, Oct. 16, 1688, when about to embark for England, displayed the arms of Nassau quartered with those of England. The motto, embroidered in letters three feet long, was happily chosen. The House of Orange had long used the elliptical device, “ I will maintain.” The ellipsis was now filled with words of high import, — “ The liberties of England and, the Protestant religion!'3 He landed at Torbay from the ship bearing this flag, Sunday, Nov. 4, 1688, auspiciously the anniversary both of his birth and his marriage.
The battle of Caton Moor, or Northallerton, fought Aug. 22, 1138, is called the 'battle of the standard,’ because the English barons rallied around a sacred stand, constructed of a ship’s mast, fixed on a four-wheeled vehicle, bearing the banners of St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverly, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, and surmounted by a pyx containing a consecrated host. This standard was brought forth by the Archbishop of York when the English were hotly pressed by the invaders headed by King David.
1 The Philadelphia Press. 2 Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. vi., October, 1870.
3 Macaulay’s England.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
141
A particular and minute account of the banner or standard of St. Cuthbert of Durham, made in 1346, has been preserved in a little volume entitled ‘ The Antient Rites and Monuments of the Monas-tical and Cathedral Church of Durham, 1672.’ It contained a relic of the saint, which was thought to endow it with peculiar sanctity and power. This banner, a yard broad and five quarters deep, was of red velvet, embroidered and wrought with flowers of green silk and gold, the nether part of it indented in five parts and fringed with red silk and gold. “ In the midst of the banner cloth was the cor-porax cloth, with which St. Cuthbert in his lifetime had been used to cover the chalice when he said mass. This corporax cloth was covered over with white velvet, half a yard square every way, having a red cross of red velvet on both sides over the same holy relique, most cunningly and artificially compiled and framed, being finely fringed about the skirts and edges with fringe of red silk and gold, and three little silver bells fastened to the skirts of said banner cloth like unto sacring bells.” The bearer of this banner had faith it was never carried or shown in any battle, but, by the especial grace of God Almighty and the mediation of holy St. Cuthbert, it brought home the victory.
After the Reformation, St. Cuthbert’s banner fell into the hands of Whittingham, who was made the Dean of Durham, and his wife, a Frenchwoman, is reported to have burned it.1
In the Middle Ages, the English standard was not a square flag, like the modern standard, which is rightly a banner, but was elongated, like the guydon and pennon, but much larger, becoming narrow and rounded at the end, which was slit, unless the standard belonged to a prince of the blood royal.
The size of the standard was regulated by the rank of the person whose arms or device it bore.2 The English standards were generally divided into three portions, one containing the arms of the nobleman,
next his cognizance or badge, and then his crest; these were divided by bands, on which was inscribed his war-cry or motto, the whole being fringed with his livery or family colors.
The standard of the Douglas and the
The Douglas Standard, 1382.
gauntlets of Percy, relics of the fight of Otterburne, Aug. 15, 1388, are still preserved in Scotland. The story of the battle represents Douglas as
1 Penny Cyclopedia.
2 See ante, p. 24.142
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
having, in a personal encounter with Percy in front of Newcastle, taken from him his spear and hanging flag, saying he would cari;y it home with him, and plant it on his castle of Dalkeith.1
The battle was an effort of Percy to recover this valued standard, which, however, found its way to Scotland, notwithstanding the death of its captor. One of the two natural sons of Douglas founded the family of Douglas, of Cavers, in Roxburghshire, the last male descendant of which, James Douglas, died in 1878; and in their hands these relics of Otterburne have been preserved nearly five hundred years. It is found, however, that history has misrepresented the matter. The Otterburne flag proves not to be a spear pennon, but a standard thirteen feet long (two yards longer than the regulated size of an emperor’s standard), bearing the Douglas arms; it evidently was Douglas’s own banner, which his sons would, of course, be most anxious to preserve and carry home. Here is a standard laid up in store at Cavers, more than a hundred years before America was discovered !1
Charles I., in his issue with the Parliament, having decided to make a solemn appeal to the sword, issued a proclamation requiring all his subjects who could bear arms to meet him at Nottingham on the 23d of August, 1641, when he designed to raise his royal standard, the first and only time of such a rally since the barons raised the standard at Northallerton, A.D. 1138. At the appointed time, a numerous company, mounted and on foot, came from the surrounding country, rather to indulge their curiosity with respect to the mode of conducting an ancient ceremony never before witnessed in the memory of any living man, than to offer loyal assistance to their sovereign.
On the hill, three troops of horse and a corps of six hundred foot were drawn up to guard the standard. As the herald was about to begin, King Charles desired to see the proclamation; and, calling for pen and ink, placed the paper on his knee as he sat in the saddle, and made several alterations with his own hand, returning it to the herald, who then read it, but, on coming to the passages the king had corrected, with some embarrassment. Immediately after the reading, the trumpets sounded, the standard was advanced, and the spectators threw up their hats, shouting “ God save the kingj ” The standard raised was a large blood-red streamer bearing the royal arms quartered, with a hand pointing to the crown which stood above, and inscribed with the motto, “ Give Caesar his clue.” Farther on towards the point were represented at intervals the rose, the fleur-de-lis, and the harp, each surmounted by a royal crown.
1 Chambers’s Book of Da}rs.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
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It was with difficulty the standard could he fixed in its place, the ground being solid rock, and no instruments to pierce it having been provided. Scarcely had this object been accomplished by digging into the firm stone with the daggers and halbert points of the soldiers, when a fierce gust of wind, sweeping with a wild moan across the face of the hill, laid prostrate the emblem of sovereignty. This accident was regarded as a presage of evil, and a general melancholy overspread the assembly. No further attempt was made that day, and the standard was borne back into the castle in silence. The next day and the day following, the ceremony was repeated, with less gloomy auspices, the king attending on each occasion.1
The Royal Standaed of Geeat Beitain and Ieeland. — The origin of the emblazonments on that gorgeous banner may be thus briefly sketched.2 The lions passant gardant or, on a red field, were the arms of Normandy, and two of them were introduced by William Rufus; the third was added by Henry II. for the duchy of Aquitaine, in right of his wife. Edward III. quartered with the lions the fleur-de-lis powdered on a blue field, of which five were entire, and borne in the first and fourth quarters. This he did on claiming the sovereignty of France, in right of his mother, Isabel, sister and heiress of Charles the Fair; the royal standard, composed thus of the arms of France and England combined, continued until the reign of Henry V., when the French king having reduced the number of fleurs-de-lis to three, Henry did the same. They so appear on the standard carried by the Great Harry, in the time of Henry VIII., and on a royal standard at the main of a ship of war (supposed the Ark Royal of Raleigh) of the time of Elizabeth, as represented on the tapestry of the old House of Lords, which was destroyed by the fire. On a staff abaft, this ship had a plain square flag of St. George, white, with a red cross. On the union of England and Scotland, through the accession of James I., the standard was changed, the first and fourth quarters bearing each the arms described, the second introducing the lion of Scotland, and the third quarter the harp of Ireland.
William III. placed an escutcheon of pretence upon the royal standard for Nassau, which was removed by Queen Anne; and the
Arms of Henry V., of England.
1	Cattermole’s Great Civil War.
2	The royal banners of England have always borne the same blazonry as the royal shield, for which see engraving of royal arms, from the Conquest to Queen Victoria, p. 118.144
THE SYMBOLS; STANDARDS; AND BANNERS
standard then stood, the first and fourth quartering^ the lions of England and Scotland, the second quarter the fleur-de-lis, and the third quarter the harp. George I. again changed it, and during his reign the arms of Brunswick, of Lunenburg, of ancient Saxony, and the crown of Charlemagne, formed the fourth quarter, the other quarters remaining as in the reign of Queen Anne. On the legislative union with Ireland, in 1801, the fleurs-de-lis of France were removed.
The royal standard of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was established, and first hoisted on the Tower of London, and on Bedford Tower, Dublin, and displayed by the Foot Guards, Jan. 1, 1801.1 When the new standard was first hoisted on board the Royal William, at Spithead, after the Union, it was considered ominous, by the sailors of the fleet, that a gale of wind blew it from the masthead and it was lost.2 It is a gorgeous banner, and when flashing its golden splendor in the bright beams of the sun presents a beautiful appearance. The emblazonry represents the arms for the time being of the nation, as impressed on the coins and borne upon the great seal and seals of office.
The royal standard is never hoisted except on occasion of the first ceremony. It is never displayed on shipboard except when the sovereign or some member of the royal family is actually present,3 or on
1 Haydn’s Book of Dates.	2 British Naval Chronicle.
3 The only occasion on which the Royal Standard has been displayed within the United States of America since 1776 was when the Prince of Wales embarked at Portland, Maine, Oct. 15, 1860, to return to England after his tour through the United States and Canada.
“ The Prince’s last act on American soil was to take leave of the Mayor of Portland. He then stepped hurriedly down the carpeted steps where he embarked to his barge, which had a silken union jack flying at the stern. The moment he stepped on board, a sailor at the bow unrolled a small royal standard of silk attached to a staff, and placed it at the bow of the boat. As soon as it was in place, the whole British squadron, mustering eight or ten ships, honored it with a royal salute of twenty-one guns. The yards of the ships were at the same time manned, and when the Prince stepped on the deck of the Hero, his own ship, the Royal Standard was run up at her main, and again saluted by the whole fleet, 'which immediately after weighed and put to sea, the Hero leading. As they passed Fort Preble, the American ensign was run up at the fore, and saluted by the whole fleet, with twenty-one guns fron each ship, which was returned by the guns of the fort.” — Goold’s History of the Portland Rifle Corns.
A Royal Standard was captured at York, now Toronto, the capital of Upper Canada, when that place was taken by a land and naval force under General Pike and Commodore Isaac Chauncey, on the 27th of April, 1818, and is preserved in the gunnery-room of the U. S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. This is probably the only instance of the royal standard of the United Kingdom having come into the possession of an enemy. The following is Commodore Chauncey’s official account of its capture: —OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
145
the Sovereign’s birthdays, when the commander-in-chief of a fleet hoists it at the main. In garrisons at such times it always supersedes the jack, or common garrison flag.
As established in 1801, it was heraldically described as “quarterly, first and fourth, gules three lions passant gardant in pale or, for England ; second, or, a lion rampant gules within a double tressure flory counter flory of the last for Scotland ; third, azure, a harp or, stringed argent, for Ireland. On an escutcheon of pretence, ensigned with the electoral bonnet: and divided per pale and per cheveron, enarclied with three compartments, the arms of his Majesty’s dominions in Germany ; viz., two lions passant gardant in pale or, for Brunswick; second, or, semee of hearts proper, a lion rampant azure, for Brunswick; third, gules, a horse courant argent, for Saxony. In the centre, on an escutcheon gules, the crown of Charlemagne proper, being the badge of the office of arch-treasurer to the holy Roman Empire.”1
The white horse on a red field was the armorial bearing of ancient Saxony or Westphalia, and has for centuries been borne by the illustrious House of Brunswick. The banner of Wittekend bore a black horse, which, on his conversion to Christianity by Charlemagne, was altered to a white one, as the emblem of the pure faith he had embraced. In 1700, a medal was struck at Hanover to commemorate the accession to the electorate of George Lewis, Duke of Hanover, afterwards George I. This medal bears on one side the head of the Elector, and on the reverse the white horse. On the accession of George I., the white horse was introduced as a royal badge in the standards and colors of certain regiments of cavalry and infantry.
By the peace signed at Amiens, 1802, the French fleurs-de-lis wTere required to be erased from the British shield, though they had already been dropped. From 1337, the King of England had styled himself * King of France.’ George III. was the first who relinquished that title.
At the death of William IV., 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, under the Salic law, she relinquished the kingdom of Hanover (since incorporated with the empire of Germany) to her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, and the escutcheon of pretence* with
“ Sir, — I have the honor to present to you, by the hands of Lieutenant Dudley, the British standard taken at York on the 27th of April last, accompanied by the mace, over which hung a human scalp. These articles were taken from the Parliament House by one of my officers and presented to me. The scalp I caused to be presented to General Dearborn, who, I believe, still has it in his possession.”
1 Naval Chronicle, vol. v.
10146
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
its electoral bonnet, blue lion, and white horse, was removed from the royal arms and standard, leaving simply the quarterings for the three realms of the United Kingdom, — England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Sir Walter Scott, alluding to the royal banner of Scotland, says that upon it —
u The ruddy lion ramps in gold.”
The Scottish lion being rampant gules on a field or, as displayed on the standard of the United Kingdom.
The origin of the tressure flory of Scotland, which surrounds the lion rampant, is believed to be this: Achaius, sixty-fifth King of Scotland, being a peaceable and godly ruler, made a league, about a.d. 792, with Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans and King of Erance; and in token thereof the tressure of lilies was given b}^ him to Achaius, to be borne on the arms of Scotland, as a memorial to posterity of an alliance offensive and defensive between the two kingdoms, and as a pledge of brotherly love, to signify that the French arms or lilies should defend and guard the lion of Scotland. About the same time, he adorned the crown of Scotland with four lilies and four crosses; the first, emblems of peace and unity, the latter, symbols of their faith in Christ, and of the inviolable fidelity of the kingdom of Scotland.1
The harp and trefoil of Ireland. — Queen Elizabeth was the first sovereign to assume the Irish harp and shamrock. The harp was an attributive ensign of the goddess Hibernia, the patroness of Ireland. The Irish monarehs being styled ‘ bards/ their standard bore a harp. The harp of Bryan Boiroiske, King of Ireland, killed by the Danes in 1039, was preserved at Dublin until 1782.
The shamrock, or trefoil, a druidical symbol, was held in great veneration by the Hibernians. Monkish historians of Ireland record this legend: About 440, St. Patrick preached the gospel in a field to the pagan peasantry of Ireland, but could not persuade them of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, until, picking up a plant of the trefoil, held sacred among them, he showed, by the union of three leaves on one stem, evidence of three bodies united in one person. Having persuaded them by this natural example of the reality of a hitherto incomprehensible mystery, he converted multitudes, who adopted the shamrock in token of their belief. The Irish armorial bearings subsequently disappeared from the British shield, but were restored in 1801, when Ireland was united (?) to England. The harp first appears on the Irish pieces of Henry VIII. The groat of Eliza-
1 Prestwick’s Respublica.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.	147
beth has three harps. Henry VIII. is said to have given his daughter three harps for her perfecting in music.
The Thistle of Scotland. — The origin of the thistle as the emblem of Scotland is said to be this: About the year 1010, in the reign of Malcolm I., the Danes invaded Scotland, and landed at Buchan-ness, intending to storm Stain’s Castle, a fortress of some importance. Midnight was the time selected for the attack, and, as their presence was unknown and unlooked for, they expected to succeed, without much trouble, in gaining possession of the castle. The Danes advanced slowly and silently, and, to prevent the possibility of their footsteps being heard, they took off their shoes. They reached the place, and they had only to swTim the moat and place their scaling-ladders, and the castle was theirs, when, in another moment, a cry from the invaders themselves wakened the inmates to a sense of their danger; the guards flew to their posts, the soldiers mounted, armed, and pursued the Danes. This sudden change had arisen from a simple cause. It appeared that the moat, instead of being filled with water, was dried up and overgrown with thistles, which, piercing the unprotected feet of the Danes, caused them to forget their cautious silence, and to utter the cry which had alarmed the sleeping inmates of the castle. Thus was the thistle the means of preserving Scotland, and was thenceforth adopted as her national emblem. Burns thus alludes to it: —
u The rough burr-thistle spreading wide Among the bearded here,
I turned my weeder-clips aside,
And spared the symbol dear.77
Anciently, in France, there was an order of knighthood dedicated to our Lady of the Thistle. It was revived by Charles VII., of France, and James II., of Scotland, when they united against England about 1440. James II., of Scotland, had the thistle painted on a sacred banner of St. Andrew, and hence it became a national standard for*Scotland. In 1687, James VII. of Scotland and II. of England entwined the thistle of Scotland with the roses of England. The jewel of the Knights of the Thistle bore the image of St. Andrew and his cross, and the motto was, “Nemo me impnne lacessit,” — “No one injures me with impunity.”
The crosses of St. Andreio and St. Patrick. — The origin of the crosses of St. Andrew and St. Patrick have been thus stated: In 1248, the Christian allies besieged the walls of Seville, employingTHE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
148
divers war-machines, among which was the saltire or scaling-ladder, by aid of which they surmounted the walls. This victory having been gained on St. Andrew’s day by the assistance of the saltire, that badge was adopted by the conquerors, and a Te Deum was sung in all the churches in honor of St. Andrew. In the mean time, Seville having been converted to Christianity, the archbishop, who succeeded the mufti, transferred the saltire to the banner of St. Andrew, to whose miraculous assistance the clergy ascribed the taking of the strong golden tower of the city. Long rejoicing for the miraculous victory led to the legend that St. Andrew had been crucified on a saltire, which they hence named the ‘ cross of St. Andrew.’ Crucifixion on a saltire never having been adopted by any nation, its use in the martyrdom of St. Andrew must be considered a monkish legend. St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, is alleged to have died on such a cross. Hence the representation of these crosses on the union jack of the United Kingdom.1
Another version is that the cross of St. Andrew as the national insignia of Scotland is derived from a miraculous occurrence, when Achaius, king of the Scots, and Hungus, king of the Piets, joined their forces to oppose the invasion of Athelstane, the Saxon king of England. The Scottish leaders, having addressed themselves to God and their patron saint, there appeared in the blue firmament of heaven the figure of the white cross on which St. Andrew had suffered. Presuming from this heavenly vision that their prayers were favorably received, the soldiers fought with enthusiastic courage, and defeated the invaders, who left their king, Athelstane, dead upon the field of battle in East Lothian, a.d. 940; and ever since the white saltire upon an azure field has been carried by the Scottish nation.2
St. George, of Cappadocia, who furnishes the red Latin cross for the union, according to Mr. Emerson, was not a very reputable character, but a low parasite, who obtained a contract to supply the army with bacon. He was a rogue and an informer, became rich, and then had to run for his life. He saved his money, embraced Arminianism, was made Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, and in 361 was dragged to prison. He was finally taken out and lynched, as he deserved to be. This bishop is the St. George of England and Russia, — a very different character from the Georgian chevalier and dragon-destroyer of the Trajan standard.3
1 Brunet’s Regal Armorie.	2 Newton’s Display of Heraldry.
3 Cardinal Newman, created in 1879, took his title from the Church of St. Georgio de Nelabro, the only one in Rome dedicated to the patron saint of England. This chuichOF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
149
A very curious history of the origin and formation of the union jack, written by Sir Harris Nicolas, is in Braley’s ' Graphic Illustrator.’
ST GEORGES CROSS
ST. ANDREWS CROSS
The Union Jack or Flag of Great Britain. — The combination of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew produced the first union
jack, which was declared in 1606, by King James I., the national ensign of Great Britain, happily symbolizing the union of England and Scotland, in its union of the crosses of the two realms. In 1801, in consequence of the legislative union with Ireland, a second union ensign was established. The new device combined the three crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick. The blazonry of this jack is borne by the Duke of Wellington upon a shield of pretence over his paternal arms, as an fi augmentation of honor” significant and expressive. The Duke of Marl-
UNION OR KINGS COLORS léo£
UNION ENSIGN JAN.16 1707
UNION FLAG 1801.
borough’s arms bear in like manner the cross of St. George upon a canton, in commemoration of the services of his ancestor.
When or why the name ' jack * was given to this flag is conjectural: in old records it is almost universally styled the 'union flag.’ Some have thought as the upper part of a trooper’s armor was so named, the name was transferred during the time of the Crusades to the St. George’s cross on a white field, which the’ soldiers of the cross wore over their armor before and behind. Others think the new flag received this name in honor of James I., it being the abbreviation of his signature, Jcic. The name is mentioned in 1673, in the English treaty with the Dutch, which obliges “ all Dutch ships or squadrons of war meeting those of Great
contains, under the high altar, the head of St. George and his red silk banner, which are exhibited on the day after Ash Wednesday and on St. George’s Day, tlie only days the church is open to the public. Two minutes’ walk distant is the Church of S. Maria-in-Cosmedin, under which is preserved a piece of St. Patrick’s skull, exhibited on that saint’s day.
67454150
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Britain, carrying the king’s flag, called f the jack/ within certain seas
and bounds to strike their topsail and lower their flag with like ceremony and respect as heretofore by Dutch ships to those of the King of England or his ancestors.”
At the time of the union, devices representing it were popular. Our engraving is a fac-simile of one of these.
The royal ordinance establishing the first ‘ union jack ’ is as follows : —
“ Whereas some differences hath arisen between our subjects of South and North Britain, travelling by sea, about the bearing of their flags; for the avoiding of all such contentions hereafter, we have, with the advice of our council, ordered from henceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain, and the members thereof, shall bear in the maintop the red cross, commonly called St. George’s cross, and the white cross, commonly called St. Andrew’s cross, joined together, according to a form made by our heralds, and sent by us to our admiral, to be published to our said subjects; and in the foretop our subjects of South Britain (England) shall wear the red cross only, as they were wont; and our subjects of North Britain (Scotland) in the foretop the white cross only, as they were accustomed: wherefore, we will and command all our subjects to be conformable and obedient to this our order, and that from henceforth they do not use or bear their flags in any other sort, as they will answer to the contrary at their peril.
“ Given at our Palace this 12th day of April, 4th Iacques, a.d. 1606.” 1
There are instances in which this union flag is represented with the St. George’s cross spread across the entire head, and the St. Andrew’s cross the entire fly. No drawing is extant* “of the form made by the heralds,” sent to the admiral to be published, but the paintings of Yandevelde and others show on the bowsprits of vessels of war the flag known as the f union jack,’ presumptive proof that such was the union devised by the heralds. In a drawing of the Duke of York’s yacht visiting the fleet in the Medway, painted by Yandevelde and preserved in the British Museum, all the ensigns have a red cross in a canton; but every bowsprit is furnished with a union jack, and two of the largest ships carry it aloft, — one, the Breda, at the
1 United Service Journal.
A Union Device of 1800.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
151
main, and another at the mizzen. There is also an admiral’s ship with the white at the main.
In a paper dated Friday, Jan. 14, 1652, “By the commissioners for ordering and managing ye affairs of the Admiralty and Navy,” ordering what flag shall be worn by flag-officers, it is ordered, “ all the shipps to wear jacks as formerly.”
The king’s proclamation, Jan. 1, 1801, establishing and ordering the present red ensign, known as the ' meteor flag of old England,’
which the lively imagination of poets has transformed into the omnipotent banner which “for a thousand years has braved the battle and the breeze,” to be worn by all the merchant ships of the kingdom, instead of the ensign before that time usually worn by them, says, “To the end that none of our subjects may presume on board their ships to wear our flags, jacks, and pendants which, according to ancient usage, have been appointed as a distinction to our ships, or any flags, jacks, or pendants in shape or mixture of colors so far resembling ours as not to be easily distinguished therefrom, we do, with the advice of our privy council, hereby strictly charge and command all our subjects whatsoever that they do not presume to wear on any of their ships or vessels our jack, commonly called the 'union jack,’ nor any pendants, nor any such colors as are usually borne by our ships, without particular warrant for their so doing from us, or our high admiral of Great Britain, or the commissioners for executing the office of high admiral for the time being; and we do hereby also further command all our loving subjects, that, without such warrant as aforesaid, they presume not to wear on board their ships or vessels any flags, jacks, pendants, or colors made in imitation of or resembling ours, or any kind of pendants whatsoever, or any other ensign than the ensign described on the side or margin hereof,” &c. The proclamation then excepts from this order certain vessels temporarily employed by the government, which are to “wear a 'red jack’ with a union jack described in a canton at the upper corner thereof, next the staff.” All merchant ships displaying the union jack, &c., were to have their colors seized, and the masters and commanders and other persons so offending were to be duly punished. This union flag or jack was worn, and continues to be worn, on the bowsprit of all ships of war.
St. Andrew. St. George. St. Patrick.152
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
It is also worn by the admiral of the fleet at the main of his flag-ship, and is the garrison color hoisted over all the forts belonging to her Majesty’s dominions. It is heraldically described thus: The crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, on fields argent and azure, the crosses saltire of St. Andrew and St. Patrick quarterly, per saltire counter charged argent and gules, the latter fimbriated of the second, surmounted by the cross of St. George, gules fimbriated as the saltire.” 1
It does not appear why the red saltire is called St. Patrick’s cross, in defiance of all Church tradition. St. Patrick never had a cross, and to give him one is simply an Irish bull. The saltire, so far as it belongs to any saint, is St. Andrew’s. It has been suggested that the red saltire, bordered with white, really represents the Fitz Gerald arms, “ argent, a saltire gules.”
In 1823, it was royally ordained no merchant ship or vessel should carry the union jack, unless it was bordered on all sides with white, equal in breadth to one-fifth of the breadth of the jack exclusive of the border. The penalty for using the royal union jack on board a merchant vessel is ,£500.
An idea was long entertained in England that the admiral’s red flag had been taken from the main masthead of the admiral’s ship, and that the Dutch obtained that trophy in one of the battles between Blake and Yan Tromp, — a mistaken notion, for the red flag never has been surrendered. The last admiral who wore it, before it was restored to the navy by the creation of a batch of admirals and rear and vice admirals of the red after the battle of Trafalgar, Oct. 21,1805, was Sir George Rooke, as admiral of the fleet, when commander of the combined forces of England and Holland in the Mediterranean in 1703. Upon the union of England with Scotland, 1606, the red flag was discontinued, and the union jack superseded a red flag at the main, as the distinguishing flag of the admiral of the fleet.2
Up to 1864, the royal navy wore ensigns of the three colors, red, white, or blue, according to the rank of the officer commanding. In that year, the white ensign was alone reserved for the royal navy, and the blue and red ensigns were given up to the use of the naval reserve and merchant marine. At the same time, the several grades of admirals of the red and blue were merged under the white ensign, with a St. George’s red cross on a white field for their distinguishing flags, the union being continued in all the ensigns.3
1	British Naval Chronicle, vol. v. pp. 64, 65.
2	British Naval Chronicle, 1805, also 1816.
3	In the first edition of this work the full circular order from the admiralty, dated Aug. 4, 1864, was given.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
153
The military flags of Great Britain in use may be grouped in the* two divisions, — ‘ cavalry banners ’ styled ‘ standards/ and f infantry colors.’ The standards of the cavalry are small in size; their color is determined by that of the regimental facings; they are charged with the cipher, number, heraldic insignia, and honors, such as ‘ Waterloo/ ‘ Alma/ &c., of each regiment. The standards of the household cavalry are crimson, richly embroidered with the royal insignia of England.
Every infantry regiment or battalion of the line has its “ pair of colors.” One is the queen’s color, a union jack charged with some one or more of the regimental devices; the other is the regimental color, and its field is of the same tincture as the facings, and bears-the cipher, number, device, motto, and honors of the corps. At first, each infantry regiment had one color only; afterwards, there were three to each regiment. In the reign of Queen Anne, the colors-were reduced to their present number, — a ‘ pair.’ The colors of the Foot Guards reverse the arrangement of those of the line. Their* queen’s color is crimson, either with or without a cantoned jack, but always charged with the royal cipher and crown, and the regimental devices. The regimental color of the Guards is the union jack. The Guards also have small company colors.
The royal artillery and rifles of the line have no colors. The volunteer regiments have been left to determine for themselves whether they shall carry colors, and also the character of the colors they may decide to adopt. What may be termed the volunteer banner is worthy of the force. It has the figures of an archer of the olden time, and a rifleman of to-day, with the motto, “ Defence, not defiance.”1
In 1873, the colors of the native army in India were assimilated to those of the British army, and the devices, &c., of the colors of all the native regiments were ordered to be registered at the College of Arms.
The standard of a regiment is a telegraph in the centre of the battle to speak the changes of the day to the wings. “ Defend the colors! form upon the colors! ” is the first cry and first thought of a soldier. This standard contains the honor of the band, and the brave press round its bearer. An instance of the attachment shown by English troops to their standards occurred after the battle of Corunna. It was night. The regimental color of the Fiftieth was missing; a cry arose that it had been lost; the soldiers were furious; Sir Henry Fane, with a loud and angry voice, called out, “No, no! the Fiftieth cannot have lost their colors! ” They were not lost. Two ensigns —
1 Boutell’s Heraldry.154
THE SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS
Stewart, a Scotchman, and Moore, an Irishman — had been slain as they bore the banners charging through the village of El Yina. Two color-sergeants, seizing the prostrate colors, continued the charge, and carried them through the battle. When the fight was done, an officer received one of these standards from the sergeant. It was dark, and he forgot both their use and their honor, and had gone to the rear, intending to embark with them, though the regiment was still in position. The stray color was found, and the soldiers pacified; but this officer never could remove the feeling which his well-meaning but ill-judged caution had produced against him. This shows the sentiments entertained by British troops for their colors, pervading all ranks, from the general to the drummer. Sir Henry Fane’s words rendered him a favorite with the Fiftieth Regiment ever after.
A British color-sergeant, shot down and overrun by the enemy, once seized in his mouth a corner of the flag, and his teeth locked upon it in the rigidity of death. The enemy cut it away, leaving a bit between his fixed teeth. The standard was retaken, and ever since the flag of the regiment is made with that little piece carefully cut out, in memory of the sergeant who was buried with the fragment in his mouth. -
In the Military Hospital at Chelsea is preserved a large number of military trophies, among them the following American flags: —
1.	An American national color of Second Regiment of the line, taken by General Brock on the frontier.
2.	An American flag, taken probably in the Revolutionary War.
3.	An American flag, the same as the above.
4.	A regimental color of the Fourth American Regiment, 1812-14.
5.	An American flag taken by the Eighty-fifth Regiment on the left bank of the Mississippi.
6.	An American flag, taken in the first war, probably at Boston.
7.	An American regimental flag of the Second Regiment.1
The American ensign of the Canadian rebel steamer Caroline is preserved in the Museum of the Royal Military and Naval Institute, Scotland Yard, London.
Immediately before the battle of Trafalgar, Nelson exhibited the ever memorable signal, “ England expects every man will do his duty.” The illustration is from an original drawing in the Royal Service Institution, and shows how great a number and variety of flags was used. Each set of flags had to be arranged according to its number in the signal-book, and run up to the masthead, until answered and
1 London Paper, 1836.OF ANCIENT AND MODERN NATIONS.
155
England - expects - every - man - will - do - his - d - u -1 - y. ”
understood by each ship. Then another set was run up, and so on until the signal was completed. Each set represented a word, except the last word, ‘ duty,’ which, strange to say, was not represented by
any number in the signal-book, and had to be spelled out. This tedious method of signalling is to some extent still used by the navy and merchant ships of all nations. Sir Harris Nicolas deemed it worth while to ascertain as precisely as he could the circumstances under which those words were uttered. There are three accounts of the matter, — one by Mr. James, in his ‘ Naval History;5 one by Captain Blackwood, who commanded the Euryalus at the battle of Trafalgar; and one by Captain Pasco, who was Nelson’s dag-lieutenant in the victory. Sir Harris Nicolas accepts Pasco’s version, because that officer himself signalled the words. “ His lordship came to me on the poop,” says Pasco, “ and, after ordering certain signals to be made, said, ‘ Mr. Pasco, 1 wish to say to the fleet, “ England confides every man will do his duty! ” ’ and he added, ‘You must be quick, for I have one more to make, which is for close action.’ I replied, ‘If your lordship will permit me to substitute “ expects ” for “ confides,” the signal will soon be completed, because the word “ expects ” is in the vocabulary, whereas the word “ confides ” must be spelled ? ’ His lordship replied, in haste, and with seeming satisfaction, ‘ That will do, Pasco; make it directly! ’ When it had been answered by a few ships in the van, he ordered me to make the signal for close action.” Captain Blackwood says the correction suggested by the signal-officer was from “ Nelson expects ” to “ England expects; ” but Captain Pasco’s is accepted as being more probable.
The flag which floated over the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square in 1844 was part of the ensign which thirty-eight years before waved over the hero on the memorable day of his last great achievement and death.156
SYMBOLS, STANDARDS, AND BANNERS.
A gentleman residing at Sacramento. Cal.? has in his possession a banner of green with a golden harp in the centre, which is the identical banner carried by the rebels of 1798 in Ireland, and most notably at the siege of Drogheda. It was brought to the United States by his father, James Gildea. The hag is thirty feet long by ten, wide, and has been well preserved.
At Cyprus, in 1878, when Sir Garnet Wolseley took possession, the British hag was solemnly censed, blessed, and hoisted by Greek priests,, the guards presenting arms.
Note. — Campbell, the poet of Hope, wrote, some time previous to our civil war, the following lines, which, however, since slavery has been abolished, at the expense of a, bloody and costly war, have now no significance : —
“ United States ! your banner wears Two emblems, — one, of fame ;
Alas ! the other that it bears Reminds us of your shame.
Your standard’s constellation types White freedom by its stars ;
But what’s the meaning of your stripes, —
They mean your negro’s scars.1”
In reply to this bitter epistle, the Hon. George Lunt, of Massachusetts, wrote : —
“ England ! whence came each glowing hue That tints your flag of meteor light, —
The streaming red, the deeper blue,
Crossed with the moonbeams pearly white ?
The blood and bruise — the blue and red —
Let Asia’s groaning millions speak ;
The white, it tells of color fled
From starring Erin’s pallid cheek ! ”
A fair retort, as true to-day as it was a quarter of a century ago.
1 (The cry that comes across the sea From your low cabins reaches me,
Like a Banshee’s wild, despairing wail,
Brought on the surging northern gale,
Connemara !
“ Men stagger as they try to stand Upon your famine-stricken land,
And women lying down to die,
Bare icy breasts, because their babies cry :
Connemara l”1
1 F. C , in Providence Journal, 1880.Page 15'/
PL 17.
NEW ENGLAND COLORS 1686-1776.
MERCHANT FLAG 1701	NEW ENGLAND FLAC 1737PAßT II
A.D. 860-1777.
THE EARLY DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA, AND THE FIRST BANNERS PLANTED ON ITS SHORES,
a.d. 860-1634.
COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL FLAGS, 1634-1766.
FLAGS OF THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY AND REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, PRECEDING THE STARS AND STRIPES,
1766-1776.
THE GRAND UNION OR CONTINENTAL FLAG OF THE
UNITED COLONIES,
1776-1777.“ Far o’er yon azure main thy view extend,
Where seas and skies in blue confusion blend:
Lo ! there a mighty realm, by Heaven designed The last retreat for poor oppress’d mankind ;
Formed with that pomp which marks the hand divine,
And clothes yon vault where worlds unnumbered shine.
Here spacious plains in solemn grandeur spread,
Here cloudy forests cast eternal shade ;
itich valleys wind, the sky tall mountains brave,
And inland seas for commerce spread the wave.
With noble floods, the sea-like rivers roll,
And fairer lustre purples round the pole.
Here, warmed by happy suns gay mines unfold The useful iron and the lasting gold ;
Pure, changing gems in silence learn to glow,
And mock the splendors of the covenant bow.
Far from all realms this world imperial lies,
Seas roll between, and threat’ning tempests rise,
Alike removed beyond ambition’s pale,
And the bold pinions of the venturous sail;
Till circling years the destined period bring,
And a new Moses lift the daring wing.
On yon fair strand behold that little train Ascending venturous o’er the unmeasured main;
Ho dangers fright, no ills the course delay ;
’T is virtue prompts, and God directs the way.
Here empire’s last and brightest throne shall rise,
And peace and right and freedom greet the skies ;
To morn’s fair realms her trading ships shall sail Or lift their canvas to the evening gale :
In wisdom’s walks her sons ambitious soar,
Tread starry fields, and untried scenes explore ;
And hark ! what strange, what solemn breaking strain Swells, wildly murmuring o’er the far, far main !
Down time’s long lessening vale the notes decay,
And lost in distant ages roll away.”
Timothy Dwight's Prophecy of America, written 1771-1774.PART II
THE EARLY DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA, AND THE FIRST BANNERS PLANTED ON ITS SHORES,
a.d. 860-1636.
u And then the blue-eyed Norseman told A saga of the days of old.
1 There is/ said he, i a wondrous book Of legends in the old Norse tongue,
Of the dead kings of Norroway, —
Legends that once were told or sung In many a smoky fire-side nook.
And he who looks may find therein
The story that I now begin.’ ”—Longfellow.
A Northman Vessel, a.d. 860-1014.160
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Expeditions to the shores of North America are said to have gone forth from the British Isles even in advance of the Northmen. Only vague traditionary accounts of these expeditions have come down to us, but records of early voyages from Greenland have been found, which afford strong circumstantial evidence that the New England coast was visited, and that settlements were attempted thereon, by Scandinavian navigators, five hundred years before the first voyage of Columbus.
The fact that the Northmen knew of the existence of this continent prior to the age of Columbus was prominently brought before the people of this country in 1837, when the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, at Copenhagen, published their work on the antiquities of North America, under the editorial supervision of that great Icelandic scholar, Professor Rafn. It had always been known that the histories of certain early voyages to America by the Northmen were preserved in the libraries of Denmark and Iceland. Adam of Bremen, who wrote about a.d. 1074, had heard of the exploits of the Northmen in Vineland, and made mention of that country in his work.
Naddod, a Scandinavian pirate or viking, in the year 860, and Gardar, a Dane, soon after, are said to be the first Northmen who, driven by storms, came in sight of and reconnoitered Iceland. The news they carried home induced others to follow in their track, and Northman Ingolf, a.d. 874, was the first who settled there. He and his men found there Christian Irishmen, the Papas or Papar, who soon left the island.
In 876, a northeast storm drove one of these Icelandic settlers, named Gunnbjorn, to some rock near Greenland, which he appears only to have seen in the distance. It was more than fifty years before any other adventurer followed in his track, until, in 928, Are Marson was driven by a storm from Iceland to America.1 At last, in the spring of 984-985, Eric the Red, having been banished, for manslaughter, from Iceland, sailed with the intention of seeking the country seen by Gunnbjorn. Having found it, he established a settlement, which he called Brattalid, in a bay on the west coast of Greenland, which, after him, was called Eric’s Eiord. He found the country pleasant, full of meadows, and of a milder climate than the more northern Iceland. He gave it the name of Greenland,2 saying that this would be an inviting name, which would attract other people from Iceland. Another adventurer, Heriulf, soon followed him, and established himself on the west coast, north of our present Cape Farewell, at a place which, after him, was called Heriulfsness.
1	De Costa’s Pre. Col. Dis. p. 86.
2	De Costa holds that Eric did not originate the name.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
161
Heriulf had a son, Biarne, who, when his father went to Greenland, was on a trading voyage to Norway. Beturning to Iceland in 986, and, finding that his father had gone to the west with Eric the Bed, he resolved to follow him, and to spend the winter in Greenland.
Boldly setting sail, he encountered northerly storms. After many days they lost their reckoning or course, and, when the weather cleared, descried land entirely unlike that described to them as Greenland. They saw it was a more southern land, and covered with forests. It not being the intention of Biarne to explore new countries, but to find his father in Greenland, after sailing two more days and nights, he improved a southwest wind, turned to the northeast, and, after several days’ sailing by other lands bordered by icebergs, reached Heriulfsness. His return occupied nine days, and he speaks of three distinct tracts of land along which he had coasted, one of which he supposed to be a large island.
The results of the expedition of Biarne were these: He was the first European who saw, though from a distance, and very cursorily, some parts of the coasts of New England, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. When he returned to Norway, he was blamed for not having examined the new-found countries more accurately.
In Greenland there was much talk about undertaking a voyage of discovery to the west. Leif, the son of Eric the Bed, the first settler in Greenland, having bought Biarne’s ship, a.d. 1000, with a crew of thirty-five men, among whom was Biarne himself, went out on Biarne’s track to the southwest. They anchored and went on shore, probably at Newfoundland, and after a brief delay pursued their voyage, and came to a low, wooded coast, with shores of white sand, which they named Markland (Woodland), our present Nova Scotia.1 Continuing their course, in two days they again made land, a promontory projecting in a northeasterly direction from the main, corresponding to our present Cape Cod.
Leif, rounding this cape to the southward, sailed westward, and
1 About 1659, Francis Fuller, of Winthrop, Maine, stated that he went as a ship carpenter’s apprentice to the Kennebec, and at Agrys Point, near the present town of Pittston, three miles below the city of Gardiner, in clearing the ground for a ship-yard, they discovered the bottom of a brick chimney. Further examination disclosed the remains of thirteen other chimneys. “ Within the limits of one,” said Mr. Fuller, “grew a tree three feet in diameter. We had the curiosity to count the rings of this tree, to ascertain its age, and found that they exceeded six hundred, thereby indicating that it was over six hundred years old. We concluded a village had existed there long before Columbus discovered America.”—Joseph Williamson, Esq., on the Northmen in Maine, in Historical Magazine, January, 1869.
11162
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
entered a bay or harbor, and went on shore. Finding the country very pleasant, he concluded to spend the winter there, and formed a settlement, which was called Leifsbudir (Leifs block-house or dwelling). It is, with a degree of probability, supposed this settlement was on the coast of Rhode Island, in Narragansett Bay, perhaps not far from Newport. Leif and his men made several exploring expeditions to the interior. On one of these a German named Tyrker, who had long resided with Leifs father in Iceland and Greenland, lost his way, and was missing. Leif, with some of his men, went in search of him, and had not gone far when they saw him coming out from a wood, holding something in his hands, coming towards them, very much excited, and speaking in German. At last he told them, in Norse, “ I found vines and grapes,” showing what he held in his hands. Leif, an Icelander and Greenlander, probably had never seen fresh grapes, and asked, “ Is that true, my friend ? ” and then Tyrker said that he well knew they were real grapes, having been born and educated in a country in which there were plenty of vines. The Northmen collected their boat full of grapes, and from this circumstance Leif gave this new southern country the name of Vinland. During the winter, Leif observed that the climate of Yinland was so mild that cattle could be kept out-doors unsheltered, and that throughout the year the days and nights were much more equal in length than in Greenland. On the shortest day in Yinland the sun was above the horizon from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. This astronomical observation confirms the generally adopted view that their settlement was in the southern part of New England. Filling their vessel with wood, they returned to Greenland in the spring.1
Leif’s brother, Thorwald, being of opinion the new country had not been explored sufficiently, borrowed Leif’s ship, and, aided by his advice and direction, commenced another voyage to this country in 1002. Sailing on the track of his predecessors, he arrived at Leifbudir, in Yinland, and spent the winter in fishing and cutting wood. In the spring he sent out his long-boat to the southward on a voyage of discovery, and she did not return until the fall of the year.
These events took place about the time of the massacre of the Danes
1 Mr. Williamson, in his article on the Northmen in Maine, contends that the island to the eastward of the main was Monhegan, while the river issuing from lakes, &c., is well represented by the Kennebec, which joins the ocean near that island. De Monts, who visited Acadie in 1607, speaks of grapes in several places, and they were in such plenty on the Isle of Orleans, in lat. 47°, that it was called the Island of Bacchus.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
163
in England, and the revengeful invasion of the English coast by Sweyne, whose sister Gunhilda, with her husband and son, had been put to death in the presence and by command of Edric Streone, one of the Anglo-Saxon chieftains. He ravaged Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire, as also other parts, and burnt several towns, until
Etheldred was glad to purchase a two years’ respite at a cost of £36,000, equivalent to the worth of 720,000 acres of land at that time. He was also compelled to feed his invaders.1
The Danish ships with which Sweyne made his descent upon the English coast in 1004 have been described with minuteness by con-
1 Southey’s Naval History.164
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
temporary chroniclers, and afford us an idea of the vessels in which Leif and his brother Thorwald sailed along the American coast.
“Each vessel,” says Sir NT. Harris Nicolas,1 citing contemporaneous chronicles, “ had a high deck and bore a distinctive emblem indicating its commander, similar, probably, in object, to the banners of later chieftains. The prows of the ships were ornamented with figures of lions, bulls, dolphins, and of men, made of copper gilt, and at the mastheads of others were vanes shaped like birds with expanded wings, showing whence the wind blew. Their sides were painted with various colors, and the shields of the soldiers, of polished steel, were placed in rows around the gunwales. Sweyne’s own ship was the Great Dragon, built in the form of the animal whose name it bore; its head forming the prow, and its tail the stern. The mysterious Scandinavian standard of white silk, having in its centre a raven, with extended wings and beak open, the supposed insurer of victory, which had been embroidered by three of Sweyne’s sisters in one night, amidst charms and magical incantations, was on board his ship, but it was not displayed until he landed in England.”
The next year, 1004, Thorwald undertook another voyage, and had a battle with the aborigines, it is conjectured near the harbor of Plymouth. Of course the victory was with the Europeans. After the victory, Thorwald asked his men whether any had been wounded. Upon their denying this, he said, “ I am: I have an arrow under my arm which will be my death-blow ! ” Advising them to depart as soon as possible, he requested them to bury him on a hilly promontory overgrown with wood, which he had previously selected as his abode, saying: “ I was a prophet, for now I shall dwell there for ever. There you shall bury me, and plant two crosses, one at my head and one at my feet, and call the place e Krossaness,’ — the cape of the crosses, — for all time coming.” Thorwald upon this died, and his men did as he had ordered them. Thorwald was the ancestor of Thorwaldsen the sculptor, and in an unpublished poem Edward Everett expressed a hope that the artist would commemorate in undying stone the discoverers to Europe of North America.
u Thorwald shall live for aye
In Thorwaldsen.”
But, alas ! the sculptor died with the hope unfulfilled.2
Thorwald’s men returned to the settlement at Leifsbudir, and spent with them the following winter. But in the spring of 1005,
1	History of the Royal Navy, vol. i.
2	Boston Daily Advertiser, July 17, 1872.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
165
having collected a cargo of wood, furs, and dried grapes, they sailed to Greenland. The results of Thorwald’s expedition were, that he and his men stayed on the coast of New England nearly two years, principally occupied in explorations. They sailed along the south coast of New England towards and perhaps beyond New York. They recognized and described more minutely the important headlands of Cape Cod, and gave it the name of ‘ Kiarlarness,’ — Keel Cape, — because there they experienced bad weather and broke their keel, a piece of which, after repairing their ship, they stuck up on the reef. They intended an expedition along the coast toward the north, which was turned back, near the harbor of Boston, by the death of Thorwald.
The next voyager was Thorstein, Eric’s third son, who resolved to proceed to Yinland in his brother’s ship, with twenty-five able and strong men, to obtain his brother’s body. His wife, Gudrida, a woman of energy and prudence, accompanied him. They got no farther than Greenland, when a sickness broke out. Thorstein and others died, and Gudrida returned with the ship to Eric’s fiord on the southern coast of Greenland. In the following summer, 1006, two ships arrived at Eric’s fiord from Iceland. Thorfinn, a wealthy and powerful man of illustrious lineage, who commanded one of them, fell in love with Gudrida, the widow of Thorstein, and married her. Thorfinn, urged by his wife and others, resolved to undertake a voyage to the south, and in the summer of 1007 prepared three ships, their united companies amounting in all to oile hundred and sixty men, and, with the intention of colonizing in the new and beautiful land, took all kinds of live-stock along. They sailed in the spring of 1008, and were the first European navigators that made a coasting voyage along the coast of Maine, keeping in sight of the land until they came to Cape Cod, which, from its long sandy beaches and downs, they named Furderstranclr, — beaches of wonderful length. Their settlement was formed near Leifsbudir, on the other side of the water, at a place which pleased Thorfinn better, and which was called Thorfins-budir. It stood near a small recess or bay, called by them ‘ hop ’ or ‘ corner.’ On the low grounds around this hop they found fields of wheat growing wild, and on the rising ground plenty of vines. Here Gudrida, the wife of Thorfinn, gave birth to a son, who received the name of Snorre, who must be considered the first American child born on the continent, of European parents. On a subsequent attempt to explore the coast of Maine, Thorhall, one of Thorfinn’s men, was driven over to the coast of Ireland. After a while, discontent166
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
and dissensions broke out among the settlers, and Thorfinn, with his wife Gudrida, and his American son Snorre, then three years of age, left the country together, and with a good southerly wind returned to Greenland. It is probable a party of his men remained behind, and continued the settlement of Yinland. Thorfinn never returned, but afterwards went to Norway, and from thence, in 1014, to Iceland, where he bought an estate, and resided for the remainder of his life with his wife and son. After his death and the marriage of Snorre, his widow Gudrida made a pilgrimage to Rome, where she was received with distinction. Afterwards she returned to her son’s estate in Iceland, where Snorre had built a church, and where, after all her adventures, she long lived as a religious recluse.1
In 1121, the voyage to Yinland of a bishop of Greenland, named Eric, is mentioned in ‘ Icelandic Annals.’ Eric was appointed bishop of Greenland, but performed no duties after his consecration, and eventually resigned that See in order to undertake the mission to Yinland. The fact that such a high ecclesiastical functionary should go to Yinland appears good proof that, since Thorfinn’s time, Northmen settlers or traders had tarried there. Of the results of his expedition we have no particular information. After this voyage, we hear no more of Yinland for more than one hundred years, nor of countries southwest of Greenland. Then, in 1285, two Icelandic clergymen, Adalbrand and Thorwald Helgason, visited, on the west of Iceland, “ a new land; ” and in 1288, Eric, king of Denmark, sent out a ship commanded by Rolfe, to pay a visit to this new land, supposed to have been Newfoundland. In 1290, Rolfe travelled through Iceland, and called out men for a voyage to the new land.
Another hundred years after this event, the ‘Icelandic Annals’ has the following remarkable though short report: “ In the year 1347, a vessel having a crew of seventeen men sailed from Iceland to Markland.” From the middle of the fourteenth century down to the discovery of America by Columbus, Cabot, and others, we learn no
1 The Dighton Rock, six and a half miles from Taunton, Mass., on the east side of Taunton River, a boulder of fine gray rock, twelve feet long and five feet high, has an inscription in the middle (surrounded by rude Indian hieroglyphics of a later date) which is supposed to be the work of the Northmen, and to relate that Thorfinn Karlsefne established himself there with one hundred and fifty-one men. A copy of the inscription was shown to a Mohawk chief, who said it represented a triumph of Indians over a wild beast. Mr. Schoolcraft showed a copy to an Algonquin, who gave a similar interpretation, but the central figures he rejected, as having no connection with the rest. That two distinct parties were concerned in making the inscription is clear from the testimony of the Indians. See Antiquitates Americans, pp. 355—371. There has been recently a proposition to remove this rock to Copenhagen.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
167
more of Scandinavian undertakings in this direction. The heroic age of the Northmen, and their power and spirit of enterprise, had long-passed by,1 though there is evidence tending to show that communication was never suspended.
These early voyagers left no traces of their presence on the continent, unless it shall be conceded that the round tower or mill at Newport, about the origin of which history and tradition are alike silent, was built by them: it stood there when the English people first visited Ehode Island, and the Narragansett Indians had no traditions of its origin.2 Many have supposed that the skeleton in armor dug up near Fall Eiver was a relic of a Northman killed by the natives in the battle with Karisefne. Longfellow has immortalized this legend in his verse.
Information of these voyages existed in Europe. But the discovery was chiefly remembered in traditionary tales of the exploits of these vikings; and these new lands were often considered a part of the European continent, connected along the ice-bound regions of the north. When Columbus conceived the grand idea of reaching Asia by sailing westward, no account of these Scandinavian voyages was current in Europe.3
It is certain that the junks and boats of the Asiatic nations driven by storms from the islands and coasts of Asia, drifting along on the kuro-sima, or black current, which skirts the coast of Japan and is lost in Behring’s Straits, and which answers in the Pacific to the Gulf stream of the Atlantic, were thrown upon the Pacific coast of America, and that their shipwrecked crews and passengers found their way into the interior of the continent. It also seems probable that other Asiatics found their way by the Aleutian Isles and Behring’s Straits from the projecting capes of Asia to our Pacific shores. Some refer the origin of the Indian tribes of America to the Phoenicians, others perceive evidences of their Egyptian or Hindoo parentage, and others claim they are the lost tribes of Israel “ who took counsel to go forth into a far country where never mankind dwelt.”
1	An account of the Scandinavian voyagers is to he found in the Collections of the Maine Historical Society, containing a History of the Discovery of Maine, by J. G. Kohl, published in 1869, which, De Costa says, is a mass of errors, and that he wrote his * Northmen in Maine ’ to show we have no evidence that the Northmen visited Maine. He says, “they may have done so, but we do not know it.” His American editors are responsible for some of the errors.
2	For an account of the Old Mill, see ‘The “Old Mill” at Newport, a New Study of
an Old Puzzle,’ by R. G. Hatfield, illustrated in Scribner’s Monthly, vol. viii., March, 1879, pp. 682-642.	(
3	Columbus visited Iceland in the spring of 1477, fifteen years before his first voyage. A few years after his voyage to Iceland we find him urging his theory of reaching Asia by sailing to the west.168
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Within almost every State and Territory, remains of human skill and labor have been found, which seem to attest the existence here of a civilized people before the ancestors of the present Indian tribes became masters of the continent. Some of these appear to give evidence of intercourse between the people of the Old World and those of America centuries, perhaps, before the birth of Christ, and at periods soon afterwards.1 Remains of fortifications, similar in form to those of ancient European nations, have been discovered, — fire-places of regular structure, weapons and utensils of copper, and walls of forts and cities. There are accounts of a Roman coin found in Missouri; a Persian coin in Ohio; a bit of silver in Genesee, N. Y., with the year of our Lord 600 engraved on it, &c. Near Montevideo, South America, a tomb is said to have been found in which were two ancient swords, a helmet, and shield, with Greek inscriptions showing they were made in the time of Alexander the Great, 330 years before Christ. A few years since, an earthenware vessel containing Roman copper coins, bearing the names of Maximinus, Dioclesian, and Constantine, were dug up near the site of Old Panama on the Isthmus. The interesting question is, how these coins of the third and fourth centuries A.D. came there, though the probable explanation is that they were the collection of a virtuoso who buried them for safety when the city was sacked by the buccaneers.2 Recently -a stone, said to be covered with Tyrian inscriptions, has been found on the Upper Amazon, which Dom Pedro II. has caused to be deposited in the imperial museum at Rio de Janeiro.
The flags, banners, or standards which these peoples planted upon the shores of America in token of occupancy and sovereignty must ever remain conjectural. Nothing concerning them has come down to us.
Beyond doubt, the first European banners displayed upon the
shores of the New World, of which there is any authentic account, were those unfurled by Columbus, when he landed upon the small outlying island of St. Salvador, Oct. 12, 1492, which, fortunately, have been described by his son: “ Columbus, dressed in scarlet, first stepped on shore from the little boat which bore him from his vessels, bearing the royal standard of Spain emblazoned with the arms of Castile and Leon [a turretted and embattled castle or, on a field gules for Castile, quarterly on a field argent, a
1 Lossing’s History of the United States.	2 Panama Echo.
The Standard of Spain, 1492.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
169
Oceania
lion rampant gules for Leon] in his own hand, followed by the Pinzons in their own boats, each bearing the banner of the expedition; viz.,
a white flag with a green cross, having on each side the letters E and Y, surmounted by golden crowns.”1
In 1497, Yespucci, on his first voyage, discovered the mainland at Yucatan.
In 1498, Columbus discovered the continent, and planted the Spanish banners at the mouth of the Orinoco, supposing it to be an island on the coast of Asia. He lived and died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discoveries, while Americus Yespucius, a Florentine, who explored the eastern coast of South Amer-covered America.	ica north oi the Orinoco, a year later,
From a drawing attributed to him in the 1499, made the first formal announce-Eplstoia chustoforo Coiumbi. menfj to the world of the great discovery,
in 1507, and thus gave a name to the new continent of the west.2 At the court of England, “ there was great talk of the undertaking of Columbus, which was affirmed to be a thing more divine than
human, and his fame and report increased in the hearts of some of the king’s subjects a great flame of desire to attempt something alike notable.” Thus inspired, King Henry YIL, of England, March 5, 1496, issued a patent to John Cabot and his three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius, to sail early in May, 1497, with five ships, “ under the royal banners and ensigns, to all parts, countries, and seas, of the east, of the west, and of the north, and to seek out and discover whatsoever isles, countries, regions, and provinces in what part of the world soever they might be, which before this time had been unknown to Christians.” The king gave them further license, “ to set up the royal banners and ensigns in the countries, places, or mainland newly found by them,” and to conquer, occupy, and possess them as his vassals and lieutenants.3
Expeditionary Banner of Columbus
1	Narrative of Don Fernando ; Irving’s Life of Columbus.
2	Vespucius did not himself give name. See Major, in Archeologia, voi. xl., on Map of Leonardo da Vinci. See notes to De Costa’s article on the Lenox Globe, Magazine of American History, 1879.
3	See patent in Latin in Hakluyt’s Dion’s Voyages. London, 1860. Fcedera, xii. 1472-170
ORIGIN J ND PROGRESS OF THE
The patentees having to arm and furnish their vessels, to buy victuals, and to provide all things necessary at their own cost, were not able to avail themselves of the royal permission until more than a year after it was issued, and did not sail from Bristol until May, 1497. It is asserted that the expedition comprised four vessels, but we only know with certainty that the admiral’s ship was called the Matthew, that she was the first English vessel that touched our American shores, and the only one that returned in safety to Bristol. Relative to the course which the Cabots followed on this voyage, we have no definite information. Formerly it was supposed that they made their landfall near a cape of the island of Newfoundland, but a more careful examination of the known facts has induced Baron Humboldt and recent writers to believe that what they called ‘ Prima Vista,’ June 24, 1497, must be found in Labrador, in 56° or 58° north latitude.
It is stated that they sailed along the coast about three hundred leagues to the south. The short time they were absent from England — about ninety days — renders this doubtful. They could hardly have performed so long a coasting voyage unless in the line of their return route to the northward and eastward.
The Matthew arrived at Bristol early in August, for there is an entry in the privy-purse accounts of Henry VII., dated “Aug. 10, 1497,” in which the king says, “ that he has given a reward of ten pounds to hym that found the new isle; ”1 and Lorenzo Pasqualigo, under date “London, Aug. 23, 1497,” announces to his brothers in Venice the return of John Cabot from his voyage of discovery, and that he had found at a distance of seven hundred leagues in the west a firm land, along which he had coasted for the space of three hundred leagues, not having met a living person at the points where he had landed, but still having observed there some traces of inhabitants, — trees notched, and nets for catching game. On his return, he had -seen on his right hand two islands, where however he had not wished to go on shore, on account of the failure of his provisions; he had returned to Bristol after a voyage of three months, having left in the lands which he had discovered a grand cross, with the banner of England and that of St. Mark of Venice.
If this be true, then, under King Henry’s patent, and orders “ to set up his royal banners and ensigns in the countries, &c<, newly found,” it is probable that the English standards and ensigns, with the Venetian banner of St. Mark, were the first ever planted by any European nation upon the shores of North America since those of
1 Excerpta Histórica, p. 113.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
171
the Northmen, and that they were set up a year earlier than Columbus raised the castles and lions of Castile and Leon at the mouth of the Orinoco. Indeed Pasqualigo, in the letter already quoted, says, “ The discoverer of these places planted on his newfoundland a large cross, with one flag of England and one of St. Mark, by reason of his being a Venetian, so that our banner has floated very far afield.”
The Cabots believed they had discovered portions of Asia, and so proclaimed it. But the more extensive discoveries of a second voyage corrected this view, and revealed nothing but a wild and barbarous coast, stretching through 30 degrees of latitude, and forming an impassable barrier to the rich possessions of China which they hoped to reach. Doctor Asher, a German writer, in his work on Hudson, published in London by the Hakluyt Society in 1860, observes, “The displeasure of Cabot involves the scientific discovery of a new world. He was the first to recognize that a new and unknown continent was lying, as one vast barrier, between Western Europe and Eastern Asia.”
The voyages of these enterprising mariners along the entire Atlantic coast of the present United States, and along the whole extent of a great continent, in which at this time the English race and language prevail and flourish, has always been considered as the true beginning, the foundation and corner-stone, of all the English claims and possessions in the northern half of America.
English flags were the first which were planted along these shores, and Englishmen were the first of modern Europeans who with their own eyes surveyed the border of that great assemblage of countries in which they were destined to become so prominent; and were also the first to put their feet upon it. The history of each one of the chain of States stretching along the western shores of the Atlantic begins with Sebastian Cabot and his expedition of 1498.1
On the map of the eastern coast of North America by Juan de la Cosa, in the year 1500, the discoveries of the Cabots are marked by English standards, while the Spanish possessions of Cuba and other West India Islands are similarly marked with Spanish, and the Azores with the Portuguese, standards.
Verrazano saw the coast in 1524, but the expedition commanded by John Rut, in 1527, after Cabot, was the second expedition which sailed along the entire east coast of the United States, as far south as
1 M. D’Avezac, in a letter to Dr. Woods, dated “Paris, Dec. 15, 1868,” advocates John Cabot’s discovery of North America in 1494, and that he kept his discovery secret, to escape the exclusive pretensions of Spain and Portugal, until he had obtained the letters-patent from Henry VII., signed March 5, 1496, and returned from his voyage in August, 1496. See Maine Hist. Coll., vol. i., new series.172
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Carolina, and was the last official enterprise of the English in our waters until the expedition of Sir John Hawkins in 1565.
On the Yerrazano map of 1529, in the Propaganda, Rome, there are three flags placed to indicate the claims of Francis I. in North
America, and colored blue, which about that time was made the color of France, in opposition to the white flag of England. These flags have no device whatever.1
There is preserved in the Royal Library at Munich a map of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, &c., which has on it in great letters, “ Pedro Reinel a fez;” that is, Pedro Reinel made it. Reinel was a Portuguese pilot of great fame, who, like many Portuguese, entered the Spanish service some time after 1522. The language of the map is
1 Am. His. Mag., August, 1878, Da Costa on Ver. Map.
		
	V V	
o	o
o	
o	o
famajoha
da forluna ^3 y.da tor merit o
'\ O
. C domarco Sam Johan SamPedro
^^o^y-dos/aves
-2-^	^ Q) c das gamas
c de boavenlura de boa ventura
0 c.domarco
c0,y.defreyluis "b. de santa ciria ydos bocalhas b.dacomceica C. da e/]pera R-daspatas U. de S am francis quo S c.Rafo
Nova Scotia, NewfoundlandaLabrador 1)y PeftroIVemet ma^cin about 1505.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
173
Portuguese, it presents only Portuguese discoveries, and shows the arms and flags of Portugal, but not of Spain. From these circumstances it is probable that the map was made by Eeinel in Portugal before he entered the service of Spain, and probably soon after the voyage of the Cortereals and Cabral. We may therefore assign it to the year 1505. Peschal gives it the date of 1504. The cape which was called on the map of 1500 ' Cavo de Anglaterra/ or ‘ Cape of England/ is here for the first time named ‘ Cctvo Raso ’ (the flat cape), a name which is of Portuguese origin. The English, who did not understand the meaning of the Portuguese word, afterwards changed it to Cape Pace, which has no meaning in this connection.
During the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. several expeditions were made by the English to the northeast of America. Their leading motive in those expeditions was the hope of finding a shorter passage to the rich countries of Eastern Asia. The last English expedition of this kind, in 1536, ended with such loss of life, and other disasters, that a most unfavorable impression appears to have been made by it on the nation. After this, for nearly fifty years, the English entirely abandoned the east coast of America.
It was not until the twentieth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and eighty years after the discoveries of Cabot, that healthy efforts to found colonies in the new world were matured by the English. In June, 1578, Sir Humphry Gilbert, a step-brother of Sir Walter Ealeigh, obtained a liberal patent or grant from the Queen. Ealeigh gave him the aid of his hand and fortune; and, as early as 1579, Gilbert sailed for America with a small squadron, accompanied by his step-brother. Heavy storms and Spanish war vessels compelled them to return, and the scheme for a time was abandoned. Four years afterwards, 1583, Gilbert sailed with another squadron, and after a series of disasters reached the harbor of St. John, in Newfoundland. There he set up a pillar with the English arms upon it, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the queen. Proceeding to explore the coast southward, after being beaten by tempests off the shore of Nova Scotia and Maine, and losing his largest ship, he turned his vessel toward England, and during a September gale his little bark, the Squirrel, of ten tons, went down with all on board, and only one vessel of the expedition reached England.
In 1584, Ealeigh obtained a patent for all the lands in America between the Santee and the Delaware Eivers, and sent Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow to explore the American coast. They approached the shores of Carolina in July, and took possession of the islands in174
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds in the name of Queen Elizabeth. They remained a few weeks exploring and trafficking, and returned to England with two Indians, named Manteo and Wanchese. The glowing accounts of the newly discovered country filled Raleigh’s heart with joy. The Queen declared the event one of the most glorious of her reign, and, in memorial of her unmarried state, she gave the name of 'Virginia’ to the enchanting region.
April 19, 1585, Raleigh despatched a fleet of seven vessels under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, with a governor and colonists,
for the purpose of making a permanent settlement of the inviting land. A series of disasters followed, and, induced by misfortunes and fear, the emigrants abandoned their settlement on Roanoke Island, and were all conveyed to England by Sir Francis Drake, June, 1586. Raleigh, undismayed by the result of his first attempt, despatched a band of agriculturists and artisans with their families, April 26, 1587, to found an industrial state in Virginia. This attempt at colonization, like the others, proved a failure, and a century after the discoveries of Columbus and Cabot there was no European settlement upon the North American continent.
Twelve years after the failure of Raleigh’s colonization efforts, Bartholomew Gosnold sailed in a small bark directly across the Atlantic for the American coast, and after a voyage of seven weeks discovered the continent, May 14, 1602, near Penobscot. Sailing southward, he landed upon a sandy point which he called ' Cape Cod,’ and afterwards discovered Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and the group of islands known as Elizabeth’s Islands, which he named in honor of his sovereign. Upon an islet in a tiny lake he built a fort and storehouse, but, owing to dissensions and the want of supplies, he returned to England in June, and was prosecuted by Raleigh upon his return.
In 1605, Captain George Weymouth entered the Sagadahock, and took formal possession of the country in the name of King James; and the same year De Monts, a wealthy French Huguenot, organized a French settlement at Port Royal (now Annapolis), and called the territory around it ' Acadia.’ In 1606, the Plymouth Company obtained their charter, and soon after despatched an agent to examine North Virginia. In 1607, Jamestown was founded, and in 1607, Popham,
Raleigh’s Ship, 1585.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
175
with one hundred emigrants, landed at the month of the Kennebec, where they erected a stockade, a storehouse, and a few huts. All but forty-five returned to England in the vessels, those who remained named the settlement ‘ St. George.’ A terrible winter ensued. Lacking courage to brave the perils of the wilderness, the emigrants abandoned * the settlement, and returned to England in the spring of 1608.1
From the foregoing it will be seen that every attempt of Englishmen during the reign of Queen Elizabeth to colonize the new world proved abortive, and it was not until the accession of her successor, James I., and union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, that her flag was permanently planted upon its shores.
COLONIAL AND PROVINCIAL FLAGS.
1634-1766.
The flags used by the American colonies prior to their separation from the mother country would naturally be those of England, though such does not appear to have been invariably the case. Several flags, differing more or less from the standards and ensigns of that kingdom, seem to have been at times in use.
The ancient national flag of England, the cross of St. George, a white banner with a red cross, was the universal badge of the English soldiery as early as the fourteenth century, and was worn by them over their armor, and blazoned on their shields. Why St. George was constituted the patron saint of England has been and continues to be a puzzle to antiquarians, but “St. George for England,” or “Merrie England,” was a usual war-cry, and his banner above all others was the national banner of Englishmen. What-
1 The English claimed dominion over a belt of territory extending from Cape Fear, in North Carolina, to Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and indefinitely westward. This was divided into two districts. One extended from the vicinity of New York City northward to the present southern boundary of Canada, including the whole of New England, and westward of it, and was called ‘ North Virginia.’ This territory was granted to a company of “knights, gentlemen, and merchants” in the west of England, called the ‘Plymouth Company.’ The other district extended from the mouth of the Potomac southward to Cape Fear, and was called ‘ South Virginia.’ It was granted to a'company of “noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants,” chief!y residents of London, called the ‘London Company.’ The intermediate domain of almost two hundred miles was a dividing line, so broad that disputes about territory could not occur, as neither company was allowed to make settlements more than fifty miles beyond its own boundary. — Lossing's History of the United Stales.176
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
ever other banners were carried, it was always foremost in the field.* 1 Adopted as the national standard and ensign, it continued such until
A.D. 1606, when King James I., by his royal proclamation,2 united with it the cross of St. Andrew, a diagonal white cross on a blue ground (which had been the flag and badge of the Scots from the time of the Crusades), as a distinguishing flag, for all his subjects travelling by sea.
This union, in 1606, of the crosses of the two kingdoms, which had been united by the accession of James in 1603, was called the 'king’s colors.’ They
were required to be displayed from the main-tops of all British vessels, — those of South Britain (England), however, were to carry the St. George’s cross, and those of NTorth Britain (Scotland), the St. Andrew’s cross, in their fore-tops, to designate which section of the United Kingdom they hailed from; the union flag taking precedence in the main-top and at the after-part of the vessel.3
Rushworth says4 that “ the union flag, that is, the St. George’s and St. Andrew’s crosses joined together, was still to be reserved as an ornament proper to the king’s own ships, and ships in his immediate service and pay, and onone other. English ships were to bear the red cross, Scotch the white.”
The first grant of the crown of England under which effectual settlements were made in North America was dated April 10, 1606, the very year the crosses of the two kingdoms were united by royal proclamation. By this charter all the country in America between latitude 34° and 45° north, was called Virginia. Two companies were constituted, one called the ‘ London Company,’ the other the < Plymouth Company.’ To the first named was assigned all that portion of this vast territory lying between the parallels of 34° and 41°
1	Miss Strickland, in her * Queens of England,’ says : “Henry II. married Eleanor of Aquitaine, and through her, the ancestress of the royal line, may he traced armorial hearings and a war-cry whose origin has perplexed the readers of English history. The patron saint of England, St. George, was adopted from the Dukes of Aquitaine, as the Duke of Aquitaine’s War-cry was ‘ St. George for the puissant duke’ His crest was a leopard, and his descendants in England bore leopards on their shields till after the time of Edward I.”
2 See ante.	8 See ante, p. 149.	4 Rushworth, 1634, vol. ii. p. 247.
ST. ANDREWS CROSSFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
177
Long Parliament Flag.
north latitude, under the name of ‘ South Virginia; ’ to the latter, all lying to the north of 41°, called f North Virginia.’ Such was the vague extent of the old dominion of Virginia.1
After the execution of Charles I., the new council of states, on the 22d of February, 1648-49, passed a resolution, “that the ships at
sea in the service of the states shall bear the
x
red cross in a white flag. That the engraving upon the sterns of the ships shall be the arms of England and Ireland in two escutcheons, as is used in the seals.” Soon after we read of vessels sailing under the Long Parliament flag, which bore on a blue field the yellow Irish harp, with the St. George’s cross next the staff in a white canton. Under the Protectorate we find a blue flag in use, bearing in the field the two shields of England and Ireland ; viz., argent, a cross gules and azure, a harp or. These were joined together in a horseshoe shape, and surrounded by a white label of three folds, the motto in black letters, “ Floreat Res Publica,” and outside, two golden branches of laurel, leaved green. A flag of this period, preserved as late as 1803 in one of the storehouses of Chatham Dockyard, bore the same shields slightly separated on a red field, and surrounded by branches of palm und laurel.2
On the fleet which restored Charles II. to the throne of his father, the royal cipher took the place of the state’s arms, and the harp was removed from the Long Parliament flag, which they also bore, as having been instrumental in the restoration of that body during the previous year. Soon after this, under James, Duke of York, who had been appointed the lord high admiral of England, Ireland, Wales, and of the dominions of New England, Jamaica, and Virginia, in America, we find the flags of the navy to have been the royal standard ; the lord high admiral’s flag, then, as now, a foul anchor or, on a red field; the union jack or flag; and the English red ensign, cantoned with the St. George’s cross on a white field.
During the civil war, the colors and ensigns were principally red for the royalists, orange for the parliamentarians, and blue for the Scotch, — and all cantoned with a red St. George’s cross on a white field.
The complete union of the kingdoms was not accomplished until
1	See note, ante, p. 175.
2	See p. 17. Ensigns, standards, &c., at the funeral of Cromwell.
12178
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
1707, a hundred years after this union of crosses in the king’s colors, when under Queen Anne, the kingdom of Great Britain, including England, Wales, and Scotland, was established by treaty, and the first union parliament assembled.
The act of Parliament which ratified this union of the kingdoms, Jan. 16, 1707, ordained “ that the ensigns armorial of our kingdom of Great Britain ” shall be “ the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew conjoined (the same as heretofore described as the king’s colors), to be used on all flags, banners, standards, and ensigns both at sea and land,” “ and the ensigns described in the margent hereof (the crosses or king’s colors conjoined in the upper corner of a crimson banner, since known as the f meteor flag of England ’), to be worn on board all ships or vessels belonging to any of our subjects whatsoever.” These flags were familiarly known as union flags, from their typifying the union of England and Scotland, and were commonly used by the American colonies in connection with other devices, until their rupture with the mother country. Thus early the idea of a union flag became familiar to them.
As the king’s colors had been authoritatively prescribed for subjects travelling by sea only, it is probable the St. George’s cross continued to be very generally used by the English subjects of Great Britain on land until the act of 1707, for the Parliament of the Commonwealth under Cromwell adopted the old standard.
Ireland was conquered in 1691, but was not incorporated into the kingdom until Jan. 1, 1801, long after our revolution, and then the cross of St. Patrick, a red diagonal saltire, was fimbriated on the white cross of St. Andrew and conjoined to the other two, and thus and then the union jack of the United Kingdom assumed its present form. The present ensign of Great Britain was never worn by any of the American colonies.1
The garrison flag of Great Britain is the union jack or flag prescribed Jan. 1, 1801.
One of the British flags surrendered at Torktown, and presented to Washington by Congress, was the same as the king’s colors, established by James I., excepting that in the centre of the cross there is a white square with a crown above the garter. The garter is inscribed with the usual motto, “Honi soit qui mal y pense” and encloses a fullblown rose. This flag is now in the museum at Alexandria, Va. It
1 The proclamation declaring what ensigns, colors, &c., are to be borne by the subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland may be found in full in the British Naval Chronicle, vol. v. 1801.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
179
is made of heavy twilled silk, and is six feet long and five feet four inches wide.1
The red cross of St. George was, without doubt, hoisted over the Mayflower when she disembarked our Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth in 1620, as it was the common sea-ensign of English ships of that period. Belonging to South Britain, she may also have displayed the king’s colors from her main-top, and a St. George’s cross at the fore, as required by the king’s proclamation of 1606.
We learn from the records of Massachusetts that the red cross of St. George was in use in that colony in 1634, if not earlier.
In November of that year, complaint was entered “ that the ensigns at Salem had been defaced by Mr. Endicott’s cutting out one part of the red cross. Eoger Williams is accused of having agitated the matter, and therefore accountable for the trouble it occasioned. The case was examined as a high-handed proceeding which might be construed into one of rebellion to England, on the complaint of Mr. Bichard Browne, ruling elder of the church at Watertown, and others, before the Court of Assistants. The court issued an attachment against Ensign Bicha,rd Davenport, then the ensign-bearer of Salem, whose colors had been mutilated, to appear at the next court, which was not held until a year after his flag was so mutilated. It was then shown that the mutilation complained of was done, not from disloyalty to the flag, but from an entire conscientious conviction that it was idolatrous to allow it to remain, and that having been given to the King of England by the Pope, it was a relic of anti-Christ. Endicott was judged to be guilty of a great offence, inasmuch as he had ‘ with rash indiscretion, and by his sole authority, committed an act giving occasion to the court of England to think ill of them,’ for which he was deemed worthy of admonition, and should be disabled from bearing any public office for one year.” 2
The provincial authorities were, however, doubtful of the lawful use of a cross in the ensign, and, had there been no fear of a royal governor, little would have been heard about this mutilation of the colors at Salem ; for, December 19, all the ministers except Mr. Ward, of Ipswich, were assembled at Boston, by request of the governor, to consider, among other things, “ whether it was lawful to carry a cross in the banners.” The opinion of the meeting on that subject being divided, the matter was deferred to another meeting, in March, at which Mr. Endicott was called upon to answer. This meeting was able to agree no better than the previous one; and the record con-
1	Lossing has an engraving of it in his Field-Book of the American Revolution.
2	Massachusetts Records.180
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
tinues, “ Because the court could not agree about the thing, whether the ensigns should he laid by in that regard that many refused to follow them, the whole case was referred to the next general court, and the commissioners for military affairs gave orders in the mean time that all ensigns should he laid aside.”
In the interim, a new flag, having for an emblem the red and white roses in place of the cross, was proposed, and letters in relation to the matter were written to England, for the purpose of obtaining " the judgment of the most wise and godly there.” This project seems not to have met the approval of the wise and godly in England, for in December, 1635, it is recorded that the military commissioners “ appointed colors for every company,” leaving out the cross in all of them, and appointing that the king’s arms should he put into them and in the colors of Castle Island, Boston.
All ships, in passing the fort at Castle Island, were hound to observe certain regulations; hut after these occurrences, the fort, wearing for a time no flag to signify its real character, presented the appearance of a captured or deserted fortress.
Under these circumstances, in the spring of 1636, the ship St. Patrick, Captain Palmer, was brought to by Lieutenant Morris, the officer in command of the fort, and made to strike her colors. Captain Palmer complained to the authorities of the conduct of the commander of the fort as a flagrant insult both to his flag and country. They therefore ordered the commander of the fort before them, and, in the presence of the master of the ship, informed him that he had no authority to do as he had done; and he was ordered to make such atonement as Captain Palmer should demand. The captain was very lenient, only requiring an acknowledgment from the lieutenant of his error on board of his ship, “ that so all the ship’s company might receive satisfaction.” This Lieutenant Morris submitted to, and all parties became quieted; but within a few days another circumstance occurred respecting the fort, with a different result. The mate of a ship, called the Hector, pronounced all the people traitors and rebels, because they had discarded the king’s colors, and was brought before the court and made to acknowledge his offence, and sign a paper to that effect.
These occurrences troubled the authorities lest reports should be carried to England that they had rebelled,1 and that their contempt of the English flag was proof of the allegation. To counteract such representations, Mr. Vane, the governor, called together the captains
1 A seafaring man, approaching in his ship, having noticed that the flag displayed was destitute of a cross, “ spoke to some one on hoard the ship that we had not the king’s colors, hut were all traitors and rebels.” — Smith’s Hist. Newbury port.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
181
of the ten ships then remaining in harbor, and desired to know if they were offended at what had happened, and, if so, what they required in satisfaction. They frankly told him that if questioned on their return to England “ what colors they saw here,” a statement of the hare facts in relation to it might result to their disadvantage. Therefore they would recommend that the king’s colors might he set up in the fort. The governor and his advisers arrived at the same conclusion, and directed to give warrant to spread the king’s colors at Castle Island, when ships passed hy.
There being no king’s colors to be found to display at the fort, the difficulty was met hy two of the shipmasters offering to present a set; hut so fearful were the authorities of tolerating a symbol of idolatry, they declined receiving the colors thus offered until they had taken the advice of Mr. Cotton in regard to them. It was finally concluded that, although they were of the decided opinion that the cross in the ensign was idolatrous, and therefore ought not to he had in it, nevertheless, as the fort was the king’s, and maintained in his name, his colors might he used there. In accordance with this opinion, the governor accepted the colors of Captain Palmer, sending him, in requital, three heaver-skins, and directed Mr. Dudley to give warrant to Lieutenant Morris, the commander of the fort, to spread the king’s colors whenever ships were passing.1
This tempest in a tea-pot having been satisfactorily adjusted, the king’s colors were continued at the castle, hut were excluded from use elsewhere in the colony, through the religious prejudices of the people, and the flag hearing the king’s arms continued in use until the establishment of the Commonwealth.
In 1638, the subject of forming a confederacy of the New England colonies was discussed; hut, owing to divers differences, the matter was delayed.
Twenty-three years after the planting of Plymouth, in 1643, the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut were united in a league called “ The United Colonies of New England.” The declared object was defence against the French, Dutch, and Swedes, and in all relations with foreigners the confederation acted, each colony managing its domestic affairs. This was the first union on this continent. The union was declared to be perpetual, and the will of six of the eight commissioners chosen (two for each colony) was to he binding on all. We do not, however, learn that any common flag was adopted until several years later (1686), when Governor Andros received one from the king. In 1645, the people of Massachusetts,
1 See Winthrop’s Journal, vol. i. pp. 141, 154, 156 ; vol. ii. p. B44.182
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
through its legislature, demanded that a negro brought from Africa should be surrendered and sent to his native country.
In 1651, the English Parliament revived and adopted the old standard of the cross of St. George as the colors of England, and the General Court of Massachusetts ordered, “ as the Court conceive the old En^-
O
lish colors now used by the Parliament to be a necessary badge of distinction betwixt the English and other nations in all places of the world, till the state of England alter the same, which we very much desire, we, being of the same nation, have therefore ordered that the captain of the Castle shall advance the aforesaid colors of England upon all necessary occasions.”
In the ‘New England Historical and Genealogical Register’ for 1871 there is an interesting account of a local company of cavalry raised in 1659, just before the restoration of Charles II., by the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Middlesex, Mass., and hence called ‘ The Three County Troop' which, according to the records, continued in existence until 1677, and possibly longer. The annexed drawing of its standard, and bill of its cost, is from an entry in a herald painter’s book of the time of Charles I., preserved in the British Museum.
Standard of the Three County Troop, 1659.
Worke don for New England
For painting in oyle on both sides a Cornett one rich crimson damask, with a hand and sword, and invelloped with a scarfe
about the arms of gold, black and sillver.......................
For a plaine cornett Staffe, with belte, boote and swible at
first penny.....................................................
For silke of crimson and sillver fring and for a Cornett String For crimson damask..........................................
[<£2. 0. 6]
1. 0. 0 1.11. 0 11. 0
£5. 2. 6
(Note. — The first item, ‘£2. 0. 6/ is not given, but is deduced from the adding. The term 6 at first penny9 may be the same as ‘ at first cost.’)FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
183
The existence of this troop is clearly shown by the Massachusetts records of 1659-77, and there can be no doubt the drawing represents its standard. We may imagine it ordered from England before King Philip’s war, and that under its folds the best soldiers of the three counties took part in the contest. Two copies from the drawing agree in representing the inscription on the flag as “ thre county trom ,” which is supposed to be a mistake, and that the flag really bore the words “ Three County Troop,” the name of the company for which it was ordered.
The Hon. Nathaniel Saltonstall, “late of Haverhill,” one of the council for the colonies, on the 31st of May, 1684, wrote to Captain
Thomas Noyes, of Newbury, Mass., concerning the colors of a company of foot commanded by the latter, as follows : —
“In ye Major General’s letter, I have ordered also to require you, which I herein do, with all convenient speed, to provide a flight of colors for your foot company, ye ground field or flight (fly) whereof is to be green, with a red cross with a white field in ye angle, according to the antient customs of our own English nation, and the English plantations in America, and our Colors of Captain Noyes’s	0wn practise in our ships and other vessels. The
Company, 1684	number of bullets to be put into your colors
for distinction may be left out at present without damage in the making of them.
“ So faile not,
“ Your friend and servant,
“ N. Saltonstall.” 1
The flag of New England, in 1686, under the administration of Sir Edmund Andros, as appears by a drawing of it in the British State Paper Office, was the cross of St. George, the king’s colors of the time, borne on a white field occupying the whole flag, the centre of the cross emblazoned with a yellow or gilt crown over the cipher of the sovereign, King James I.
The early colonial documents of New York have several mentions of flags in use in that colony in the latter half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Augustin Herman, Sept. 10, 1650, brought with him from Holland a flag for the burgher’s corps of New Amsterdam; but Stuyvesant,
1 Coffin’s History of Newbury, credited to Eobert Adams’s Manuscript.184
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
who, he wrote, was doing as he pleased, “ would not allow it to he carried.”
The patroon and his codirectors of the “ colonie of Rensselaerswyck ” complained, Jan. 17, 1653, that “ their flag had been hauled down in opposition to the will and protest of their officers.” What that obnoxious flag was we have now no means of ascertaining; but the directors of the chamber of Amsterdam reply, “they are ignorant where the flag was down.”
An English flag was displayed with considerable bravado, Jan. 11, 1664, by one John Schott, in sight of the astonished burghers of New Amsterdam. “ Captain John Schott,” says the record, “ came to the ferry in the town of Breucklin [Brooklyn] with a troop of Englishmen mounted on horseback, with great noise, marching with sounding trumpets,” &c., and hoisted the English flag; and, as soon as John Schott arrived, they uncovered their heads and spoke in English. Secretary Van Buyven asked the captain to cross over, to which John Schott answered, “No ! Let Stuyvesant come over with a hundred soldiers. I shall wait for him here.”
In September of that year the red cross of St. George floated in triumph over the fort, and the name of ‘ New Amsterdam ’ was changed to ‘New York/ Early in October, 1664, New Netherland was ac-
n
knowledged a part of the British realm, and Colonel Richard Nicolls, its conqueror, became governor.
The journal of a voyage to New York in 1679-80, by Jasper Dan-kers and Peter Sluyter, translated from the original Dutch manuscript
and published by the Long Island Historical Society in 1867, has several fac-simile engravings from the original drawings. One of these, a curious picture of New York in 1679, has the union flag or king’s colors flying over the fort, and another, a view of New York from the north, has a rude drawing of a sloop sailing along with flags at the masthead, bowsprit end, and stern, all bearing the St. George cross in a white canton.
The same writers, under date Boston, Thursday,
^orSewT^inTeTa6 July 23, 1680, give us a precise description of
the flag then in use in that colony, by which it seems those colonists’ objection to the cross as an idolatrous symbol, nearly half a century earlier, still existed. Our voyagers say: “ New England is now described as extending from the Fresh [Connecticut] River to Cape Cod and thence to Kennebec, comprising three provincesFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
185
or colonies, — Fresh River, or Connecticut, Rhode Island and the other islands to Cape Cod, and Boston, which stretches from thence north.
They are subject to no one, hut acknowledge the king of England for their honeer [probably heer, that is, lord, is intended], and therefore no ships enter unless they have English passports or commissions. . . . Each province chooses its own governor from the magistracy, and the magistrates are chosen from the principal inhabitants, merchants, or planters. They are all Independent in matters of religion, if it can be called religion; many of them perhaps more for the purpose of enjoying the benefit of its privileges than for any regard to truth and godliness. I observed that while the English flag or color has a red ground with a small white field in the uppermost corner where there is a red cross, they have dispensed with this cross in their color, and preserved the rest.” The diary gives a poor and perhaps prejudiced account of the morality of the community, which it would be out of place to copy here.
Messrs. Brooke and Nicoll, Nov. 13, 1696, in a paper addressed to his Majesty’s Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, relating to the requisites for the defence of New York, ask to be furnished with “ six large union flags, for his ma^8 several forts ” in that colony; and, Eeb. 1, 1696-97, the lords of trade write Governor Fletcher, his Majesty has ordered, with other stores that had been asked for, “ six union flags, which we doubt not the agents will accordingly take care to see shipt.”
It was soon seen that a special flag to designate the merchant ships of the colonies, and to distinguish them from the king’s ships, was desirable; accordingly we find, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the following report issuing from the Admiralty office, with a drawing of the flag: —
St. George’s Cross, 1679.
“Admiralty Office, July 29, 1701.
“ Council Chameer, Whitehall, 31 July, 1701.
“ Their Excellencies the Lords Justices in Council.
“ Report of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty : — Merchant ships-to wear no other Jack than that hereafter mentioned, viz. that worn by his Majesty’s ships, with the distinction of a white escutcheon in the middle-186
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
thereof, and that said mark of distinction may extend itself to one-half the depth of the Jack, and one-third part of the fly thereof, according to the sample [drawing] hereunto annexed.
(Signed)	“ Pembroke.
Hayersham. D. Mitchell.
44 The Lords Justices in Council order that the Governours of his Majesty’s Plantations do oblige the Commanders of such merchant ships to which they grant Commissions to wear no other Jack than according to what is proposed by said report: And the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plan-
Eiag ordered for the Merchant tations are to write to the Governours of his Maj-Service in 1701.	.	.	.	n	.
esty s Plantations, signifying to them respectively
their Excellencies’ pleasure herein, with notice that they have been further pleased to order the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to give necessary directions on their part obliging the said ships to comply with their Excellencies’ pleasure in this matter.
“John Povey,
“A true copy : W. Popple.” 1
This flag was undoubtedly worn by the American colonial vessels for many years, though we have no more than official mention of it, and it is never depicted in the engravings of the time. All the pictures of New England flags from 1700 to 1750 show a red or blue ensign cantoned white, with a red St. George’s cross, and having a tree or globe in upper corner of the canton.
Lieutenant-Governor John Nanfan writes from New York, Dec. 29, 1701, to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations: “Since my last to your Lordships of the 20th October, by Mr. Penn, I have the honor of your Lordships’ letter of the 14th August, with their Excellencies the Lords Justices’ order on the reading the report from the lords of the admiralty relating to a flag of distinction from his Majesty’s ships of war to be worn by all ships that shall be commissionated by the governors of his Majesty’s Plantations, which I shall punctually observe.” , J. Burchett writes to Mr. Popple from the admiralty office, April 19, 1708, that the Lords, &c., instruct Lord Lovelace, the governor of New York, “they have no objections to certain colors proposed for privateers.”
Among the instructions furnished to Robert Hunter, governor of
1 The originals of these papers are in the records at the Massachusetts State House, Boston, vol. lxii., Maritime Affairs, p. 390.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
187
Now York, dated Dec. 29, 1709, is the following: "Whereas great inconveniences do happen by merchant ships and other vessels in the plantations wearing colors borne by our ships of war, under pretence of commissions granted to them by the governors of the said plantations, and that by trading under those colors not only amongst our own subjects but also those of other princes and states, and committing divers irregularities, they do very much dishonor our service, for prevention whereof you are to oblige the commanders of all such ships to which you shall grant commission to wear no other jack than according to the sample here described; that is to say, such as is worn by our ships of war, with the distinction of a white escutcheon in the middle thereof, and that the said mark of distinction may extend itself one-half of the depth of the jack, and one-third of the fly thereof.”1 A similar order was included in the instructions of Francis Nichols, the first royal governor of South Carolina, in 1720, and was undoubtedly forwarded to the governors of the other colonies.
The Lords of Trade to the Duke of Newcastle, under date Aug. 20, 1741, forwarded instructions to the Hon. George Clinton, governor of New York, one of which orders colonial [war] vessels “ to wear the same ensign as merchant ships, and a red jack,2 with the union jack in a canton at the upper corner next the staff.”
Governor Clinton wrote the Duke of Bedford from New York, June 17, 1750, that the Greyhound man-of-war had fired on a vessel with an intention of bringing her to, “ she having a Birdgee flag hoisted; ” a shot struck a young woman, Elizabeth Stibben by name, in the vessel, so that she expired a few hours afterward. The vessel belonged to " Colonel Richetts, of the Jerseys, a hot-headed, rash young man, who declared before he put off from the wharf he would wear that pendant in defiance of the man-of-war.” This affair caused no little excitement, and was the occasion of considerable correspondence between the governor, the commander of the Greyhound, and the magistrates, &c.
The cross of St. George, from its establishment, -in 1651, by the Commonwealth of England, continued in general use in the American colonies with occasional variations throughout the seventeenth century, and until the union flag of James I., devised for his English and Scotch subjects in 1606, was prescribed by act of Parliament for general use throughout the British dominions in 1707.3
1	Instructions to Governor Hunter, New York Colonial History, vol. v. p. 137.
2	See Account of Landing of Britisli Troops at Boston, 1768.
3	The proverb, “ Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones,” is said to have originated at the union of England and Scotland in 1606. Great numbers of188
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
A crimson flag, the jack of which was a red St. George cross on a white field, was the ensign most generally in use in New England. Sometimes a tree, at other times a hemisphere, was represented in the upper canton next the staff formed by the cross, and occasionally the fly or field of the flag was blue.
In a little book, something of the character of the Gotha Almanac, entitled ‘The Present State of the Universe,5 by John Beaumont, Jr., printed at London by Benjamin Motte, 1704, there is a picture of a New England ensign, with a tree, like the one above described. Another book, entitled ‘ A General Treatise of the Dominion and Laws of the Sea,5 &c., by Alexander Justice, Gent., printed at London for S. & J. Sprint and J. Nicholson & Rd. Smith, 1705, has a folding plate of national flags, among which there is a New England ensign of the same character, a tracing of which is annexed. This plate calls the
English Ensign.
East India Company.
Irish Ensign.
Scotch Ensign.
New England Ensign.
From a Plate of National Flags in the ‘ Dominion of the Sea,’ 1705.
English red ensign ‘ the Budge flag,5 the meaning of which is not obvious ; perhaps a burgee flag.
Another wrork, published in 1701, has a representation of this New England ensign; and in yet another work there is a representa-
Scotsmen flocked to London. Buckingham hated the Scotch bitterly, and encouraged marauders to break the windows occupied by them. Some of the sufferers retaliated by breaking the windows of the Duke’s house, which had so many, it was called ‘ the glass house.’ The Duke of Buckingham complained to the king, and the monarch replied, “Ah, Steenie ! Steenie ! those wha live in glass housen should be carefu’ how they fling stanes ! ”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
189
tion of the flag of the New England colonies, having a dark blue field, with a red St. George cross on a white canton, while in the place of the tree a half globe is represented. Tossing, in his ‘ Field-Book of the American Devolution,’ gives a picture of a New England flag, with the tree, copied from an old Dutch work representing the flags of all nations, which is preserved in the library of the New York Historical Society.
I have a French work on flags, published in à La Haye, 1737, which describes a Pavillon de Nouvelle Angleterre en Amérique, “ as
azure, on a canton argent, quartered with the red cross of St. George, having a globe in the first quarter,” in allusion to America, commonly called the 'New World.’ The illustration is a fac-simile, reduced in size, of one in this hook.1
The earliest notice of a New England flag emblematic of the union of more than one colony I have found is that of 1686, heretofore described.2
The departure from the authorized English flag, and assuming standards Nouvelle An&£eteiS£^ Amérique of their own, evinces a feeling of in-1737'	dependence among the colonies, while
the absence of a desire for separation is evident in the allegiance implied by representing on them the colors of England, or, when from tenderness of conscience they were left out, the substitution of the arms of the king.
A green tree wasJ the favorite emblem of Massachusetts, and appeared on the coins of that colony as early as 1652.
By an order of the General Court in that year, a mint was established, and it was ordered that all pieces of money should have a double ring, with this inscription, “ Massachusetts,” and a tree in the centre on one side, and “New England” and the year of our Lord on the other. This was strictly adhered to by the mint-master, and for thirty years all the coins now known as pine-tree shillings, sixpences, &c., bore the date 1652. The rudeness of the impressions on these early coins may render it uncertain whether a pine-tree was
1	La Connoissance des Pavillons ou Bannières que la plupart des Nations arborent en Mer, &c. À La Haye, chez Jaques Van den Kieboom. 1737.
2	See ante, p. 183.190
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
intended to be represented, or some other tree, though at length it received the name of one of the commonest tribes of trees in New England. Mr. Drake, in his f History of Boston/ says, the tree on the New England flag, of which he gives an illustration, “no more resembles a pine-tree than a cabbage.” The following story confirms the idea that a pine-tree may not have been the original design: —
When Charles II. learned the colonies’ assumption of one of his prerogatives to coin money, he was very angry; his wrath was, however, appeased by Sir Charles Temple, a friend of the colony, who told him they thought it no crime to coin money for their own use; and, taking some of the money from his pocket, handed it to the king, who asked him what tree that was upon it. “ That,” replied Sir Charles, “ is the royal oak which preserved your Majesty’s life.” His remark put the king in a good humor, and he heard what Sir Charles had to say in their favor, calling them “ a parcel of honest dogs.” 1
This New England flag was undoubtedly the earliest symbol of a union of the colonies, and it probably went out of use after the adoption of the union flag of King James, by the act of Parliament in 1707, for all the subjects of the British realm. That flag, with the addition of a white shield at the union of the crosses, was ordered (see ante), in 1701, to be worn by all merchant vessels commissioned by the colonial authorities of New England and New York, and, in 1720, by the merchant vessels of South Carolina; and the order was doubtless extended to all the American colonies.
On Will Burgess’s map of Boston, engraved in 1728, there are pictured four ships at anchor and a sloop under sail, all wearing ensigns bearing the union jack of King James on a staff at the stern. One of the ships is dressed with flags, and firing a salute; another flies a long coach-whip pennant at her main.
Sir William Pepperrell, commander of the expedition against Louisbourg, in 1745, furnished the motto for the expeditionary flag; viz., “Nil desperandum, Christo duce”— “Never despair, Christ leads us,” — which gave the enterprise the air of a crusade. Among those engaged against Louisbourg was William Vaughan, a graduate of Harvard University, holding the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel. He conducted the first column through the w7oods, within sight of the city, and saluted it with three cheers. He headed a detachment con-
1 Curwin’s Journal. Valentine’s New York Manual, 1863, contains an account of the flags which have waved over New York City, from a memoir prepared by Doct. A. K. Gardner, for the New York Historical Society.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
191
sisting chiefly of New Hampshire troops, and marched to the northeast part of the harbor in the night, where they burned the warehouses containing the naval stores, and staved a large quantity of wine and brandy.
The smoke of this fire, being driven by the wind into the grand battery, so terrified the French that they abandoned it, and retired to the city, having spiked the guns and cut the halyards of the flag-staff. The next morning, May 2, 1745, as Vaughan was returning with thirteen men only, he crept up the hill which overlooked the battery, and observed that the chimneys of the barrack were without smoke and the staff without a flag. With a bottle of brandy which he had in his pocket he hired one of his party, an Indian, to crawl in at an embrasure and open the gate. He then wrote to the general: “ May it please your honor to be informed that, by the grace of God and the courage of thirteen men, I entered the royal battery about nine o’clock, and am awaiting for a reinforcement and a flag.” Before either could arrive, one of the men climbed up the staff with a red coat in his teeth, which he fastened by a nail to the top. This piece of triumphant vanity alarmed the city, and immediately an hundred men were despatched in boats to retake the battery. But Vaughan, with his small party on the naked bank and in the face of a smart fire from the city and the boats, kept thefn from landing till reinforcements arrived.1
The name of the man who hoisted this impromptu flag with such rash daring is given in an obituary notice containing the following exaggerated version of his feat, printed in the f Boston Gazette ’ of June 3, 1771: “ Medford, May 25, 1771. This day died here Mr. William Tufts, Jr., aged about 44 years. . . . When about 18 years of age he enlisted a volunteer into the service of his king and country in the expedition against Cape Britain [Breton], under the command of Lieut.-General Pepperrell, in the year 1745, where he signalized his courage in a remarkable manner at the Island Battery, when an unsuccessful attempt was made by a detachment from the army to take it by storm. He got into the battery, notwithstanding the heavy fire of the French artillery and small arms, climbed up the flag-staff, struck the French colors, pulled off his red great-coat, and hoisted it on the staff as English colors, all which time there was a continued fire at him from the small arms of the French, and got down untouched, tho’ many bullets went thro’ his trowsers and cloathes.” 2
1	Belknap’s History of New Hampshire.
2	J. L. Sibley, New England Historical and Genealogical Eegister, 1871.192
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Governor Thomas Pownall, in his Journal of 'A Voyage from Boston to Penobscot River/ May, 1759, mentions calling the Indians together and giving them a union flag, probably the union jack with a red field or flag, for their protection and passport. He also furnished them with a red and also a white flag, as emblems of war and amity. Afterwards, he mentions hoisting the king’s colors on a flag-staff at Fort Point, with the usual ceremonies, and saluting them.1
On the 21st of August, 1760, an engagement took place between the English under Lord Amherst and the French forces under Pou-chet, which resulted in the capture of Fort Levis on the St. Lawrence, a little below the present city of Ogdensburg, NT. Y. During this engagement the English vessel Seneca, of 22 guns and 350 men, grounded, and was compelled to strike her flag. There were two other vessels — the Ontaonaise and Oneida — on the English side. “ One thing,” says Pouchet, “ which amused the garrison at the most serious moments of the battle was that the Indians, who were perched upon the trenches and batteries, to watch the contest with the vessels, which they regarded on their side on account of the names that had been given them, made furious cries at seeing them so maltreated, because they carried an Indian painted upon their flags.”2
FLAGS OF THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY AND REVOLUTIONARY PERIODS.
1766-1777.
In contemporary newspapers for ten years preceding the commencement of our revolutionary struggle, liberty poles, trees, and flags of various devices are frequently mentioned.
On the 9th of January, 1766, the people of Portsmouth, N. H., demanded from Governor Meserve, agent for the distribution of stamps in New Hampshire, his commission and instructions, and, notwithstanding his resignation, required him to take oath that he would not directly or indirectly attempt to execute the office. They afterwards marched through the streets, carrying the commission in triumph on the point of a sword, and bearing aloft a flag on which was inscribed “ Liberty, Property, and no Stamps ; ” and, to perpetuate the memorable event, they erected this standard at Swing Bridge, which thenceforth was called ‘ Liberty Bridge.’
1	Maine Historical Collections, vol. y.
2	L. B. Hough’s Trans. Pouchet’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 32.Tage 193
PL.V.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
193
When the Stamp Act reached Boston, intense excitement ensued, and it was denounced as a violation of the British Constitution, and as destructive of the first principles of liberty; a coffin was prepared, inscribed “ Liberty, born at Plymouth, in 1620; died, 1765, aged 145 years ; ” an oration was delivered at the grave, a long procession having followed, with minute guns firing; but, just as the oration was concluded, the figure of Liberty showed symptoms of returning life, whereupon “ Liberty revived ” was substituted on the coffin, amid the joyful ringing of bells.
The obnoxious Stamp Act was passed March 22, 1765, but did not go into effect until November. It was such a source of disaffection, rebellious utterances and acts, that it was repealed the 18th of March, 1766, after having been in operation only four months. When the glad tidings reached America, the colonists saw in its repeal a promise of justice for the future, and went into frenzies of rapture. They had celebrations and bonfires, and were ready to purchase all the goods England had to sell. At New York, they put up a liberty pole in The Fields, with a splendid flag, inscribed “ The King, Pitt, and Liberty.” They ordered a statue of Pitt, who had insisted on the repeal, for Wall Street, and another of George III., for the Bowling Green.
The repeal of the obnoxious act was soon found to be only a snare of their rulers, under cover of which advantage was taken of their grateful mood to wring concessions. Citizens were seized by the British men-of-war in the harbor, and pressed to serve in the crews. Fresh taxes were levied. The soldiers openly insulted the people, and in a few weeks cut down their liberty pole. The angry but patient people raised a new pole, still with the loyal motto. The next spring the soldiers cut it down again. Next day came the Sons of Liberty, a society grown up with the peril of the times, composed of brave, loyal, and intelligent men, and set down a new pole sheathed with iron around its base, — still with the old loyal motto : “ To his most gracious Majesty George III., Mr. Pitt, and liberty.” For almost three years this stanch liberty pole stood, though the soldiers attacked it once or twice. Finally, one January day in 1770, a squad of redcoats mustered at its base, and the gallant pole came down. The Liberty Boys were ready with another pole, but the timid corporation forbade them to raise it on public ground. So the Liberty Boys bought a strip of private ground close by the old stand, eleven feet wide and a hundred feet deep; and from the ship-yard, where it had been formed, they escorted their new mast, six horses, gay with ribbons, drawing it, a full band going before, and three flags flying free, inscribed “Liberty
IB194
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
and Property.”1 They took the mast to the field, and dug a hole twelve feet deep, in which they stepped the liberty pole, after girding it with iron two-thirds of its length from the ground, defying the red-coats to cut it down. On it they shipped a topmast twenty-two feet long, on which was inscribed the word Liberty. This pole the British cut down in 1776.
At Charleston, S. C., under a wide-spreading live oak-tree a little north of the residence of Christopher Gadsden, within the square now bounded by Charlotte, Washington, Brundy, and Alexander Streets, the patriots of 1765 were accustomed to assemble to discuss the political questions of the day; and from this circumstance, that oak, like the great elm in Boston, obtained the name of ‘ liberty tree/ and it is claimed, and generally believed in South Carolina, that under it Gadsden, as early as 1764, first spoke of American independence. In 1765, when the stamp paper reached Charleston, it was deposited at Fort Johnson. A volunteer force took the fort and captured the paper. Whilst they held the fort, they displayed a flag' showing a blue field with three white crescents, which seems to have been improvised by the volunteers; of whom there were three companies. Underneath it, on the 8th of August, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed to the people. In 1766, the Sons of
Liberty met under it, and with linked hands pledged themselves to resist, when the hour for resistance came. Its history and associations were hateful to the officers of the crown, and after the city surrendered, in 1780, Sir Henry Clinton ordered it cut down, and a fire was lighted over the stump by piling its branches around it. Many cane-heads were made from its stump in after years, and a part of it was sawed into thin boards, and made into a neat ballot-
The box was destroyed by fire, at the room of the association, during the great conflagration of 1838.2
The old liberty tree in Boston was the largest of a grove of beautiful elms that stood in Hanover Square, at the corner of Orange (now Washington) and Essex Streets, opposite the present Boylston Market. The exact site is marked by a building,,
1 Valentine’s Manual of the City Councils of New York.	2 Lossing.
box and presented to the 76 Association.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
195
erected by the late Hon. David Sears, in whose front is a bass-relief of the tree, with an appropriate inscription.1 It received the name of ‘ liberty tree ’ from the association called the ‘ Sons of Liberty ’ holding their meetings under it during the summer of 1765. The ground under it was called ‘liberty hall.’ A pole fastened to its trunk rose far above its branching top, and when a red flag was. thrown to the breeze, the signal was understood by the people. Here the Sons of Liberty held many a notable meeting, and placards and banners were often suspended from the limbs or affixed to the body of the tree, and the following inscription was placed upon it: “ This tree was planted in the year 1614, and pruned, by order of the Sons of Liberty, Feb. 14, 1766.” 2 Hov. 20, 1767, the day on which the new revenue law went into effect, there was a seditious handbill posted on it. It contained an exhortation to the Sons of Liberty to rise on that day and fight for their rights, stating, that if they assembled, they would be joined by legions; that if they neglected this opportunity,, they would be cursed by all posterity. In June, 1768, a red flag was hoisted over it, and a paper posted upon it inviting the people to rise and clear the country of the commissioners and their officers.
In 1768, Paul Revere published a view of a part of the town of Boston, in Hew England, and British ships of war landing their troops, Friday, Sept. 30, 1768.
All the ships in front of the town, viz. the Beaver, Donegal, Martin,, Glasgow, Mermaid, Romney, Launceston, and Bonetta, with several smaller vessels, carry the English red union ensign of the time on a staff at the stern, a union jack on the bowsprit, and a red pennant with a union at the main, except the Glasgow, which has a red broad pennant at her main. The Glasgow, seven years later, played an important part at the battle of Bunker’s Hill. The troops are landed and being landed on Long Wharf, and have two pairs of colors, one of each pair is the ordinary union jack, the other a red flag with a union jack in the centre of it. This is probably the red union jack elsewhere mentioned.3
July 31,1769, on Governor Bernard’s being ordered to England, the general joy was manifested by congratulations among the people, salutes from Hancock’s wharf, the union flag flying above the liberty tree, and bonfires on the hills. The flag was kept flying for several days.
1 The illustration represents the bass-relief.	2 Tudor’s life of Otis.
3 A fac-simile of this engraving was printed by the publisher of the ‘ Little Corporal,’ Chicago, 111., in 1870. An engraving of Boston, by William Price, dedicated to Peter Faneuil, and probably of earlier date, as Faneuil died in 1742, represents numerous ships, wearing the English union ensign, while the union flag or king’s colors fly over the forts.196
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
The anniversary of the uprising against the Stamp Act, Aug. 14,1773, was celebrated with great spirit, and a ' union flag’ floated over the tent in which the company had their entertainment. Nov. 3, 1773, a large flag was raised above the liberty tree, and the town-crier summoned the people to assemble. The destruction of the tea followed this meeting. In the winter of 1775-76, the British soldiers cut down this noble tree, which from these associations had become odious to them. It furnished fourteen cords of wood, and probably went to ashes in the stove set up in the Old South Meeting-house, when the soldiers occupied that building for a riding-school, and kindled fires with books and pamphlets from Prince’s valuable library, the remnant of which is now preserved in the Boston Public Library. The destruction of the liberty tree was bitterly resented.
The 'New England Chronicle,’ reporting the act, says: "The enemies of liberty and America, headed by Tom Gage, lately gave a notable specimen of their hatred to the very name of liberty. A party, of whom was one Job Williams, was the ringleader, a few days since repaired to a tree at the south end of Boston, known by the name of ‘ Liberty Tree,’ and, armed with axes, &c., made a furious attack upon it. After a long spell of groaning, swearing, and foaming, with malice diabolical they cut down a tree because it bore the name of f Liberty.’ ”1
At Taunton, Mass., in October, 1774, a' union flag ’ was raised on the top of a liberty pole, with the words ' Liberty and Union ’ thereon.
In January, 1775, the sleds containing wood for the inhabitants of Boston bore a ‘ union flag.’ The colonists had long been familiar with union flags ; they now began to associate liberty with them.
March 21,1775, the friends of liberty at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., erected a flag bearing on one side “ The King,” and on the other “ The Congress and Liberty,” which was cut down by the authorities as a public nuisance.2
In the earliest days of the Revolution each State seems to have set up its own particular banner. There were probably no colors worn by the handful of Americans hastily called together at the battle of Lexington or at Bunker’s Hill, but immediately after, the Connecticut troops had standards, bearing on them the arms of that colony, with the motto, “ Qui transtulit sustinet” in letters of gold, which was freely translated “ God, who transported us hither, will support us.” In April, 1775, six regiments were ordered by the General Assembly of Connecti-
1	The New England Chronicle for August 24-31, 1775.
2	Holt’s Journal, April 6, 1775.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
197
cut to be raised for the defence of the colony. In May, standards were ordered for these regiments. For the 1st, the color was to be yellow; for the 2d, blue ; for the 3d, scarlet; for the 4th, crimson ; for the 5th, ivhite; for the 6th, azure. In July, 1775, two additional regiments were ordered, and the colors for these were, for the 7th, blue; for the 8th, orange. These regiments were enlisted for a few months only, and were not in the field at the formation of the Connecticut line, in 1777. There is now deposited with the Connecticut Historical Society an old red silk flag, about a yard square, on which is a tracing of the arms of Connecticut, in a darker red paint, and over them, in gilt letters, this inscription: —
II BAT II. BEGrT.
CONNECTICUT.
Raised 1640
This flag was presented to the State by the Hon. John Mix, who was an ensign, and adjutant of the 2d regiment of the line in 1777, and is supposed to be of that or earlier date. The “ Raised 1640 ” is supposed to allude to the great English rebellion, as a presage of what might be hoped for in the rebellion just begun.1
In March, 1775, a union flag with a red field, having on one side this inscription, “G-eo. Rex and the Liberties of America,” and on
the other “No Popery,” was hoisted at New York. The armed ships of New York of that time are said to have had a black beaver for their device on their flag. This was the device of the colonial seal of New Netherland, and is still seen on the seal of the city of New York, colonial seal of New No description of the union flags of these times
has been preserved. Aged people, living a few years since, who well remembered the processions and the great flags, could not recall their devices, nor has any particular description of them been found in the contemporaneous private diaries or public newspapers; nevertheless, it is more than probable, and almost certain, that these flags were the familiar flags of the English and Scotch union, established in 1707, and long known as union flags, inscribed with various popular and patriotic mottoes.
The Historical Chronicle of the Gentleman’s Magazine,’ under date April 17, 1775, records “by a ship just arrived at Bristol from
1 Connecticut Quartermaster-General’s Eeport, 1839 ; Hartford Courant, 1839 ; Army and Navy Chronicle, 1839 ; Letters of C. J. Hoadley to G. H. P., 1873.198
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
America, it is reported that the Americans have hoisted their standard of liberty at Salem.”
Neither contemporary accounts nor the recollections of old soldiers are satisfactory respecting the flags used by the continentals at the battle of Bunker Hill, on the 17th of June, 1775. The British used the following signals: “ Signals for boats in divisions, moving to the attack on the rebels on the Heights of Charleston, June 17,1775 ; viz., 1. Blue flag, to advance. Yellow ditto, to lay on oars. Bed ditto, to land.”1 It is not positively ascertained that any were used by the Americans; certainly, none ivere captured from them by the British.
A eulogy on Warren, however, written soon after the battle, describing the astonishment of the British on the morning of the battle, says: —
“ Columbia’s troops are seen in dread array,
And waving streamers in the air display.”
It is to be regretted that the poet has not described these fanciful waving streamers; probably, says another writer, but without stating his authority, “ they were as various as the troops were motley.”
At a patriotic celebration in 1825, a flag was borne which was said to have been unfurled at Bunker Hill; and tradition states that one was hoisted at the redoubt, and that Gage and his officers were puzzled to read by their glasses its motto. A whig told them it was “ Come, if you dare.” Trumbull, in his celebrated picture of the battle, now in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, has represented a red flag having a white canton and red cross and a green pine-tree.2
1	Orderly Book of Major-General Howe.
2	This cannot be considered authoritative. Painters frequently take a poet’s license, and are not always particular in the accuracy of the accessories of their paintings. Thus Leutze, in his ‘Washington crossing the Delaware,’ Dec. 25, 1776, conspicuously displays-the American flag with the blue field and union of white stars, although the flag had no existence before the 14th of June, 1777, and was not published until September, 1777. Yet this inaccurate historical tableau has been selected to embellish the face of the fifty-dollar notes of our national banks. In Powell’s ‘ Battle of Lake Erie,’ at the Capitol, the flag in Perry’s boat has only thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, although fifteen of each had been the legal number for twenty years, or since 1794.
The gold medal awarded to General Daniel Morgan for the ‘ Battle of Cowpens,’ which occurred Jan. 17, 1781, has on its reverse a mounted'officer at the head of his troops charging a flying foe, while behind and over the officer are two large and prominent banners simply striped with thirteen stripes, alternate red and white without the stars,, though the stars had been for more than three years blazoned on the American ensigns. The medal was probably struck in France.
Bacon, in his picture of the ‘ Boston Boys and General Gage,’ hangs out over the porch of the Province House an English ensign showing the union jack of 1801, adopted a quarter of a century later than the scene represented. But this is excusable, since, inFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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In a manuscript plan of the battle, colors are represented in the centre of each British regiment.
Botta1 says that Doctor Warren, finding the corps he commanded pursued by the enemy, despising all danger, stood alone before the ranks, endeavoring to rally his men and to encourage them by his example. He reminded them of the motto inscribed on their ensigns, on the one side of which were these words, “ An appeal to Heaven,” and on the other, “ Qui transtulit sustinet” meaning that the same Providence which brought their ancestors through so many perils to a place of refuge would also deign to support their descendants.
Mrs. Manning, an intelligent old lady, informed Mr. Lossing 2 that her father, who was in the battle, assisted in hoisting the standard,
and she had heard him speak of it as a noble flag; the ground of which was blue, with one corner quartered by the red cross of St. George, in one section of which was a pine-tree.
Washington arrived in Cambridge, Sunday, July 2, accompanied by Major-General Charles Luce, and the "Hew England Chronicle ’ says : —
“ None of the men who have been raised by this and several other colonies are in future to be distinguished as the troops of any particular colony, but as the forces of “The United Colonies of North America,” into whose joint service they have been taken by the Continental Congress, and are to be paid and supported accordingly.” 3
On the 18th of July, a month after the battle of Bunker’s Hill, Major-General Putnam assembled his division on the height of Prospect Hill, to have read to it the manifesto of Congress, signed by John Hancock, its president, and countersigned by Charles Thomson, secretary. The reading was followed by a prayer suited to the occasion, and at the close of the prayer, at signal from the general, the troops cried ‘ Amen,’ and at the same instant the artillery of the fort thundered a general salute, and the scarlet standard of the Third Connecticut Eegiment recently sent to General Putnam, bearing on
a fresco on the walls of the new Houses of Parliament or Palace of Westminster, the artist represents Charles II. landing under this union jack of 1801, which has the saltire gules for Ireland.
1	History of American Revolution.
2	Field-Book of the American Revolution, vol. i. p. 541.
3	The New England Chronicle, and the Essex Gazette, from Thursday, June 29, to Thursday, July 6, 1775.
Bunker Hill Flag.An engraving by Paul Revere, showing the flags in use in Boston during the British occupation in 1775.
Note. — This is a fac-simile of the illustrated heading of a certificate that the bearer was enlisted as a a Montross ” at His Majesty’s North Battery. A similar certificate, with an engraving of the South Battery, at Fort Hill, was given to those enlisted at that battery.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
201
the one side the Connecticut motto, “ Qui transtulit sustinet,” and on the other the recognized motto of Massachusetts, “ An appeal to Heaven,” were unfurled. The same ceremony was observed in the other divisions.1
Lieutenant Paul Lunt, in his Diary, which has been printed, says: “May 10, 1775, marched from Newburyport with sixty men, Captain Ezra Lunt, commander, and May 12, at 11 o’clock, arrived at Cambridge.
. . . June 16, our men went to Charlestown and entrenched on a hill beyond Bunker’s Hill. . . . June 17, the regulars landed a number of troops, and we engaged them. They drove us off the hill and burned Charlestown. July 2, General Washington came into the camp. . . . July 18th. This morning a manifesto from the grand Continental Congress was read by the Eev. Mr. Leonard, chaplain of the Connecticut forces upon Prospect Hill in Charlestown. Our standard was presented in the midst of the regiments, with this inscription upon it, “ Appeal to Heaven,” after which Mr. Leonard made a short prayer, and then we were dismissed, by the discharge of a cannon, three cheers, and a war-whoop by the Indians.”
The 'New England Chronicle’ for July 21, 1775, says: “Cambridge, July 21. On Tuesday morning the standard lately sent to General Putnam was exhibited flourishing in the air, bearing on one side this motto, 'An appeal to Heaven,’ and on the other, 'Qui transtulit sustinet.’ The whole was conducted with the utmost decency, good order, and regularity, and to the universal acceptance of
all present. And the Philistines on Bunker’s Hill heard the shout of the Israelites, and, being very fearful, paraded themselves in battle array.”
June 19, 1775, two days after the battle of Bunker Hill, and before the news had reached Georgia, there was a meeting of a committee of the leading men of Savannah, to enforce the requirements of the American Association. After the meeting, a dinner was had at Ton-dee’s tavern, where a ‘ union flag ’ was hoisted upon a liberty pole, and two pieces of artillery placed under it.
Aug. 1, 1775, there was raised at Prospect Hill, Charlestown, for a flag-staff, a mast seventy-six feet high, which came out of a schooner that was burnt at Chelsea.
1 Bancroft’s History of the United States ; Frothingham’s Siege of Boston; I. J„ Greenwood.
The Pine Tree Flag.
From a map published in Paris, 1776.202
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
In September, 1775, Arnold made liis famous expedition through Maine to Canada, and, when drifting down the gentle current of the Dead River, came suddenly in sight of a lofty mountain covered with snow, at the foot of which he encamped three days, raising the continental flag over his tent. What its color was, or the devices upon it, we have no means of ascertaining. The mountain is now known as ‘ Mount Bigelow,’ — tradition asserting that Major Bigelow, of Arnold’s little army, ascended to its summit, hoping to see the spires of Quebec.
During September, 1775, two strong floating batteries were launched on the Charles River, and opened a fire, in October, upon Boston, that caused great alarm and damaged several houses. They appear to have been scows made of strong planks, pierced near the water-line for oars,
and along the sides higher up for light, and musketry. A heavy gun was placed at each end, and upon the top were four swivels. American Floating Battery, used at Their ensign was a pine-tree flag.1 The six
the Siege of Boston.	i	n .	• • i i	ttt n •
schooners first commissioned by Wasfimg-
From an English Manuscript.	.	.
ton and the first vessels commissioned by the United Colonies sailed under the pine-tree flag.2 Colonel Reed, in a
1	Lossing’s Field-Book of the Revolution.
2	Captain John Selman and Nicholas Broughton were commissioned by General "Washington (according to the statement of Selman to Elbridge Gerry), in the fall of 1775, both living at Marblehead. “ The latter as commodore of two small schooners, one the Lynch, mounting six 4-pounders and ten swivels, and manned by seventy seamen, and the other the Franklin, of less force, having sixty-five. The commodore hoisted his broad pendant on board the Lynch, and Selman commanded the latter.
“These vessels were ordered to the river St. Lawrence, to intercept an ammunition vessel bound to Quebec, but missing her, they took ten other vessels, and Governor Wright, of St. Johns, all of which were released, as we had waged a ministerial war, and not one against our most gracious sovereign.” — Letter of E. Gerry to John Aclams, dated Feb. 9, 1813.
The form of commission issued by General Washington to the officers of the vessels fitted out by him, under authority of the Continental Congress, and the officers so commissioned, were as follows : —
By his Excellency George Washington, Esq., Commander-in-chief of the Army of the
United Colonies.
To William Burke, Esq.
By virtue of the powers and authorities to me given by the honorable Continental Congress, I do hereby constitute and appoint you captain and commander of the schooner Warren, now lying at Beverly port, in the service of the United Colonies of North America, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the said office of captain and commander of the said vessel, and to perform and execute all matters and things which to your said office do, or may of right belong or appertain, until further order shall be given herein by the honorable Continental Congress, myself, or any future commander-in-chief of said army, willing and commanding all officers, soldiers, and persons whatsoever anyFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
203
letter from Cambridge to Colonels Glover and Moylan, under date Oct. 20, 1775, says : “ Please fix upon some particular color for a flag, and a signal by which our vessels may know one another. What do you think of a flag with a white ground and a tree in the middle, the motto, ‘ An appeal to Heaven,5 — this is the flag of our floating batteries.” Colonels Moylan and Glover replied the next day, that, as Broughton and Selman, who had sailed that morning, had none but their old colors (probably the old English union ensign), they had appointed as the signal by which they could be known to their friends the ensign at the main topping lift. In January, the Franklin was wearing the pine-tree flag.1
The suggestion of Colonel Eeed seems to have been soon adopted. The ‘ London Chronicle,5 for January. 1776, describing the flag of a captured cruiser, says: “ There is in the admiralty office the flag of a provincial privateer. The field is white bunting. On the middle is a green pine-tree, and upon the opposite side is the motto,f An appeal to Heaven! 55 April, 1776, the Massachusetts council passed a series
way concerned, to be obedient and assisting to yon in tbe dne execution of this commission .
Given under my hand and seal, at Cambridge, this 1st day of February, Amioque Domini, 1776.
George Washington.
By His Excellency’s command.
To Captain William Burke, of the Warren.
Officers of the Armed Vessels fitted out by Order of General Washington, on the 1st day of
February, 1776.
Hancock . .	. John Manley ....	. Captain and Com. .	. 1 January, 1776.
	Richard Stiles . . .	. 1st Lieutenant . .	. 1 January, 1776.
	Nicholas Ogilby . . .	. 2d Lieutenant . .	. 1 January, 1776.
Lee. . . 8	. Daniel Waters . . .	. Captain ....	. 20 January, 1777.
	William Kissick . .	. 1st Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
	John Gill		. 2d Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
	John Desmond . . .	. Master		. 20 January, 1776.
Franklin. .	. Samuel Tucker . . .	. Captain ....	. 20 January, 1776.
	Edward Phittiplace	. 1st Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
	Francis Salter . . .	. 2d Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
Harrison. .	. Charles Dyar. . . .	. Captain ....	. 20 January, 1776.
	Thomas Dote....	. 1st Lieutenant . .	. 23 January, 1776.
	John Wigglcsworth	. 2d Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
Lynch. . .	. John Ayres ....	. Captain ....	' . 20 January, 1776.
	John Roche ....	. 1st Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
	John Tiley ....	. 2d Lieutenant . .	. 20 January, 1776.
Warren . .	. William Burke . . .	. Captain ....	. 1 February, 1776.
American Archives, 4th series, voi. iv. pp. 909, 910.
1 See next page.204
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
of resolutions for the regulation of the sea service, among which was the following: —
“ Resolved, That the uniform of the officers be green and white, and that they furnish themselves accordingly; and that the colors be a wdiite flag, with a green pine-tree, and the inscription, ‘An appeal to Heaven! ” According to the English newspapers, privateers, throughout this year, wearing a flag of this description were captured and carried into British ports. “Jan. 6,1776, the Tartar, Captain Meadows, arrived at Portsmouth, England, from Boston, with over seventy men, the crew of an American privateer that mounted ten guns, taken by the Eowryr man-of-war. Captain Meadows likewise brought her colors, which are a pale green palm-tree upon a white field, with this motto, ‘ We appeal to Heaven! ” She was taken on the Massachusetts coast cruising for transports, and was sent out by the council of that province.
Commodore Samuel Tucker, writing to the Hon. John Holmes, March 6, 1818,1 says: “The first cruise I made was in January, 1776, in the schooner Franklin, of seventy tons, equipped by order of General Washington, and I had to purchase the small arms to encounter the enemy with money from my own pocket, or go without; and my wife made the banner I fought under, the field of which was white, and the union green, made therein in the figure of a pine-tree, made of cloth of her own purchasing, at her own expense.”
Under these colors he captured the ship George and brig Arabella, transports, having on board about two hundred and eighty Highland troops of General Fraser’s corps.
“Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 10, 1776, on Sunday, arrived from off Boston a privateer brig, called the Yankee Hero, Captain Tracy. She was taken by the Milford frigate, 28 guns, Captain Burr, after an obstinate engagement, in which the captain of the privateer received a ball through his thigh, soon after which she struck. She is a fine vessel, and mounts twelve carriage guns and six swivels. Her colors were a pine-tree on a white field.”
Instances of the use of this pine-tree flag, from October, 1775, to July, 1776, could be multiplied.
In the museum collected in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in 1876, was exhibited a green silk military flag, said to have belonged to a Newburyport company during the Revolution. The flag has a white canton, on which is painted a green pine-tree in a blue field, surrounded by a chain circle of thirteen links, each link grasped by a mailed hand coming out of a cloud.
1 Shepard’s Life of Commodore Tucker.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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In the same museum was a regimental flag of yellow silk, which once belonged to Colonel D. B. Webb, aid to General Putnam, and afterwards an aid and the private secretary of Washington. It was so mutilated that its general device could not be traced, but a female figure holds in her hand a staff, the top crowned or covered with a low-crowned and broad-brimmed hat, while from the staff streams a pennant of thirteen red and white stripes.
Among the curious relics of the American Revolution in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society there is a silk flag, which was presented by Governor Hancock to a colored company called the “ Bucks of America.” It has for a device a pine-tree and buck, above which are the initials “ J. H.” and “ G. W.,” for Hancock and Washington.
Mrs. Margaret C. Craig, the daughter of General Craig, an officer of the Revolution, and now living in Hew Alexandria, Penn., has a
rattlesnake flag, which was carried by Colonel John Procter’s regiment all through the war, and was at the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Ash Swamp, &c.
The flag is composed of heavy crimson watered silk, somewhat faded, and, where painted, cracked and broken, and the covering and fringe of the two tassels have been worn almost away; otherwise, the flag is in good condition. The painting is alike on both sides of the flag. It is six feet four inches long by five feet ten inches wide, and is cantoned with the English union jack of 1707; that is, with a St. George’s red and St. Andrew’s white cross on a blue field. In the centre of the red field of the flag there is painted a rattlesnake of the natural color, coiled up, and in the attitude of striking, and having thirteen rattles erect, representing the thirteen colonies. It will be noticed that the head of the snake is significantly erected, as if in defiance, towards the English union. Below the snake, on a yellow scroll, in large black letters, is the motto, “ Don’t tread on me.” Above the snake are the letters “ J. P.,” and just below them are the letters “ I. B. W. C. P.” These letters, General Craig said,
1 The illustration is from a drawing of the flag by Mrs. Campbell, furnished by Mrs. Craig.
Flag of First Brigade, Westmoreland County, Penn , 3775.1206
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
meant “ John Procter’s First Brigade, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.”
The flag belonged to Colonel Procter’s regiment, of which General Craig was a junior officer. On Colonel Procter’s death, the flag was presented to the next senior officer, and thus handed down to General Craig, who was the last surviving officer, and was sent to him by mail, but, unfortunately, the accompanying letter, detailing its history, has been lost. Mrs. Craig, to whom I am indebted for a painting of this interesting relic, from which the illustration is taken, informs me the flag has been in the possession of her family for more than seventy years. It is the only flag of the time bearing the rattlesnake device that I know "of in existence at this time.
Mrs. Craig values the flag very highly, and says, when the rebels invaded Pennsylvania, from the front yard of her house she heard distinctly the cannonading at Gettysburg, and resolved, should the rebels raid through her neighborhood, that she would secure it from them, as also her father’s sword. The flag was last displayed in public at the centennial celebration at Greensburg, Penn.
Another standard exhibited in Independence Hall, in 1876, and now deposited with the Pennsylvania Historical Society, was that of the First Rifle Regiment of Pennsylvania, 1775-83, which is thus described by Lieutenant-Colonel Hand, in a letter to Jasper Yeates, under date, “ Prospect Hill, March 8,1776 : ” “ I am stationed on Cobbles Hill, with four companies of our regiment. Two companies — Cluggage’s and Chambers’s — were ordered to Dorchester on Monday. Ross’s and Lowden’s relieved them yesterday. Every regiment is to have a standard and colors. Our standard is to be a deep green ground, the device a tiger, partly enclosed by toils, attempting the pass, defended by a hunter armed with a spear (in white), on a crimson field. The motto, f Donari nolo! ”
In its services the regiment traversed every one of the thirteen States, and this standard was borne by it in all its skirmishes in front of Boston; at White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Green Springs, Yorktown, and was with Wayne when he fought the last battle of the war, at Sharon, Ga., May 24, 1782; entered Savannah in triumph, July 11, and Charleston, S. C., Dec. 14,1782 ; was in camp on James Island, S. C., May 11,1783, and only when the news of the cessation of hostilities reached that point was embarked for Philadelphia.1
1 Annals of Buffalo Valley, by John Blair Linn, Esq., p. 85 ; also his letter to Philadelphia Times, April 6, 1877.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
207
The battle-flag of Colonel William Washington’s cavalry troop, known as the ‘ Entaw Standard/ was placed in the custody of the Washington Light Infantry Corps, of Charleston, S. C., on the 19th of April, 1827, by the Colonel’s widow, Mrs. Jane Washington, and is now preserved in their armory. It is of heavy crimson silk, and is in good condition. This little crimson flag first waved in victory at the battle of Cowpens, Jan. 17, 1781; and under its folds at Entaw Springs, Sept. 8, 1781, Lieutenant-Colonel Wade Hampton and many officers were wounded, and Colonel William Washington being disabled by the killing of his horse while charging the enemy, was made a prisoner.1
The tradition of the origin of the flag is interesting. Colonel Washington came from Virginia to South Carolina at the head of a cavalry force, and met Miss Jane Elliott at her father’s house on the family estate, known as Sandy Hill, near Eautowle’s Bridge, ten miles west of Charleston; a mutual attachment was formed, and Miss Elliott, sharing the sentiments of all her family, was an intense friend of the rebel cause. In the fall of 1780, Colonel Washington paid a hurried visit to his fiancee, and when about to leave, in reply to her playful remark that she would look out for news of his flag and fortunes, he replied, that his corps carried no flag. With a woman’s ready resource she seized her scissors, and, cutting a square of crimson damask that embellished the back of a stately drawing-room chair, said, “ Colonel, make this your standard! ” and gave it to her gallant lover, at the head of whose cavalry it was borne, mounted on a small hickory pole, during the remainder of the war. Never were knights of the old days of chivalry more deeply inspired by maidenly guerdons than were Washington and his brave cavaliers as they charged under that little square of crimson silk.
1 Constitution and Rules and Relics belonging to the Washington Light Infantry, 1879.
Entaw Flag.208
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
This flag was known as “ Tarleton’s Terror/’ after their last-named battle. It was presented to the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, by Mrs. Jane Elliott Washington in person, in 1827, on the anniversary of the battle of Lexington. The presentation took place in front of the then Washington mansion, southwest corner of South Battery and Church Streets, Charleston, S. C., and the house is still standing. Sergeant H. S. Tew, the color-sergeant, who received and bore the flag on that parade, still survives. This standard is always displayed on the Washington birthday parade, and other important military occasions. It was carried to the Bunker Hill centennial, and everywhere received with great enthusiasm. It was also carried as the colors of the Centennial Legion at Philadelphia, 4th July, 1876, which command was composed of one representative military corps from each of the old thirteen States. It will be a conspicuous feature at the grand celebration of the centennial of Cowpens, 17th January, 1881, at which time a memorial column to the victors of that field will be dedicated, with imposing ceremonies, under the auspices of the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, S. C.
At the semi-centennial celebration by the corps of Jane Washington day, or of the presentation of the flag, in 1877, Captain Courtenay, in an eloquent and patriotic speech, thus alluded to this valued relic: —
“ Fifty years ago to-day the Washington Light Infantry were in martial array in front of a well-known Carolina home. In the ample portal stood a venerated matron, whose brow had been frosted by time. Supported by an only son, she was discharging the last public duty of an eventful life. In her hand was that banner, originally improvised by her for the service of her country, and presented to that soldier of Virginia who under its crimson folds achieved a flashing fame, which filled the new-born States with patriotic enthusiasm, and still casts a reflected splendor on his times. Grouped around her were a trio of our own worthies, chosen sponsors of this corps, to make its solemn pledges and to assume the custody of this relic. The brilliant assemblage of spectators has receded from view, the long line of enthusiastic soldiers now answer a short roll-call. The chief actors have passed from time to eternity, but the spirit of the day we celebrate survives. . . . The world is largely impressed by symbols. We have our symbol! There it stands, the flag of Eutaw, Guilford, and the Cowpens! It has been intrusted to our keeping, but it is the heritage of all our people, a constant reminder to the youth of Carolina of every thing that is noble in citizenship and the martial virtues. May that standard in its progressing life ever command the rever-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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cnce due age, and combine the privileges of ardent youth! and as is the breadth of its widening fame, so shall also be the responsibilities imposed upon this community, for whom it stands in solemn pledge, ever recalling the wisdom, fortitude, and self-sacrificing spirit of our heroic past.” 1 2
On the 22d of February following, a day which is always remembered by the corps as its chosen anniversary, the orator of the day, the Eev. E. C. Edgerton, a member of the company, said, alluding to the flag: “ There is meaning in our words when we gather beneath the crimson folds of the Eutaw banner, illumined by the stars and stripes, and shout: —
u 1 Unfurl the glorious banner
Which at Eutaw shone so bright,
And, like a dazzling meteor, swept Through the Cowpens deadly fight.
Sound, sound your lively bugles,
Let them pour their loudest blast,
While we pledge both life and honor To stand by it to the last.7 77 2
In the orderly book of the army, at Williamsburg, Va., under date, “Head-quarters, April 8, 1776,” is found this entry: “The colonels are desired to provide themselves with some colors and standards, if they are to be procured: it doth not signify of what sort they are.”
In the American Archives there is a description of the standard of the Thirteenth Regiment, under date Sept. 8, 1776; viz., “Ground, light buff; device, a pine-tree and field of Indian corn (emblematical of JSTew England corn-fields). Two officers in the uniform of the regiment, one of them wounded in the breast, the blood streaming from the wound. Under the pine, several children. One of the officers pointing to them, with the motto, ‘ For posterity we bleed' ” 3
On the 13th of September, 1775, Colonel Moultrie received an order from the Council of Safety for taking Fort Johnson, on James Island, S. C.;4 and, a flag being thought necessary, Colonel Moultrie was requested to procure one by the council, and had a large blue flag made, with a crescent in the dexter corner, to be uniform with the troops of the garrison, who were clothed in blue, and wore silver cres-
1	Jane Washington Day, &c., Charleston, S. C., 1877, p. 10.
2	Annual Observance of Washington’s Birthday by the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, S. C., 1878, p. 12, and Banner Song of the Washington Light Infantry, by Theo. L. Smith, Esq.
3	American Archives, 5th series, vol. ii. p. 244.	4 Holmes’s Annals.
14210
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
cents in front of their caps,1 inscribed “ Liberty or Death.” He said, “ this was the first American flag displayed in the ¡South.” When Moultrie hoisted this flag, the timid people said it had the appearance of a declaration of war, and that the captain of the Tamar, then off Charleston, would look upon it as an insult and flag of defiance. A “ union flag ” had been displayed at Savannah the preceding June.2 June 28, 1776, the standard advanced by Colonel Moultrie on the southeast bastion of Fort Sullivan — or Moultrie, as it was afterwards named, on account of his gallant defence of it — was the same crescent flag, with the word Liberty emblazoned upon it.3
At the commencement of the action, the crescent flag which waved opposite the union flag upon the western bastion fell outside upon the beach. Sergeant William Jasper, an Irishman by parentage, seeing this, cried out to Colonel Moultrie, “ Don’t let us fight without a flag, Colonel,” and leaped the parapet, walked the wrhole length of the fort, picked up the flag, fastened it on a sponge staff, and in the midst of the iron hail pouring upon the fortress, and in sight of the whole British fleet, fixed the flag firmly upon the bastion. Three cheers greeted him as he leaped within the fort. On the day after the battle, Governor Rutledge visited the fort, and rewarded Jasper for his valor by presenting him with his own small sword, which he was then wearing, and thanked him, in the name of his country. He offered him a lieutenant’s commission; but Jasper, who could neither read nor write, declined it, saying, “ I am not fit to keep officers’ company: I am but a sergeant.”
On the day after the battle, the British fleet left Charleston Harbor. The joy of the Americans was unbounded, and the following day (June 30), the wife of Major Bernard Elliot presented Colonel Moultrie’s regiment with a pair of elegant colors; one of them was of fine blue silk, the other of fine red silk, both richly embroidered. In the assault on Savannah, Oct. 9, 1779, they were planted on the walls of the city, beside the lilies of France. Lieutenants Hume and Buck, who carried them, having fallen, Lieutenant Gray, of the South Carolina regiment, seized their standards, and kept them erect until he was stricken by a bullet, when brave Sergeant Jasper sprang forward, and had just fastened them on the parapet of the Spring Hill redoubt when a rifle-ball pierced him, and he fell into the ditch. Just then a retreat was sounded, and Jasper, wounded- and dying as he was, seized the colors, and succeeded in saving them from
1 Colonel Moultrie’s Memoirs of the Revolution, vol. i. p. 90.	2 See ante.
3 Bancroft’s History of the United States ; Dawson’s Battles hy Sea and Land.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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falling into the hands of the enemy. He was carried to camp, and soon after expired. Just before he died, he said to Major Harry, “ Tell Mrs. Elliot I lost my life supporting the colors she gave to our regiment.” 1
The Declaration of Independence wTas read by Major Elliot at Charleston, on the 5th of August, 1776, to the people, young and old, and of both sexes, assembled around the liberty pole, with all the military of the city and vicinity, flags flying and drums beating. Among the flags were, without doubt, these standards presented by his wife. They were captured when Charleston surrendered, May 12, 1780, and were among the British trophies preserved in the Tower of London.
The General Congress, having previously appointed a committee to prepare a plan, on the 13th of October, 1775, after some debate, “Resolved, That a swift sailing-vessel, to carry the carriage-guns and a proportionable number of swivels, with eighty men, be fitted with all possible despatch, for a cruise of three months.” It was also “ Resolved, That another vessel be fitted for the same purposes,” and “ that a marine committee, consisting of Messrs. Dean, Langdon, and Gadsden, report their opinion of a proper vessel, and also an estimate of the expense.” On the 17th of October, the committee brought in their estimate and report, which, after debate, was recommitted. On the 30th, the committee recommended that the second vessel be of a size to carry fourteen guns and a proportionate number of swivels and men; it was further resolved that two more vessels be fitted out with all expedition, the one to carry not exceeding twenty guns, and the other not exceeding thirty-six guns, with a proportionate number of swivels and men, to be employed for the protection and defence of the United Colonies, as Congress shall direct. Four new members were added to the committee; viz., Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Hewes, Mr. R. H. Lee, and Mr. John Adams.2
Nov. 9, 1775, it was “Resolved, That two battalions of marines be raised, to be enlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, and to be considered as a part of the continental army of Boston, particular care to be taken that no persons be appointed or enlisted into said battalions
1	Lossing’s Field-Book of the Revolution, vol. ii. pp. 532, 551. Oct. 9, 1879, there was a centennial celebration, at Savannah, of the siege, when the corner-stone of a monument to Jasper was laid over the spot where he received his death-wound a hundred years before. Savannah News, Oct. 9, 1879.
2	Journal of Congress, vol. i. p. 204.212
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but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required/’ By a resolution of the 30th, they were ordered to be raised independent of the army ordered for service in Massachusetts.
November 23, the Marine Committee reported rules for the government of the navy, which were adopted on the 28th. On the 2d of December, the committee were directed to prepare a proper commission for the captains and commanders of the ships of war in the service of the United Colonies,1 and reported one, which was adopted the same day. December 9, Congress established the pay of the navy, and on December 11 it was resolved that a committee be appointed to devise ways and means for furnishing these colonies with a naval armament, and report with convenient speed, and that this committee consist of a member from each colony; viz., Mr. Bartlett, Mr. S. Adams, Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Deane, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Crane, Mr. Morris, Mr. Read, Mr. Paca, Mr. R. A. Lee, Mr. Hewes, and Mr. Gadsden.
On the 13th, this committee reported that five ships of thirty-two guns, five of twenty-eight guns, three of twenty-four guns, can be fitted for sea probably by the last of March next; viz., in New Hampshire, one; in Massachusetts, two; in Connecticut, one; in Rhode Island, two; in New York, two; in Pennsylvania, four; in Maryland, one,” — the probable cost of these vessels being estimated at $866,666§. The next day, the same committee, Mr. Chase being substituted for Mr. Paca, was appointed to carry out the report.
These provisions for a continental navy were prior to the resolutions of the Massachusetts Council, April, 1776, providing a green uniform and the pine-tree flag for her State marine; but they make no provision for a national flag for this navy of the United Colonies.
John Jay, in a letter dated July, 1776, three months later, expressly states Congress had made no order, at that date, " concerning continental colors, and that captains of the armed vessels had followed their own fancies.” He names as one device a rattlesnake rearing its crest and shaking its rattles, and having the motto, “ Don’t tread on me.”
De Benvouloir, the discreet emissary of Yergennes, who arrived in Philadelphia the latter part of 1775, just after Congress had ordered the thirteen ships of war, reports to the French minister: “ They have given up the English flag, and have taken for their devices a rattlesnake with thirteen rattles, and a mailed arm holding thirteen arrows.”
'The London Chronicle,’ July 27, 1776, says: "The colors of the
1 Journal of Congress, vol. i. p. 255.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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American fleet have a snake with thirteen rattles, the fourteenth budding, described in the attitude of going to strike, with this motto,
' Don’t tread on me.’ ”
The number thirteen, representative of the number of colonies, seems to have been constantly in mind; thus, thirteen vessels are ordered to be built, thirteen stripes are placed on the flag, thirteen arrows are grasped in a mailed hand, thirteen rattles on the rattlesnake, and, later, thirteen arrows in the talons of the eagle, and thirteen mailed hands grasping an endless chain of thirteen links.
The rattlesnake was a favorite device with the colonists, and its origin as an American emblem deserves investigation as a curious feature in our national history.1
The choice of this reptile as a representative of the colonies had attained a firm position in the regard of the colonists long before difficulties with Great Britain were anticipated. As early as April, 1751, an account of the trial of Samuel Sanders, an English transported convict, for the murder of Simon Gerty, occasioned the following reflections, which were published in Franklin's paper, the 'Pennsylvania Gazette: ’ —
“ 'When we see our papers filled continually with accounts of the most audacious robberies, the most cruel murders, and an infinity of other villanies perpetrated by convicts transported from Europe, what melancholy, what terrible reflections, must it occasion! What will become our position ? These are some of thy favors, Britain, and thou art called the mother country ? But what good mother ever sent thieves and villains to accompany her children, to corrupt some with infectious vices and murder the rest ? What father ever endeavors to spread plague in his own family ? We don’t ask fish, but thou givest us serpents, and worse than serpents, in which Britain shows a more sovereign contempt for us than by emptying her jails into our settlements. What must we think of that board which has advocated the repeal of every law that we have hitherto made to prevent this deluge of wickedness from overwhelming us ? and with this cruel sarcasm: that those laws were against the public utility, for they tended to prevent the improvement and well-peopling of the colonies. And what must we think of those merchants who, for the sake of a little paltry gain, will be concerned in importing and disposing of such cargoes ? ’
“ This remonstrance, a bold one for the time, was commented upon in a succeeding number of the 'Gazette,’ by a writer who proposed
1 The account following is derived in part from an article printed in the ‘ Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch,’ 1871.214
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
the colonists should send to England in return f a cargo of rattlesnakes, which should he distributed in St. James’s Park, Spring Garden, and other places of pleasure, and particularly in noblemen’s gardens.’ He adds:—
“ ‘ Let no private interests obstruct public utility. Our mother knows what is best for us. What is a little house-breaking, shoplifting, or highway robbery ? What is a son now and then corrupted and hanged, a daughter debauched, a wife stabbed, a husband’s throat cut, or a child’s brains beat out with an axe, compared with “ the improvement and well-peopling of the colonies ” ? ’
“ This idea of rendering the rattlesnake a means of retribution for the wrongs of America could scarcely have been forgotten, and received a new value three years afterwards, when, to stimulate the colonies to a concert of measures against the Indians, the device of a snake cut into eight parts, representing the colonies then engaged in the war against the French and Indians, was published at the head of the ‘ Gazette,’ with the motto, ‘ Join or die.’ This device was adopted
by other newspapers in the colonies, and in 1775 it was placed at the head of the ‘ Pennsylvania Journal,’ the head representing New England, and the other disjointed portions being marked with the initials, ‘ N. Y.,’ ‘ N. J.,’ f P.,’ f M.,’ f V.,’ f N. C.,’ ‘ S. C.,’ and ‘ G.’ The motto then was, ‘ Unite or die.’ These matters kept the rattlesnake in the memory of the provincials, and may have led to its early adoption.
“Bradford’s 'Pennsylvania Journal’ of Dec. 27, 1775, contains the following speculations upon the reasons for the adoption of this emblem. This composition has been ascribed to Dr. Franklin, without any very good cause. The journal which published it was one with which Dr. Franklin was not friendly. He would have been more likely to have sent his communication to the ‘ Gazette,’ which was partly owned by his old partner, David Hall.
“ ‘ Messrs. Printers: — I observed on one of the drums belonging to the marines, now raising, there was painted a rattlesnake, with this modest motto under it, “ Don’t tread on me! ” As I know it is the custom to have some device on the arms of every country, I supposed this might be intended for the arms of North America. As I have nothing to do with public affairs, and as my time is perfectly my own, in order to divert an idle hour I sat down to guess what might have* been intended by this uncommon device. I took care, however, to consult on this occasion a person acquainted with heraldry, from whom
JJ	H fflNE
.WIEE	V
Snake Device.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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I learned that it is a rule among the learned in that science that the worthy properties of an animal in a crest shall be considered, and that the base ones cannot have been intended. He likewise informed me that the ancients considered the serpent as an emblem of wisdom, and, in a certain attitude, of endless duration; both which circumstances, I suppose, may have been in view. Having gained this intelligence, and recollecting that countries are sometimes represented by animals peculiar to them, it occurred to me that the rattlesnake is found in no other quarter of the globe than America, and it may therefore have been chosen on that account to represent her. But then the worthy properties of a snake, I judged, would be hard to point out. This rather raised than suppressed my curiosity, and having frequently seen the rattlesnake, I ran over in my mind every property for which she was distinguished, not only from other animals, but from those of the same genus or class, endeavoring to fix some meaning to each not wholly inconsistent with common sense. I recollected that her eye exceeded in brightness that of any other animal, and that she had no eyelids. She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders. She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage. As if anxious to prevent all pretensions of quarrelling with the weapons with which nature favored her, she conceals them in the roof of her mouth, so that, to those who are unacquainted with her, she appears most defenceless; and even when those weapons are shown and extended for defence, they appear weak and contemptible; but their w7ounds, however small, are decisive and fatal. Conscious of this, she never wounds until she has generously given notice even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her. Was I wrong, sirs, in thinking this a strong picture of the temper and conduct of America ?
“ ‘ The poison of her teeth is the necessary means of digesting her food, and, at the same time, is the certain destruction of her enemies. This may be understood to intimate that those things which are destructive to our enemies may be to us not only harmless, but absolutely necessary to our existence. I confess I was totally at a loss what to make of the rattles until I went back and counted them, and found them just thirteen, — exactly the number of colonies united in America; and I recollected, too, that this was the only part of the snake which increased in numbers. Perhaps it may have only been my fancy, but I conceited the painter had shown a half-formed additional rattle, which I suppose may have been intended to represent the province of Canada. ’Tis curious and amazing to observe how216
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
distinct and independent of each other the rattles of this animal are, and yet how firmly they are united together so as to be never separated except by breaking them to pieces. One of these rattles, singly, is incapable of producing sound; but the ringing of thirteen together is sufficient to alarm the boldest man living. The rattlesnake is solitary, and associates with her kind only when it is necessary for her preservation. In winter, the warmth of a number together will preserve their lives, whilst singly they would probably perish. The power of fascination attributed to her by a generous construction may be understood to mean that those who consider the liberty and blessings which America affords, and once come over to her, never afterwards leave her, but spend their lives with her. She strongly resembles America in this: that she is beautiful in youth, and her beauty increases with age; her tongue also is blue, and forked as lightning, and her abode is among impenetrable rocks.
“ ‘ Having pleased myself with reflections of this kind, I communicated my sentiments to a neighbor of mine, who has a surprising readiness at guessing any thing which relates to public affairs; and, indeed, I should be jealous of his reputation in that way, were it not that the event constantly shows that he has guessed wrong. He instantly declared it his sentiment that Congress meant to allude to Lord North’s declaration in the House of Commons, that he never would relax his measures until he had brought America to his feet, and to intimate to his lordship that if she was brought to his feet, it would be dangerous treading on her. But I am positive he has guessed wrong; for I am sure Congress would not, at this time of day, condescend to take the least notice of his lordship in that or any other way. In which opinion I am determined to remain your humble servant.’ ”
Colonel Gadsden of South Carolina, a member of the Marine Committee, presented Congress, on the 8th of February, 1776, “an elegant standard, such as is to be used by the commander-in-chief of the American navy; being a yellow flag, with a lively representation of a rattlesnake in the middle in the attitude of going to strike, and these words underneath, ‘ Don't tread on me! ” Congress ordered that the said standard be carefully preserved and suspended in the Congress-room ; and from that time it was placed in the southwest corner of that room, at the left hand of the President’s chair.1
It would be interesting to know the further history of this flag, and what became of it. Such an historical flag would not be purposely destroyed.
1 Drayton’s Memoirs American Revolution, vol. ii. p. 172.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The first legislation of Congress on the subject of a Federal navy was in October, 1775, and after that, national cruisers were equipped and sent to sea on a three months’ cruise ; but, so far as we can learn, without any provision for a national ensign, and probably wearing the colors of the State they sailed from. Before the close of the year, and before the grand union flag raising at Cambridge, Congress had authorized a regular navy of seventeen vessels, varying in force from ten to thirty-two guns ; had established a general prize law, in consequence of the burning of Falmouth by Mowatt; had regulated the relative rank of military and naval officers ; had established the pay of the navy, and appointed (Dec. 22,1775) Esek Hopkins commander-in-chief of the naval forces of the embryo republic, fixing his pay at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. At the same time, captains were commissioned to the Alfred, Columbus, Andrea Doria, Cabot, and Providence, and first, second, and third lieutenants were appointed to each of those vessels.
John Adams, a member of the Marine Committee, gives the following reasons for the choice of these names : “ The first was named Alfred, in honor of the founder of the greatest navy that ever existed ; the second, Columbus, after the discoverer of this quarter of the globe ; the third, Cabot, for the discoverer of the northern part of this continent; the fourth, Andrea Doria, in honor of the great Genoese admiral ; and the fifth, Providence, the name of the town where she was purchased, and the residence of Governor Hopkins and his brother Esek, whom we appointed the first captain.”
The Alfred was a stout merchant ship, originally called the Black Prince, and commanded by John Barry. She arrived at Philadelphia on the 13th of October, and was purchased and armed by the committee. The Columbus, originally the Sally, was first purchased by the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania, and ten days after sold to the naval committee of Congress. The merchant names of the other ships I have been unable to ascertain. Notwithstanding the equipping of this fleet, the necessity of a common national flag seems not to have been thought of, until Doctor Franklin, Mr. Lynch, and Mr. Harrison were appointed to consider the subject, and assembled at the camp at Cambridge. The result of their conference was the retention of thé king’s colors or union jack, representing the still-recognized sovereignty of England, but coupled to thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, emblematic of the union of the thirteen colonies against its tyranny and oppression, in place of the loyal red ensign.
The new striped flag was hoisted for the first time on the 2d of218
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
January, 1776, over the camp at Cambridge. General Washington, writing to Joseph Reed on the 4th of January, says: “We are at length favored with the sight of his Majesty’s most gracious speech, breathing sentiments of tenderness and compassion for his deluded American subjects; the speech I send you (a volume of them was sent out by the Boston gentry), and, farcical enough, we gave great joy to them without knowing or intending it, for on that day (the 2d) which gave being to our new army, but before the proclamation came to hand, we hoisted the union flag in compliment to the United Colonies. But, behold! it was received at Boston as a token of the deep impression the speech had made upon us, and as a signal of submission.
“ By this time I presume they begin to think it strange that we have not made a formal surrender of our lines.”
An anonymous letter, written Jan. 2,1776, says : “ The grand union flag of thirteen stripes was raised on a height near Boston. The regulars did not understand it; and as the king’s speech had just been read, as they supposed, they thought the new flag was a token of submission.”
The captain of a British transport, writing from Boston to his owners in London, Jan. 17, 1776, says: “ I can see the rebels’ camp very plain, whose colors, a little while ago, were entirely red; but on the receipt of the king’s speech, which they burnt, they hoisted the union flag, which is here supposed to intimate the union of the provinces.”
The f British Annual Register ’ says, “ They burnt the king’s speech, and changed their colors from a plain red ground, which they had hitherto used, to a flag with thirteen stripes, as a symbol of the union and number of the colonies.”
A letter from Boston, in the ‘ Pennsylvania Gazette,’ says: “ The grand union flag was raised on the 2d, in compliment to the United Colonies.” A British lieutenant, writing from Charlestown Heights, Jan. 25, 1776, mentions the same fact, and adds: “It was saluted with thirteen guns and thirteen cheers.”
Botta, in his ‘ History of the American Revolution,’ derived from contemporary documents, writes : “ The hostile speech of the king at the meeting of Parliament had arrived in America, and copies of it were circulated in the camp. It was announced there, also, that the first petition of Congress had been rejected. The whole army manifested the utmost indignation at this intelligence; the royal speech was burnt in public by the infuriated soldiers. They changed at this time the red ground of their banners, and striped them with thirteen lists, as an emblem of their number, and the union of the colonies.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Two and a half months after this grand union flag raising at Cambridge, the flag was displayed for the first time in the streets of Boston. The occupation of Dorchester Heights compelled the evacuation of Roxbury, and on the afternoon of March 17, 1776, a detachment of Americans, under Colonel Ebenezer Learned, pushed its way through the crow’s-feet and other obstacles thickly strewn in its path, and unbarred the gates of the deserted stronghold. The flag was borne by Ensign Richards, and the troops were accompanied by General Ward.1
We have contemporary evidence enough as to the time and place when “ the grand union striped flag ” was first unfurled ; but it will be observed there is no mention of the color of the stripes placed on the previously red flag, or the character of its union, or other than presumptive evidence that it had a union.
Hinman states, in his ‘ Connecticut in the Revolution,’ that “ the red ground of the American flag was altered to thirteen blue and white stripes, as an emblem of the thirteen colonies in war for liberty,” but does not give his authority for the statement.
Bancroft, in his f History of the United States,’ describes this flag as “ the tricolored American banner, not yet spangled with stars, but showing thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, in the field, and the united crosses of St. George and St. Andrew on a blue ground in the corner.”
I am informed by Benson J. Lossing, the eminent American historian, that he furnished Mr. Bancroft with the statement, having found among the papers of Major-General Philip Schuyler, and having in his
schooner, and Captain, or rather Colonel, Wynkoop is known to have commanded her at that time. There is no date on the drawing, but it may be considered as settling what were the characteristic features of
1 Drake’s History of Roxbury, 1878.
Flag of the Royal Savage, 1776
possession, a water-color sketch of the Royal Savage, one of the little fleet on Lake Champlain, in the summer and winter of 1776, commanded by Benedict Arnold. This drawing is known to be the Royal Savage, being indorsed, in the handwriting of General Schuyler, as Captain Wynkoop’s220
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
the new flag. At the head of the maintop-mast of the schooner there is a flag precisely like the one described by Bancroft, and it is the only known contemporaneous drawing of it extant. Through the kindness of Mr. Tossing, I am able to give a fac-simile, in size and shape, of this interesting drawing.
In September, 1776, the continental brig Reprisal, 16 guns, commanded by Captain Lambert Wickes, while lying at Martinique, wore a flag of thirteen stripes, whose field was white and yellow.
In General Arnold’s sailing orders for the fleet, he prescribes hoisting the ensign at the main topmast head as the signal for speaking with the whole fleet, and the same at the fore, for chasing a sail.
The red union ensign had been familiarly known for nearly seventy years, and nothing would more naturally suggest itself to a people not yet prepared to entirely sever their connection with the parent government than to utilize the old flag, and distinguish their emblem of the new union from the old in this simple manner, rather than seek further for new devices.
The flag adopted resembled, if it was not exactly the counterpart of, the flag of the English East India Company then in use, and which continued the flag of that company, with trifling variations, until its sovereign sway and empire in the East for over two hundred years was, in 1834, merged in that of Great Britain.1
1 The East India Company's Ensigns. — This company, whose first charter was granted Dec. 31, 1600, by Queen Elizabeth to “ George, Earl of Cumberland, and two hundred and fifteen knights, aldermen, and merchants, that at their own costs and charges might set forth one or more voyages to the East Indies,” &c., bore as a crest to their armorial ensigns a sphere without a frame, bound with a zodiac in bend or, between two split florant argents, each charged with a cross gules ; on the sphere the words “ Deus indicet; ” on the shield with other devices were three ships rigged under full sail, pennants and ensign being argent, and each charged with the same cross gules. The pennants were long, tapering, and split at the end, while the ensigns were perfectly square.
It is not probable that the East India Company were entitled to bear on their ships any particular distinguishing flag in the early years of its history, since the royal proclamation of James I., issued April 12, 1606, ordered “ all subjects ^	of the isle and kingdom of Great Britain, and the members
thereof, to bear in their maintop the union flag, being the red cross of St. George and the white cross (saltire) of St. Andrew, joined upon a blue ground.”
At what date a striped flag was adopted by the East India Company is not evident. A contemporary print, preserved in the British Museum, representing the Puritans in 1644, under Sir Robert Harlow, or Harley, destroying the cross in Cheap-side, exhibits several flags, one of which bears two red stripes on a white field, and the St. George’s cross on a white canton, which extends over the first two stripes.
Flag destroyed at Cheap-side, 1644.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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East India Company’s Ensign, 1704.
In 1681, the renewal of the charter of the company hy Charles II. vested in it the power and authority to make peace or war with any nation not being Christians, and
six years later it was ordered the king’s union flag should he always used at the Fort St. George.
In 1698, a new company was established by act of Parliament, which soon, however, became incorporated' with the former. Its arms were argent, a cross gules in the dexter chief quarter, an escutcheon of the arms of France and England quarterly, crest, two lions rampant, gardant or, each supporting a banner crest argent charged with a cross gules.
‘The Present State of the Universe,’ fourth edition, London, 1704, by J. Beaumont, Jr., gives as the East India Company’s ensign a flag with thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white, with a St. George’s cross on a white canton, which rests upon the fourth red stripe. In the ‘Dominion and Laws of the Sea,’ published in London in 1705, the East India Company’s flag is pictured with but ten stripes.
In a Dutch work on ship-building by Carl Allard, published in Amsterdam the same year, the East India Company’s flag has but nine stripes.
In ‘La Connoissance des Pavillons ou Bannières que la plupart des Nations,’ published à La Haye, 1737, there are represented many striped flags, among them : —
Pavillon cVescadre, de Division des Vaisseaux Ecossois, which has eleven stripes, alternate red and white, with the white canton and red cross resting on the third red stripe.
Pavillon de Rotterdam, which has eleven stripes, alternate white and green.
Pavillon de Breme, which has a head of red and white squares the whole width of the flag, and nine stripes, alternate red and white.
Pavilion d' Enchase Norte Hollande, which has thirteen stripes, yellow and red.
Pavillon de Rang ou de Division d'escadre [English] has thirteen stripes, red and white, with St. George’s cross in a canton argent.
The East India Company’s flag has nine stripes, red and white, with the white canton and red cross resting on the third red stripe.
The East India Company’s flag, in 1834, was cantoned with the union jack of the United Kingdom,- and its field was composed of thirteen alternate red and white stripes, seven red and six white ; the central red stripe rather wider than the others, and crossed by a perpendicular red stripe or bar, forming a St. George’s cross. It was the white St. George ensign, with the addition of six red bars or stripes across its field.
East India Company, 1834.
235348235348485353235353222
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Commodore Hopkins,
Commander m Chief of ifie. ylMrJilCAN FEDEX*
¿ftJfiiffJ at fAe fief tfo'cU 22\<2uyi fy ¿TZo.SttrtvCoriJon.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
223
THE GEAND UNION OE CONTINENTAL FLAG OF THE
UNITED COLONIES.
1776-1777.
It has been suggested that the stripes on our flag, as a symbol of union, were derived from the national flag of the Netherlands, adopted as early as 1582, and which then, as now, consisted of three equal
horizontal stripes, symbolic of the rise of the Dutch republic from the union at Utrecht.
The stripes on this flag were at first orange, white, and blue, the orange in chief. In 1650, after the death of William II., a red stripe was substituted for the orange, and the flag remains without other change to this day. Hudson, the first to display a European flag on the waters of New York, and the explorer of the river bearing his name, sailed up the river in 1609, under the Dutch East India flag, which was the same as above described, with the addition of the letters 'A. 0. C.,’ “Algemeene Oost Inclise Compctg-nie” in the centre of the white stripe. This was the flag of the colony of Manhattan established under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, until 1622.
When the government fell into the hands of the Dutch West India Company, the letters ' GL W. C.,’ “ Geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie” were put in the white stripe in place of the letters "A. 0. C.’ This was the dominant flag (with the change of the orange stripe for a red one in 1650) until 1664, when, on the island’s surrender to the English, the union jack of England supplanted the tricolor of Holland, and the name of 'New Amsterdam’ was changed to 'New York.’1 In July, 1673, the Dutch again took possession of the city, which they occupied until Nov. 10, 1674, when, by a treaty of
1 Valentine’s Manual .Common Council, New York, 1863.224
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
peace between England and Holland, the cross of St. George was re-hoisted over the city.
“From Holland,” argues a writer, “came the emigrants who first
planted the seeds of civil and religious liberty and popular education in the Empire State, and from Holland more than any other land came the ideas of a federal union,1 which binds together the American States. From Holland, whither persecution had driven them, also embarked the Pilgrim Fathers, to land upon our winter-swept and storm and rock bound coast. The rights for which Holland so long struggled, and so ably portrayed by Motley in his ‘ History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic,’ are identical with those which the thirteen colonies so successfully maintained. What more likely, then,” says this reasoner, “ that in adopting a device for a union flag our fathers should derive the idea from a country to whose example they were already so much indebted.”
A more commonplace origin for the stripes has been suggested. The continental army of 1775 was without uniforms, and the different grades were distinguished by means of a stripe or ribbon. The daily view of these, the only distinguishing marks of rank, would naturally suggest the same device for representing the United Colonies.2
1	The United Provinces of the Netherlands on their independence devised for their standard the national lion of Flanders [rampant gu\ grasping in his paws a sheaf of seven arrows or, to denote the seven provinces, and a naked sword, which had been borne by the counts from the eleventh century. The shield of the arms was azure billetee, and the whole achievement was charged upon the white of the flag.
2	Sarmiento’s History of our Flag, 1864. The orders to which he refers are to be found in American Archives, 4th series, vol. ii. p. 1738, viz. : —
“Head-quarters, Cambridge, July 23, 1775.
“Parole, 4Brunswick.’ Countersign, ‘Princeton.’
“As the continental army have, unfortunately, no uniforms, and consequently many inconveniences must arise from not being able always to distinguish the commissioned officers from the non-commissioned, and the non-commissioned from the privates, it is desired that some badges of distinction may be immediately provided; for instance, the field-officers may have red or pink cockades in their hats, the captains yellow or buff, and the subalterns green. They are to furnish themselves accordingly. The sergeants may be distinguished by an epaulette or stripe of red cloth sewed upon the right shoulder ; the corporals, by one of green.
“Head-quarters, Cambridge, July 24, 1775.
“Parole, ‘Salisbury.’ Countersign, ‘Cumberland.’
“ It being thought proper to distinguish the majors from brigadiers general by some particular mark, for the future major-generals will wear a broad purple ribbon.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
225
Without far seeking for the origin of the stripes upon our flag, it is possible that the stripes on his own escutcheon suggested them to the mind of Washington. They were also one of the devices on the flag of the troop of light horse which accompanied Washington from Philadelphia to New York, when proceeding to assume command of the army at Cambridge, where they were first shown; and it may be that these lists, as they were sometimes called, were adopted as an easy expedient for converting the red ensigns of the mother country, by an economical method, into a new flag, representing the
union of the American colonies against ministerial oppression, when not quite ready to give up their loyalty to the “ king’s colors,” which they retained on the new ensign.
It required the addition of the “ new constellation” to render the stripes significant, and give a poetic life and national character to the flag.
When the Yirginia convention at Williamsburg instructed its delegates in Congress, May 15, 1776, three weeks before the Declaration of Independence, “ to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to dependence upon the crown and parliament of England, and to propose a confederation of the colonies,” there was a great civil and military parade, when, according to an eye-witness, “the union flag of the American States” waved upon the Capitol during the whole ceremony.1 This could have been no other than the flag inaugurated by Washington at his camp at Cambridge in January.
-In July, 1776, a committee, consisting of Generals Sullivan and Greene and Lord Stirling, was appointed to devise a system of signals to be hoisted on the Highlands of Neversink, to give the earliest intelligence of the enemy’s approach. They proposed that, for any number of ships from one to six, and from six to twenty-two, and for any
1 Niles’s American Revolution, pp. 251, 252. The toasts at the soldiers’ banquet were : 1st, “ The American independent States ; ” 2d, “ The grand Congress of the United States and their respective legislatures ; ” 3d, “ General Washington, and victory to the American arms. ” These toasts were accompanied by salutes of artillery and feu de joies of small-arms.
Reduced Fac-simile of Washington’s Book-plate.
15226
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
greater number, three large ensigns with broad stripes of red and white should be hoisted.1
Colonel Rud. Ritzema, addressing the members of the New York Congress, May 31, 1776, says that, the day before, it was given out in general orders that General Putnam had received a letter from General Washington, requesting all the colonels at New York to immediately provide colors for their several regiments; and he asks that Mr. Curtinius may have directions to provide a pair for his regiment, of such a color and with such devices as shall be deemed proper by the Congress; i.e., New York Provincial Congress.2
On the 4th of July, 1776, after various amendments, the Declaration of Independence from Mr. Jefferson’s pen was adopted. The document was authenticated, like other papers of Congress, by the signatures of the President and Secretary, and, in addition, was signed by the members present, with the exception of Mr. Dickenson, of New York, who, as Mr. Jefferson has testified, “ refused to sign.” It did not bear the names of the members of Congress as they finally appeared upon it. Some days after the Declaration had thus passed, and had been proclaimed at the head of the army, it was ordered to be engrossed on parchment, and signed by every member; and it was not until the 2d of August that these signatures were made. It is this copy or form which has been preserved, as the first-signed paper does not exist, and was probably destroyed.3
No person actually signed the Declaration on the 4th of July. Mr. Read, whose name appears among the signers, was then actually against it; and Morris, Rush, Clymer, Smith, Taylor, and Ross, whose names also appear, were not members on that day, and were not appointed delegates until the 20th of July. Thornton, of New Hampshire, who entered Congress in November, then placed his name upon it, and Judge McKeen, who was present, and voted for it, did not sign until after his return from Washington’s camp. It is said that, by a
1	Life of General Nathaniel Greene, vol. i.
2	American Archives, 4th series, vol. vi. p. 634, and on page 637 is the order he refers to, viz. : —
“After Orders, May 31, 1776.
“ General Washington has written to General Putnam desiring him in the most press-ing terms to give positive orders to all the colonels to have colors immediately completed
for Mr respective regiments."
In a letter to General Putnam, dated May 28,1776, Washington adds, in a postscript, “ I desire you ’ll speak to the several colonels, and hurry them to get their colors done.”
— Washington Letters, B, vol. i. p. 316.
3	E. A. Pollard, in Lippincott’s Magazine, July, 1872.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
227
secret resolution, no member of the first year should hold his seat in Congress until he became a subscriber.1
The first legislation of the Continental Congress on the subject of a federal navy was on the 18th of October, 1775, and cruisers were about that time equipped and sent to sea on a three months7 cruise, under the pine-tree flag, but without any provision for a national ensign. Two days later, Oct. 20, 1775, Washington writes to Colonel Glover and Stephen Moylan, “ Please fix upon some particular flag, and a signal by which our vessels may know one another. What do you think of a flag with a white ground, a tree in the middle, the motto,f Appeal to Heaven! This is the flag of our floating batteries. We are fitting out two vessels at Plymouth, and when I next hear from you on this subject I will let them know the flag and the signal, that we may distinguish our friends from our foes.77 2
Mr. Moylan replies: “ The schooner sailed this morning. As they had none but their old colors, we appointed them a signal that they may know each other by, and be known to their friends, — as the ensign up the main topping lift.77 3
Before the close of the year, and before the grand union flag raising at Cambridge, a regular navy of seventeen vessels, varying in force from ten to thirty-two guns, was ordered, a general prize law established, the relative rank of military and naval officers regulated, and Esek Hopkins, Esq., appointed commander-in-chief of the naval forces of the embryo republic. At the same time, Dec. 22, 1775, captains were commissioned for the purchased vessels, and first, second, and third lieutenants appointed to each. Under the same law the pay of the commander-in-chief of the fleet was fixed at one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. Such was the humble beginning of a national naval organization. Cruisers armed and equipped by and holding commissions from the several colonies had been fitted and continued to be sent out for some time after under their colonial or State flags, and probably continued to fly them until the close of the war.
The floating batteries of Pennsylvania, in the Delaware, carried the pine-tree flag in the autumn of 1775. According to the English newspapers, privateers throughout the year 1776, wearing a flag of this description, were captured and carried into British ports. The Yankee Hero was captured under these colors in June. Com-
1 Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia.	2 Washington’s Letters, B, vol. i. p. 84.
3 Washington’s Letters, vol. vii. p. 106.228
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
modore Tucker has related that he hoisted them on the Franklin in January, 1776, and under them captured the ship George and brig Arabella.
Dec. 21, 1775. The province of North Carolina authorized three armed vessels to be fitted out with all despatch for the protection of the trade of that province.
Nov. 11,1775. The South Carolina Colony schooner Defence, proceeding to sink some hulks in Hog Island Creek, Charleston Harbor, was fired at by the king’s ships Tamar, of sixteen, and Cherokee, of six guns. Fort Johnson discharged some 26-pounders at the king’s ships.
Nov. 14, 1775. Clement Lempriere was appointed captain of the ship Prosper, fitting and arming for South Carolina, and other officers were appointed to her.
Throughout October, 1776, the navy board of South Carolina made various provisions for a State navy, and commissioned officers for it and vessels.1
Dec. 20, 1775. A committee was appointed by the New York Provincial Congress to purchase and equip a proper vessel for the defence of the East River, her cost not to exceed £600.
Jan. 22, 1776. The Committee of Safety of the Provincial Congress of New York wrote to the delegates from New York to the Continental Congress, that they are informed by one of those delegates that the Continental Congress will take into the continental service the sloop Sally, purchased December 20 by Colonel McDougall for the defence of the colony for £325, and request, “ Should it so be determined, her flag should be described to them,” — showing that at that time the New York Committee of Safety were not informed what the continental flag was.2
April, 1776, the Massachusetts Council passed a series of resolutions providing for the regulation of the sea service; among them was the following: —
“ Resolved, That the uniform of the officers be green and white, and that they furnish themselves accordingly, and that the colors be a white flag with a green pine-tree, and the inscription, £ An appeal to Heaven.’ ”
The following order to the commander of one of these State cruisers was issued later in the year : —
1	American Archives, vol. ii. 5th series, pp. 1323-1829.
2	American Archives, vol. iv. 4th series.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
229
“ State of Massachusetts Bay to John Clouston, Commander of the Sloop Freedom, in the service of said State.
“You are hereby directed and commanded to repair, with the vessel under your command, to the harbor of Boston, in company with the sloop Bepublick, commanded by John Foster Williams, now in Dartmouth, and there to await the further orders of the council.
“By order of the major part of the council, the 4th of September, 1776.
“ Samuel Adams, Secretary.
“ Returns of officers on board the armed sloop called the Freedom, whereof John Clouston is commander : — John Clouston, captain ; James Scott, first lieutenant; Timothy Tojbey, second lieutenant. In council, Sept. 4, 1776, read and ordered that the above officers be commissioned agreeably to their respective rank.
“ Samuel Adams, Secretary.”
Philadelphia, June 6, 1776. Two privateers belonging to this port have taken three very valuable ships bound from Jamaica to London, laden with rum, sugar, molasses, &c., having also a large quantity of dollars and plate on board. We hear that on board of the above ships there were several very fine sea-turtles, intended as a present to Lord North, one of which, with his lordship’s name nicely cut in the shell, was yesterday presented by the captain to the worthy president of the American Congress.
June 29, 1776, an ordinance passed the Virginia Convention establishing a board of commissioners to superintend and direct the naval affairs of that colony.1
Senior of the five first lieutenants of the new continental navy stood John Paul Jones, who was commissioned to the Alfred, then in the Delaware, designed to be thè flag-ship of the commander-inchief, Esek Hopkins, and of which Dudley Saltonstall, Esq., was the captain.
Paul Jones has recorded that ‘ the Flag of America ’ was hoisted by him, “ by his own hctndf 2 on board the Alfred,3 and adds, “ being the first time it was ever displayed by a regular man-of-war.” From
1	American Archives, voi. vi. 4th series, p. 1598.
2	Mackenzie’s Life of J. Paul Jones, voi. i. p. 22 ; J. F. Cooper’s Life of Jones, p. 17 ; Emmons’s United States Navy, 1775-1853 ; Sands’s Life of Jones, p. 33, who adds, “He does not mention the date of this transaction, nor has the present compiler been able to fix it.”
3	All the commissions for the Alfred were made out before those for the Columbus. Sands’s Life of Jones, p. 35.230
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
this we may infer it had been previously displayed by some of the State cruisers.
In a letter to Robert Morris, dated Oct. 10, 1783, Jones says: “ It was my fortune, as the senior first lieutenant, to hoist the 'flag of America’ the first time it was displayed. Though this was but a light circumstance, vet I feel for its honor more than I think I should have done if it had not happened.”
In a letter to Baron Vander Capellan, Jones says : “ America has been the country of my fond election, from the age of thirteen when I first saw it. I had the honor to hoist with my own hands the flag of freedom, the first time it was displayed on the Delaware; and I have attended it with veneration ever since on the ocean.”
Jones’s commission is dated the 7th of December, but as the flag is said to have been hoisted for the first time when the commander-inchief embarked on the Alfred, and his commission was not issued until the 22d of December, it would seem probable either that Christmas or New Year’s day would be selected for its display. The latter would bring its hoisting to the same date as the raising of the union, flag in the lines of the army at Cambridge.
Could the log-book of the Alfred referred to in the following letter be found, the precise date when Jones hoisted the flag of America would be known.
“ Captain Jones to Colonel Tillinghast.
“ Sloop Providence, June 20, 1776.
“ Sir, — I have made so many unsuccessful attempts to convey the Fly past Fisher’s Island, that I have determined to give it up, and pursue my orders for Boston. When I arrive there I will transmit you my letter of attorney; in the mean time you will singularly oblige me by applying to the admiral for an order to receive for me a copy of the Alfred’s log-book, which I had made out for my private use before I left the ship, and which was unjustly withheld from me when I took command of the sloop, by the ill-natured and narrow-minded Captain Saltonstall. When the old gentleman was down here he promised to order that my copy should be delivered; but when my lieutenant applied for it, the master of the Alfred told the admiral a cursed lie, and said there was no copy made out. On inquiry, you will find that Mr. Vaughan, the mate of the Alfred, made out the copy in question for me before I went to New York.
“ I should not be so particular, did I not stand in absolute need of it before I can make out a fair copy of my journal to lay before the Congress, for I was so stinted in point of time in the Alfred, that I did not copy a single remark; besides, it is a little hard that I, who planned and superin-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
231
tended the log-book, should not be thought worthy a copy, when a midshipman, if he pleases, may claim one. I take it for granted that you will receive the book; I must therefore beg you to send it, if possible, to me at Mr. John Head’s or Captain J. Bradford’s, Boston. Regard not the expense, I will cheerfully pay it.
“ I am, sir, with esteem, your obliged and very humble servant,
“ J. Paul Jones.”
The Alfred, for which the high honor is claimed of being first to wear ' the flag of America,’ as well as the standard or flag of the first naval commander-in-chief, was originally a merchant vessel called the Black Prince. She arrived at Philadelphia from London under the command of Captain Barry, October 13,1 and was purchased and armed by the committee. According to our present ideas, she was a small ship, though a stout vessel of her class at that time, mounting twenty 9-pounders on her main deck, and from one to two guns on her quarter deck and forecastle. When captured, in 1778, by H. B. M. ships Ariadne and Ceres, her captors reported her as mounting twenty 9-pounders on a single deck, having no spar deck battery. The weight of shot thrown from her entire battery or both broadsides was not equal to the weight of a single shot thrown by one of our modern monitors. Such have been the changes in naval warfare within a hundred years.
I have said that Christmas or New Year’s day was probably selected for hoisting the flag of America, but there is evidence showing that it, or at least a continental flag, was hoisted over the Alfred as early as the 3d of December, before any of the officers of our infant navy had been commissioned. A letter addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth, and dated from 'Maryland, Dec. 20, 1775,’ says: "Their harbors by spring will swarm with privateers: an admiral is appointed, a court established, and on the 3d inst. [December] the continental flag on board the Black Prince opposite Philadelphia was hoisted.” 2 Another letter to a friend in England says: " The Black Prince [Alfred], a fine vessel, carries a flag, and mounts from twenty to thirty 12 and 16 pounders, besides swivels, and fights mostly underdeck.”
It is not known with certainty what flag Jones calls 'the flag of America,’ though there are reasons for supposing it the grand union
1	“The Black Prince, Campbell, arrived at Falmouth from Philadelphia, Oct. 31, 1775.” — Boston Gazette, Feb. 3, 1776. Either this was another ship of the same name, or there is a mistake of dates. A vessel called the Black Prince was one of the Saltonstall expedition, and was burnt by the enemy.
2	See letter signed B. P., Niles’s American Revolution, Baltimore, 1822, p. 541.232
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
flag of thirteen stripes displayed at Cambridge on the 2d of January, and identical with the “ union flag ” displayed by the Virginia Convention in May.
In the day-signals for the fleet to the several captains in the fleet, as sailing from the capes of Delaware, Feb. 17, 1776, the signal for the Providence to chase was a “ St. George’s ensign with stripes at the mizzen peak.” For a general attack, or the whole fleet to engage, “the standard at the maintop masthead with the striped jack and ensign at their proper places.” This standard was probably the rattlesnake flag mentioned elsewhere. The striped jack may have been a flag of thirteen stripes, with a rattlesnake undulating upon it.1
1 The following are these orders in full, taken from American Archives, 4th series, vol. iv. p. 179, &c. They are undoubtedly the first signals used by our navy.
Orders given the several Captains in the Fleet at sailing from the Capes
of the Delaware, Feb. 17, 1776.
Sir,—You are hereby ordered to keep company with me, if possible, and truly observe the signals given by the ship I am in ; but in case you should be separated in a gale of wind or otherwise, you then are to use all possible means to join the fleet as soon as possible ; but if you cannot, in four days after you leave the fleet you are to make the best of your way to the southern part of Abaco (one of the Bahama islands) and there wait for the fleet fourteen days. But if the fleet does not join you in that time, you are to cruise in such places as you think wall most annoy the enemy. And you are to send into port, for trial, all British vessels, or property, or other vessels, with any supplies for the ministerial forces, who you may make yourself master of, to such places as you may think best within the United Colonies. In case you are in any great danger of being taken, you are to destroy these orders and your signals.
Ezeck Hopkins, Commander-in-chief.
Signals for the American Fleet by Day.
For sailing: Loose the foretopsail, and sheet it home.
For weighing and coming to sail: Loose all the topsails, and sheet them home.
For the fleet to anchor: Clew up the maintopsail, and hoist a weft in the ensign.
For seeing a strange vessel: Hoist the ensign, and lower and hoist it as many times as you see vessels, allowing two minutes between each time.
For chasing: For the whole fleet to chase, a red pendant at the foretopmast head.
To give over the chase: A white pendant at the foretopmast head.
For the Columbus to chase: Strike the broad pendant half mast, to be answered by a weft in the ensign, and making sail.
To chase to windward: Hoist the ensign, lowering the pendant at the same time ; if to leeward, not.
To give over the chase: A white pendant at the foretopmast head, and if at a great distance, fire a gun at the same time. This may serve for any of the vessels to give over the chase and return to the fleet.
For the Andrew Doria to chase: A Dutch flag at the foretopmast head.
To chase to windward: Hoist the ensign, lowering the pendant at the same time ; if to leeward, not.
To give over the chase: A white pendant at the foretopmast head, and if at a great distance, fire a gun at the same time.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
233
A contemporary account says that, in the succeeding February, Admiral Hopkins sailed from Philadelphia with the American fleet,
For the Cabot to chase: A white flag at the foretopmast head. To chase to windward, &c., as above.
For the Providence to chase : A St. George’s ensign with stripes at the mizzen peak. To chase to windward, as above.
For the Fly to chase: A Dutch flag at the maintopmast head. To chase to windward, &c., as above.
For the Hornet to chase: A red pendant at the maintopmast head. To chase to windward, &c., as above.
For the Wasp to chase : A Dutch flag at the mizzen peak. To chase to windward, &c., as above.
For a General Attach, or the whole Fleet to engage.
The standard at the maintopmost head, with the striped jack and ensign at their proper places.
To disengage and form into a squadron: A white flag at the ensign staff, and the same into a weft for every vessel to make the best of their way off from the enemy for their own preservation.
For all captains to come on board the Commodore: A red pendant at the ensign staff.
To speak with the Columbus: A white pendant at the mizzen topmast head.
To speak loith the Andrew Doria: A Dutch flag at the mizzen topmast head.
To speak with the Cabot: A weft in a jack at the mizzen topmast head.
To speak with the Providence : A white flag at the mizzen topmast head.
To speak with the Fly: A Dutch flag at the ensign staff.
For any vessel in the fleet that wants to speak with the Commodore : A weft in the ensign, and if in distress, accompanied with two guns.
To fall into a line abreast: A red pendant at the mizzen peak.
To fall into a line ahead: A white pendant at the mizzen peak.
For meeting after a separation: A weft in an ensign, at the maintopmast head, to be answered with the same, and clewing up the maintop gallant sail, if they have any set.
For the ship Providence to chase: A red pendant at the mizzen topmast head. To chase to windward, as before.
To speak with the ship Providence: A weft in the ensign at the ensign staff.
Among the signal flags to be used by the fleet under Abraham Whipple, commodore' commanding, given under his hand on board the continental frigate, Providence, Nan-tasket Roads, Nov. 22, 1779, are mentioned : —
A continental ensign.	A Dutch jack and ensign. A striped flag, and
A continental jack.	A ivhite ensign.	A white jack. '
A red ensign.
Among the signals prescribed to be observed by commanders in the continental navy, and issued by order of the Marine Committee, Jan. 14, 1778, are mentioned as to be used, —
A French jack and A continental jack.
Colonel Reigart, in his unreliable pamphlet, assigns a particular flag to each vessel of this squadron, — but without giving any authority for his statement, and in all my researches I have never found any, — which is, viz. : that “ the Alfred carried a pine-tree flag, presented by Connecticut; the Columbus, the red cross of St. George, presented by Vermont ; the Andrea Doria, the white cross of St. Andrew, presented by Philadelphia; the Cabot, a white silk pine-tree flag from Connecticut; the Providence, St. Andrew’s cross,234
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ amidst the acclamations of thousands assembled on the joyful occasion, under the display of the union flag, with thirteen stripes in the field, emblematical of the thirteen United Colonies.”
The first achievement of this squadron was the capture of New Providence, and a writer from thence to the ‘ London Ladies’ Mao'a-zine/ under date May 13, 1776, mentions that the colors of the American fleet were “ striped under the union, with thirteen stripes, and their standard [admiral’s flag] a rattlesnake; motto, f Don’t tread on me.’ ”
This confirms my opinion that ‘ the flag of America ’ was no other than the grand union flag of Cambridge, and that the commander-in-ehieDs flag was the yellow flag presented by Colonel Gadsden, and heretofore described.
At the Naval Academy, Annapolis, there is preserved a mezzotinto engraving of “ Commodore Hopkins, commander-in-chief of the American fleet, published as the law directs, 22d August, 1776, by Thomas Hart, London, which has been transferred to glass and colored.” 1 I have a copy of this mezzotinto from which the illustration has been engraved.2 The commodore is represented in the naval continental uniform,3 with
presented by Rhode Island ; the Hornet, the yellow silk flag of Virginia, with rattlesnake; the "Wasp, the yellow silk flag of South Carolina, with a crescent, a beaver, a rattlesnake, and motto, * Don’t tread on me ; ’ the despatch vessel Fly, bearing a blue flag with red cross of St. George.” As these vessels were not fitted out or equipped by the colonies to which he assigns them, without further authority his statement with regard to the flags cannot be credited.
1	There are extant other copies of this engraving. C. J. Bushnell, Esq., of New York, has one. It is inscribed like the other, 22d August, 1776. Hon. J. R. Bartlett, of Providence, also has a copy. Mr. Bushnell has a similar engraving of Charles Lee, which has over a cannon a flag-staff, attached to which is a white flag bearing the motto, “An Appeal to Heaven.” This engraving is inscribed, <£Charles Lee, Esq., major-general of the continental forces in America. Published as the act directs Oct. 31, 1775, by C. Shepherd. Thomtinson, pinxt.” Mr. Bushnell has also a similar engraving of General Gates, which exhibits at his right hand a flag with thirteen black bars and thirteen white. It is inscribed, “ Horatio Gates, Esq., major-general of the American forces. London, published as the act directs, Jan. 2, 1778, by John Morris.” I have seen a colored copy of this engraving, in which General Gates is dressed in a red coat with white or buff facing, and the thirteen black bars on the flag are painted red.
2	See p. 222.
3	This, the first uniform of the continental navy, was prescribed by the Marine Committee, just two weeks after the date of this engraving.
Uniform of Navy and Marine Officers.
In Marine Committee, Philadelphia, Sept. 5, 1776.
Resolved, That the uniform of the officers of the navy in the United States be as follows : —
Captains: Blue cloth with red lapels, slash cuff, stand-up collar, flat yellow buttons, blue breeches, red waistcoat with yellow lace.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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a drawn sword. At his right hand there is a flag of thirteen stripes with a snake undulating across them, and underneath it the motto, “Don’t
Lieutenants : Blue with red lapels, a round cuff faced, stand-up collar, yellow buttons, blue breeches, red waistcoat, plain.
Master : Blue with lapels, round cuff, blue breeches, and red waistcoat.
Midshipmen : Blue lapelled coat, a round cuff faced with red, stand-up collar, with red at the button and button-hole, blue breeches, and red waistcoat.
Uniform of the Marine Officers.
A green coat faced with white, round cuff, slashed sleeves and pockets, with buttons round the cuff, silver epaulette on the right shoulder, skirts turned back, buttons to suit the facings. White waistcoat, and breeches, edged with green, black gaiters, and garters. Green shirts for the men, if they can be procured.
Extract from the Minutes :
John Buown, Secretary.
American Archives, 5th series, vol. ii. p. 181.
This uniform does not appear to have been satisfactory, for in March, 1777, the major part of the captains at Boston agreed upon the following uniform dress for the navy : —
Full Dress for Post Captains.
Dark blue coat, white lining, white cuffs, and narrow white lapels the whole length of the waist. The coats full trimmed with gold lace or embroidered button-holes ; the buttons at equal distance asunder on the lapels, the upper part of the lapels to button on the upper part of the shoulder, three buttons on each pocket flap, three on each cuff. Stand-up blue collars. White waistcoats, breeches, and stockings. Dress swords. Plain hats with black cockades and gold buttons and loops. Gold epaulettes on the right shoulder, the figure of a rattlesnake embroidered on thé straps of the epaulettes, with the motto, “ Dont tread on me.” The waistcoat trimmed with gold lace, yellow flat buttons, with the impression of the rattlesnake and the motto “Don't tread on me” on each of them.
Undress for Post Captains.
The same as dress coats, with the difference that the undress coats have frock backs and turn-down white collars.
Dress for Lieutenants.
The same as for post captains, excepting the lace and embroidery and the epaulettes, and that instead of the rattlesnake they wear buttons with the impression of an anchor. Evidently lieutenants were not allowed epaulettes.
Undress for Lieutenants.
The same as for post captains, excepting the lace, embroidery, and the epaulettes and buttons, and that the coats be made short, or such as are usually called ‘ coatees'
Dress and Undress for Masters and Midshipmen.
The same as for lieutenants, excepting the lapels, and that they wear turn-down collars on their dress and undress coats.
The dress and undress for commanders of ships and vessels under twenty guns to be the same as for post captains, excepting the epaulettes.
This uniform proposition I found among the ‘Paul Jones MS.’ in the Congressional Library, and is signed by Captains John Manly, Hector McNeil, Dudley Saltonstall, E. Hinman, Joseph Olney, John Roche, and John Paul Jones, and by Captain McNeil for Captain William Thompson, and by Captain Olney for Captain Abraham Whipple.
Evidently this uniform was adopted by Jones, if by no one else ; for John Adams,236
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treacl on me” There is no union to the flag, and it may represent the striped jack mentioned in his signals to the fleet. Over his left hand is a white flag with the Massachusetts pine-tree, and over it the words, “Liberty Treeand under it, “An Appeal to God!'
F. J. Dreer, of Philadelphia, has a smaller French engraving, evidently from the same painting, inscribed: “ Commodore Hopkins, Com-mandeur en Chef des Amerj: Flotte.” It is without date, and only shows the flag at Hopkins’s right hand, which is hoisted on the ensign staff of a ship of the line, and has the thirteen red and white stripes, without any union, rattlesnake, motto, or other device. The ship has pennants at each masthead. In this engraving the left hand of the commodore, and ship and flag over it, are not shown.1
Cooper is of opinion that the flag hoisted by Jones was a pine-tree flag with a rattlesnake coiled at its roots, and the motto. Such flags were hoisted over the Massachusetts State cruisers, and it is possible such a flag was hoisted over the Alfred; but Jones would scarcely have called it “ the Flag of America.” The proof is certain, however, that the squadron sailed under striped ensigns. Whether the stripes were red and white, or blue and white, or red, blue, and white alternately, seems not certain. A writer in the ‘ Boston Post,’ in 1853, asserted he had then before him a fac-simile of the flag used by the Confederate States from July, 1776, until the adoption of the stars and stripes, and that in the union emblem of the stripes there is a rattlesnake coiled up and ready to strike, with the usual motto underneath. A writer in ‘ Harper’s Magazine,’ in 1855, says, without citing his authority: “ The Alfred was anchored off the foot of Walnut Street. On a brilliant morning early in February, 1776, gay streamers were seen floating from every masthead and spar on the river. At nine o’clock a full-manned barge threaded its way among the floating ice
who was a passenger to L’Orient in the Alliance, Captain Landais, writes in his diaiy at that port, May, 1779 : —
“ After dinner, walked out with Captains Jones and Landais to see Jones’s marines dressed in the English uniforms, red and white. A number of very active and clever sergeants and corporals are employed to teach them the exercise and manoeuvres and marches, &c., after which Jones came on board our ship. This is the most ambitious and intriguing officer in the American navy. Jones has art and secrecy, and aspires very high. You see the character of the man in his uniform and that of his officers and marines, variant from the uniforms established by Congress, — golden button-holes for himself, two epaulettes ; marines in red and white instead of green. Eccentricities and irregularities are to be expected from him, — they are in his character, they are visible in his eyes. His voice is soft and still and small; his eye has keenness and wildness and softness in it.”
1 Mr. Bushnell has another French engraving of Hopkins, undated. It is in an oval, surrounded by emblems, &c., and under it are the two flags shown in the Hart engraving.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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to the Alfred, bearing the commodore, who had chosen that vessel for his flag-ship. He was greeted by the thunders of artillery and the shouts of a multitude. When he reached the deck of the Alfred, Captain Saltonstall gave a signal, and Lieutenant Jones hoisted a new flag prepared for the occasion. It was of yellow silk, bearing a pine-tree, with the significant device of a rattlesnake, and the ominous motto, ‘Don't treacl on me!" This is like the flag presented by Colonel Gadsden to Congress, in February, for the use of the commander-inchief of the American navy, with the addition of a pine-tree.
An English writer of the period is quoted by Robert C. Sands, in his "Life of Paul Jones/ as saying : —
“ A strange flag has lately appeared in our seas, bearing a pine-tree with the portraiture of a rattlesnake coiled up at its roots, with these daring words, * Don't tread on me! We learn that the vessels bearing this flag have a sort of commission from a society of people at Philadelphia calling themselves the Continental Congress.”
Miss Sarah Smith Stafford informed me, in 1873, that when she was about eleven years old her father took her to New York, where she was shown several flags of the era of the Revolution, and well remembered seeing one with stripes, and a snake stretched out and partially concealed in grass, with the head a little elevated. This emblem created a great impression on her, as she had never seen a snake.
A letter from Williamsburg, Va., dated April 10, 1776, states that a British cruiser, the Roebuck, had taken two prizes in Delaware, which she decoyed into her reach by hoisting a continental union flag. The affidavit of Mr. Berry, master’s mate of the ship Grace, captured by the Roebuck, confirms the letter.1
Another letter, from Williamsburg, Va., May 11, 1776,2 describes the colors of the American fleet as follows : “ The colors of the American fleet have a snake with thirteen rattles (the fourteenth budding 3), in the attitude of going to strike, with this motto, f Don't tread on me! "
John F. Watson4 states that the Alliance, frigate, when commanded
1	Pennsylvania Evening Post, June 20, 1776.
2	American Archives, 4th series, vol. vi. p. 420; also Boston Gazette, April 14, 1777. This letter hears no signature, but immediately above it and on the same page in ‘ American Archives ’ there is a letter of the same date from Williamsburg, addressed by General Charles Lee to General Washington.
3	The half-formed additional rattle was said by Franklin to represent the Province of Canada, and the wise man added that “the rattles are united together so that they can never be separated but by breaking to pieces.” — Charles Sumner’s Lecture, ‘ Are we a Nation ? ’
4	Annals of New York, p. 34.238
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by Jones, bore the “ national flag of the coiled-up rattlesnake and thirteen stripes. Watson must be mistaken, since the Alliance was not launched until 1777, and Jones did not command her until 1779, when she must have carried the stars and stripes. On Dec. 17, 1779, the Dutch admiral at the Texel wrote Jones, asking to be informed whether the Alliance was a French or an American vessel; if the first, the admiral expected him to show his commission and display the French ensign and pendant, under a salute; if an American, that he should lose no occasion to depart. The French commissary of marine urged him to satisfy all parties by hoisting French colors; but Jones refused to wear any other than ‘ the American flag,’ and sent word to the admiral that under that flag he should proceed to sea whenever the pilot would undertake to carry the ship out.
Ten days after, on the morning of the 27th of December, Jones went to sea, and had the satisfaction of writing to Mr. Dumas, by the pilot: “ I am here, my dear sir, with a good wind at east, and under my best American colors.” Favored by a strong east wind, the Alliance the next day passed through the Straits of Dover, with her colors set, running close to the Goodwin Sands, in full view of the fleet anchored in the Downs only three or four miles to leeward. On the 29th she reconnoitred the fleet at Spithead, still showfing her colors, and on the 18th of January, 1780, was fairly out of the Channel.1
It is claimed for Commodore Barney that he first hoisted 'the continental flag’ in Maryland. He was appointed second in rank to the sloop Hornet, one of Hopkins’s squadron. A crew had not been shipped, and the duty of recruiting fell upon him. Fortunately for his purpose, just at this moment a new ‘ American flag,’ sent by Commodore Hopkins for the service of the Hornet, arrived from Philadelphia, the first that had been seen in the State of Maryland. His biographer calls it a star-spangled banner; but that is evidently her mistake. The next morning at sunrise Barney unfurled it, to the music of drums and fifes, and, hoisting it upon a staff, planted it with his own hands at the door of his rendezvous. The sound of the martial music, then a novelty in Baltimore, and the still more novel sight of the rebel colors gracefully waving in the breeze, attracted crowds of all ranks and sizes to the gay scene of the rendezvous: and before the setting of the same day’s sun the young recruiting officer had enlisted a full crew of jolly rebels for the Hornet.2
That Paul Jones was the first to hoist the new continental flag
1 Mackenzie’s Life of Paul Jones, vol. i. pp. 252, 253.
e Life of Commodore Joshua Barney, by Mary Barney.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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has been doubted; and Cooper remarks, he may have been mistaken :1 “ He always claimed to have been the first man to hoist the flag of 1775 in a national ship, and the first man to show the present ensign on board a man-of-war. This may be true or not. There was a weakness about the character of the man that rendered him a little liable to self-delusions of this nature; and while it is probable he was right as to the flag which was shown before Philadelphia, the town where Congress was sitting, it is by no means as reasonable to suppose that the first of the permanent flags [stars and stripes] was shown at a place as distant as Portsmouth. The circumstances are of no moment, except as they serve to betray a want of simplicity of character, that was rather a failing with the man, and his avidity for personal distinction of every sort.5’
John Adams, who certainly did not love Jones, writing Elbridge Gerry, Vice-President of the United States, from Quincy, Jan. 28, 1813,2 disputes this claim of Jones, and says, with the pride of a Massachusetts man: “ Philadelphia is now boasting that Paul Jones has asserted in his Journal that ‘ his hand hoisted the first American flag/ and Captain Barry has asserted that f the first British flag was struck to him; ’ now I assert that the first American flag was hoisted by Captain John Manly, and the fiyst British flag was struck to him. You were not in Congress in 1775, but you was in the State Congress, and must have known the history of Manly’s capture of the transport which contained the mortar3 which afterwards, on Dorchester Heights, drove the English army from Boston, and navy from the harbor.”
He also wrote John Langdon, who was a member of the first Marine Committee, Jan. 24, 1813: “ My recollection has been excited lately by information from Philadelphia that Paul Jones has written in his Journal, 4 My hand first hoisted the American flag/ and that Captain Barry used to say that the first British flag was struck to
1	Cooper’s Life of Paul Jones, p. 31.
2	Austin’s Life of Elbridge Gerry.
3	The transport brig Nancy, with military stores, several brass guns, and one mortar, was captured by the schooner Lee, Captain John Manly, of four guns, ten swivels, and fifty men, on the 29th of November, 1775. December 8, he captured the ship Jenny, of two guns, loaded with provisions, and the brig Hannah, and beat off a British schooner of eight guns, having two vessels under convoy.
Captain Barry did not get to sea in the Lexington until February, 1776. We have no account of the flag worn by Manly. It was probably the pine-tree flag. I think Jones may retain his honors, and for Barry, it can be truthfully claimed that he was the first under the striped flag to capture an armed vessel of the enemy. The fortunate capture of the Nancy is alluded to in one of Mr. John Adams’s letters.240
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
him. Both these vain boasts I know to be false, and as you know them to be so, I wish your testimony to corroborate mine. It is not decent nor just that these emigrants, foreigners of the South, should falsely arrogate to themselves merit that belongs to New England sailors, officers and men.”
Mr. Langdon replied from Portsmouth, “ Jan. 27, 1813, the appointment of Manly and his successors must be well known throughout the United States. As to Paul Jones, if my memory serves me, pretending to say that ‘this hand first hoisted the American flag,’ and Captain Barry, that f the first British flag was struck to him/ they are both unfounded, as it is impressed on my mind that many prizes were brought into the ISTew England States before their names were mentioned.”1
The brig Lexington, mounting fourteen 4-pounders, commanded by Captain John Barry, has been credited as the first of the new continental marine to get to sea and to display the striped flag upon the ocean. There had been private and colonial marine enterprises and cruisers previously, as there were later. Two vessels, the Lynch and the Franklin, had been commissioned by General Washington, and had sailed under the pine-tree flag, and two small vessels, the Wasp and Hornet, had come around from Baltimore to join the fleet in the Delaware;2 but it was claimed for the Lexington that she was the first to get to sea. Cooper, in the early editions of his 'Naval History/ so asserted; but in later editions he says an examination of the private papers of Captain Barry has shown him that Captain Barry was actually employed on shore or in the Delaware for a short time after Commodore Hopkins got to sea.3 The first regular commissioned cruisers, therefore, of the National Navy of the United Colonies were those of Hopkins’s squadron. The fleet left Philadelphia early in January, 1776.4
1	Life and Works of John Adams, vol. x. pp. 28 and 29, where also are his letters to Elbridge Gerry, pp. 30, 31.
2	“Tuesday, Jan. 9, 1776. Resolved, That a letter be written to Mr. Tilghman informing him that the Hornet and Wasp are under orders to sail to the Capes of Delaware, and that such vessels as are ready to sail may take the benefit of that convoy.
“That the committee for fitting out armed vessels be directed to give orders to the captains of the Hornet and Wasp, to take under their convoy such vessels as are ready to sail.” — American Archives, 4th series, vol. iv. p. 1637.
3	Cooper’s Naval History, edition 1856.
4	The Naval Committee were authorized by the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania, under date Jan. 1, 1776, to engage three pilots of that province to conduct the vessels down to Reedy Island, and the Committee of Safety also authorized the loan of a number of men from the armed*'bodies of that province to navigate the vessels belongingFLA G OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The following letter contains an account of its departure for Reedy Island * ——
“Newbern, N. C., Feb. 9, 1776.
“ By a gentleman from Philadelphia, we have received the pleasing account of the actual sailing from that place of the first American fleet that ever swelled their sails on the Western Ocean, in defence of the rights and liberties of the people of these colonies, now suffering under the persecuting rod of the British ministry, and their more than brutish tyrants in America. This fleet consists of five sail, fitted out from Philadelphia, which are to be joined at the Capes of Virginia by two ships more from Maryland, and is commanded by Admiral Hopkins, a most experienced and venerable sea-captain. The admiral’s ship is called the Columbus, after Christopher Columbus, thirty-six guns, 12 and 9 pounders, on two decks, forty swivels, and five hundred men. The second ship is called the Cabot, after Sebastian Cabot, who completed the discoveries of America made by Columbus, and mounts thirty-two guns. The others are smaller vessels, from twenty-four to fourteen guns. They sailed from Philadelphia, amidst the acclamations of many thousands assembled on the joyful occasion, under the display of a union flag with thirteen stripes in the field, emblematical of the thirteen United Colonies; but unhappily for us, the ice in the river Delaware as yet obstructs the passage down, but the time will now soon arrive when this fleet must come to action. Their destination is a secret, but generally supposed to be against the Ministerial Governors, those little petty tyrants that have lately spread fire and sword throughout these southern colonies. For the happy success of this little fleet, three millions of people offer their most earnest supplications to Heaven.” 1
At Reedy Island, the squadron was frozen up for six weeks, and did not leave the Delaware until the 17th of February.2 On the 19th,
to Congress down. The Naval Committee’s sailing orders to Hopkins are dated Jan. 5, 1776. —American Archives, 4th series, vol. iv. pp. 506 and 578.
Washington, in his letter to Bead, Jan. 4, 1776, after describing his raising the union flag at Cambridge, says : “ I fear your fleet has been so long fitting out, and the destination of it is so well known, that the end will be defeated, if the vessel escape.”
1	American Archives, 4th series, vol. iv. p. 964. John Adams, in a letter from i{ Quincy, April 13, 1819,” writes : “ I lay no serious claim to the title of ‘ Father of the American navy, ’ or of any thing else except my own family. Have you seen the ‘ History of the American Navy,’ written by a Mr. Clark and edited by Mat. Carey ? I gave the names Alfred, Columbus, Cabot, and Andrea Doria to the first ships that sailed under the flag of the United Colonies.” — Watson’s Men and Times of the Revolution. See also ante.
Adams alludes to the 4 Naval History of the United States,’ by Thomas Clark, a second edition of which, in two volumes, 12mo, was published in Philadelphia, by M. Carey, Jan. 3, 1814. The book is scarce, and has long been out of print. The first edition was published May 6, 1813.
2	Life of Paul Jones ; Hopkins’s Orders to the Fleet; Cooper’s Naval History, &c.
16242
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the Hornet and Fly parted company. The first achievement of the squadron under the continental flag was a descent upon New Providence, where near one hundred cannon and a large quantity of other stores fell into its hands. After hoisting the striped flag, and holding possession of the place for a few days, Commodore Hopkins left on the 17th of March, bringing away the governor and one or two men of note.1
On this occasion, the first that ever occurred in the continental navy, the marines, under Captain Nicholas, behaved with the spirit and steadiness that has distinguished the corps from that hour down to the present time.
Scattering his small vessels along the southern coast, the Commodore, with the remainder of his squadron, arrived off Montauk Point on the 4th of April, where he captured a small vessel of six guns, and on the 6th engaged the Glasgow, 20, Captain Tyringham Howe, which managed to get into Newport, and join the English squadron.
On the 17th of April, when near the Capes of Virginia, the Lexington supported the honor of the continental flag on the seas by capturing, after a close and spirited action, the British brig Edward, mounting sixteen 4-pounders, two more than the Lexington. The Lexington had only four men killed, while the Edward was cut to pieces, and suffered severe loss. The Lexington’s career was short, but glorious. The same year, in October, and near the spot where she engaged the Edward, she was captured by the frigate Pearl. During the night, the Americans overpowered the prize crew, and took the brig to Baltimore, where she was recommissioned, and sailed thence, March, 1777, for Europe. After her arrival, cruising in company with the Dolphin and Reprisal, she was chased by a ship of the line, but escaped into Mor-laix, where she was seized and detained by the French government until September. Immediately after her release she sailed, and the next day surrendered to the British man-of-war cutter Alert, after an action of an hour and a half and a hard chase of four hours, having expended all her ammunition. Conquered, not subdued, and unable to return her opponent’s fire, Captain Johnson, her commander, to save the lives of his crew, was compelled to strike her colors.
When taken, she had been in service about one year and eight months. She was the first vessel that bore the continental flag to victory on the ocean, and in her short career had fought two severe actions under it, was twice taken and once recaptured, was otherwise engaged with armed vessels, and captured several prizes. This Lexington of the seas, therefore, occupies the position in our naval annals
1 Cooper’s Naval History.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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that the Lexington from whence she derived her name does from having been the arena of the first conflict of the colonies with England.
A correspondent in England says: “ An American privateer was some time since taken by one of onr frigates. She carried the continental colors, which are thirteen red and white stripes ; but it was observed that this privateer had but twelve stripes in his colors. Being asked the reason, he answered that, since we had taken New York, the Congress had a province less; and that whenever they lost any of the provinces, it was their orders to cut away one of the stripes from their colors, so that there should be no more stripes than provinces/’1
It has been suggested, as a reason that a flag emblematic of the union of the colonies was not sooner adopted, the adherence of Georgia was required to complete their union. On the 6th of July, 1775, Georgia, in her Provincial Congress, assented to all measures of resistance, and united with the other colonies against the ministerial measures; but the flag with thirteen stripes was not hoisted until January, 1776.
It is not the province of this work to follow the naval events of the war only as it is connected with the history of the flag under its several phases, and to show where and when it first made its mark upon the ocean.
The first American vessel of war to show the continental flag to the European world was the Reprisal, Captain Lambert Wickes, a brig of sixteen guns. She sailed from home soon after the Declaration of Independence.
A letter from St. Eustatia, dated “ July 27, 1776,” mentions her arrival there, after an engagement with the Shark, sloop of war, of equal force, and that “ the colors which the American showed were a field white and yellow, with thirteen stripes.” 2
She arrived at Philadelphia, September 17, with Dr. Franklin on board as a passenger, and appeared in France in the autumn of 1776, bringing in several prizes. The prizes were ordered to quit France without delay, and the Reprisal and the Lexington were detained until security was given that they would quit the European seas. When released, the Reprisal sailed for America, and foundered on the banks of Newfoundland, when all on board perished, with the exception of the cook.
Aug. 16, 1776, the Marine Committee directed Captains Jones and Hallock, of the continental ships Hornet and Providence, to watch for
1	Low’s Astronomical Diary, 1777.
2	American Archives, 5th series, vol. i. p. 610.244
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the arrival of the sloop Queen of Hungary, bringing arms and ammunition from Martinico, whose flag was six black bars and six yellow bars.
In a little work published at Leipsic, entitled ‘ The Historic Genealogical Calendar or Chronicle of the most Memorable Transactions in the New World,’ for 1784, copies of which are in the Mercantile and Historical Society Library of New York City, there is a colored representation of “the flag and pendant of the thirteen United States of North America.” The flag bears on its field thirteen horizontal stripes, red, blue, and white, and a canton extending over the first six stripes, charged with thirteen white stars, arranged three and two. The narrow pendant corresponding, consists of three stripes, red, blue, and white, forked red and white at the end, and has a blue chief charged with thirteen white stars next the staff, similarly arranged; but between this chief and the three horizontal stripes are thirteen short perpendicular stripes, red, blue, and white.
The first vessel to obtain a salute for the continental flag from a foreign power was the brig Andrea Doria, Captain Robinson. This little brig was purchased prior to the resolution of Dec. 22, 1775, and had done some active cruising under the command of Nicholas Biddle. She sailed from Philadelphia, September, 1776, and proceeded at once to St. Eustatia to procure arms. On her arrival at that port, Nov. 16, 1776, she saluted the Dutch flag, and her salute was returned by the governor, who was subsequently removed from office for his indiscretion.1 A letter to the Maryland Council of Safety, dated St. Eustatia, Nov. 19, 1776, says, “Captain Robertson, of the continental brig Andrea Doria, arrived here three days ago, and saluted the fort with eleven guns. The salute was returned by the fort with 18-pounders, and the captain most graciously received by his Honor the Governor and all ranks of people.” “All American vessels here now wear the Congress colors.” 2
On her return, the Andrea Doria captured the Race Horse, of twelve guns, a vessel of about her own force, and arrived at Philadelphia with her prize. When the evacuation of Fort Mifflin gave command of the Delaware to the British, both these vessels were burnt, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy.
1	In 1876, a pamphlet was published in Concord, N. H., entitled * The Stars and Stripes: The Flag of the United States of America, —When, where, and by whom was it first saluted ? ’ in which the writer proves the fact of this salute, and considers it a salute to the stars and stripes ! Of course he is mistaken, as the stars were not added to the stripes until June, 1777, and did not come into use for some months later.
2	American Archives, vol. ii. 5th series, p. 760.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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In August, 1777, the General Mifflin, commanded by Captain William McNeil, and wearing the ‘ continental colors,’ was saluted at Brest, much to the indignation of the British ambassador. This is the second salute to the continental striped flag of which we have any account.1
On the 29th of October, 1776, the Continental Congress passed the following resolve, though it does not appear upon its journals that to that time, or for several months later, there was any legislation establishing a national flag:2 —
“ Resolved, That no private ship or vessel of war, merchant ship, or other vessel, belonging to the subjects of these-States, be permitted to wear pendants when in company with continental ships or vessels of war, without leave from the commanding officer thereof. That if any merchant ship or vessel shall wear pendants in company with continental ships or vessels of war without leave from the commander thereof, such commander be authorized to take away the pendant from the offender. That if private ships or vessels of war refuse to pay the respect due the continental ships or vessels of war, the captain or commander refusing shall lose his commission.”
This law, says Cooper, in his ‘ Naval History,’ who dates it a year earlier (1775), “was framed in a proper spirit, and manifested an intention to cause the authorized agents of the government on the high seas to be properly respected. It excites a smile, however, that the whole marine of the country consisted at that time of two small vessels, that were not yet equipped.” 8 He might have added, and before any national flag had by legal enactment, so far as the journals of Congress show, been prescribed. The official origin of the grand union striped flag at Cambridge, and the striped flags worn by the fleet of Commodore Hopkins, is involved in obscurity. It is singular that no mention of their official establishment can be found in the private diaries of the times, the official or private correspondence since made public of the prominent actors of the Devolution, the newspapers of the times, or the journals of the Provincial and Continental Congresses. We only know, from unimpeached testimony,
1	In 1863, the Confederate (rebel) cruiser Florida received a return salute from the English authorities at Bermuda, but we do not learn that the governor was removed for his indiscretion.
2	Journal of Congress, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1776, vol. i. p. 531 (edition of Way & Gideon, Washington, 1823).
3	The list of vessels belonging to the United States Navy, October, 1776, the date of the resolve given by Cooper, was : Thirteen vessels of from 32 to 28 guns building, and thirteen vessels in service ; viz., One of 24, one of 20, two of 16, three of 14, one of 12, two of 10, and three smaller, — 814 guns. At the same time (Oct. 10, 1776), a resolution passed Congress defining the relative rank of the twenty-four captains then in the navy. Cooper’s Naval History, 1856 ed., pp. 57, 58.246
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
that there was a striped continental flag, representing the majesty and authority of the thirteen United Colonies.
Flags with different devices and mottoes continued, however, to be used by troops in the field.
At the battle of Long Island, Aug. 26, 1776, the Hessian regiment of Rahl saw a troop of some fifty Americans hastening towards them with flying colors. Rahl commanded to give fire. The Americans, who had lost their way, or had been cut off from their countrymen, surrendered, begged for quarter, and laid down their arms. An under officer, leaping forward, took away the colors. He was about to present them to Colonel Rahl, when General Yon Merbach arrived, and was about snatching the colors from the under officer’s hands, when Rahl said, in a tone of vexation, “ By no means, General; my grenadiers have taken those colors, they shall keep them, and I shall not permit any one to take them away.” A short altercation now took place between them, and they separated in an angry mood, but the colors remained for the present with Rahl’s regiment. The captured colors were of red damask, with the motto, “Liberty” The Americans took their stand at the head of the regiment Rahl, with arms reversed, carrying their hats under their arms, and fell upon their knees, earnestly entreating that their lives might be spared.1
I have an engraving of what purports to be the battle of White Plains, Oct. 28, 1776, which seems to represent the scene above described, the Americans carrying a flag of which the annexed is a fac-simile.
That a national flag other than the striped continental was not provided until some time after the Declaration of Independence, is to me certain. William Richards, writing to the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, Aug. 19, 1776, says, "I hope you have agreed what sort of colors I am to have made for the galleys, &c., as they are much wanted; ” and again, Oct. 15,1776, “ The commodore was with me this morning, and says the fleet has not any colors to hoist if they should be called on duty. It is not in my power to get them until there is a design fixed on to make the colors by.” 2
A letter dated Newport, Oct. 21, 1776, says, on the authority of
1	Hessian account of the battle of Long Island. Memoirs of Long Island Histoiical Society, yob ii. pp. 434, 435.
2	Pennsylvania Archives, vol. v. pp. 17, 46.
From an old English engraving of the Battle of White Plains, Oct. 28, 1776.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
247
a Captain Vickery, just arrived from the West Indies: “No vessel is suffered to wear English colors in any French port, but continental colors are displayed every Sunday, and much admired.” 1 A letter dated “Southampton, England, Nov. 11, 1776,” says, “that the brig Kingston, Captain Eeveness, this day arrived fourteen days from Oporto, and brought advice of sixteen American privateers at Bilboa and four at Ferrol, Spain, and that “their colors are a red field with thirteen stripes where our union is placed, denoting the united rebellious colonies.” 2 This would show that the flags were red, with thirteen stripes in a union where we now have stars.
Boston, Dec. 5, 1776. Captain Barbeoc, in a vessel belonging to Newburyport, has arrived at Squarn from Bilboa, in thirty-three days. With him came passenger Mr. George Cabot, of Beverley, merchant, who informs that the Spanish and French ports are open to our cruisers, and that they permit American vessels to carry the American flag in their ports.
In the preceding pages we have established that the earliest flags planted on the shores of North America, of which there is any record, were those of England; that during the colonial and provincial periods they were continued in the Anglo-Saxon settlements, with the addition of various devices and mottoes, to the time of the grand union flag raising at Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jan. 2, 1776, when the long-established and well-known red ensign of England, bearing in its union the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, was striped in its field with thirteen alternate red and white stripes, emblematic of the union of the thirteen colonies against the oppressive acts of the ministerial government of the Kingdom of Great Britain, whose symbol they nevertheless retained. We now have arrived at the period when this last symbol of loyalty was abandoned, and the striped union flag of the colonies received added beauty and new significance by the erasure of the blended crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, and showing in their place a canopy of white stars on a blue field, representing a new constellation in the western political heavens, an entire separation of the colonies from Great Britain, and the advent among nations of a new power, which, by its Declaration a few months previous, had solemnly proclaimed a free and independent State, under the name of The United States of Amekica.
1	American Archives, 5th series, vol. i. p. 173.
2	American Archives, 5th series, vol. iii. p. 637.THE STARS and STRIPES. 1777-1878.
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PROPOSED STANDARD	
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84358547984768PAKT III.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
a.d. 1775-1818.
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE STARS AND STRIPES AS THE DEVICES OF OUR NATIONAL BANNER.
1774-1777.
THE THIRTEEN STARS AND THIRTEEN STRIPES DURING
THE REVOLUTION.
1777-1783.
THE FLAG OF THIRTEEN STARS AND THIRTEEN STRIPES.
1783-1795.
THE FT.AG OF FIFTEEN STARS AND FIFTEEN STRIPES.
1795-1818.“ Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may he displayed because of the truth.” — Psalms lx. 4.
“ As at the early dawn the stars shine forth even while it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent. So on the American flag, stars and beams of many-colored light shine out together. And where this flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no ramping lions and no fierce eagle, no embattled castles or insignia of imperial authority : they see the symbols of light. It is the banner of dawn. It means Liberty ; and the galley slave, the poor oppressed conscript, the down-trodden creature of foreign despotism, sees in the American flag that very promise and prediction of God : ‘ The people which sat in darkness saw a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.’
“In 1777, within a few days of one year after the Declaration of Independence, the Congress of the Colonies in the Confederated States assembled and ordained this glorious national flag which we now hold and defend, and advanced it full high before God and all men as the flag of liberty.
“ It was no holiday flag gorgeously emblazoned for gayety or vanity. It was a solemn national signal. When that banner first unrolled to the sun, it was the symbol of all those holy truths and purposes which brought together the Colonial American Congress ! . . . Our flag carries American ideas, American history, and American feelings. Beginning with the Colonies, and coming down to our time, in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea : Divine right of liberty in man. Every color means liberty ; every thread means liberty ; every form of star and beam or stripe of light means liberty : not lawlessness, not license ; but organized institutional liberty, — liberty through law, and laws for liberty !
“ It is not a painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Constitution. It is the government. It is the free people that stand in the government on the Constitution.”— Henry Ward Beecher's Address to two Companies of the Brooklyn Fourteenth Regiment, 1861.
“ Across the wide-spread continent our father’s flag we bear ;
Each hill and dale, from shore to shore, the sacred sign shall wear,
And unseen hands shall strengthen ours, to hold it high in air,
As we go marching on.” — General Dix.
‘ ‘ I once entered a house in old Massachusetts, where over its doors were two crossed swords. One was the sword carried by the grandfather of its owner on the field of Bunker Hill, and the other was the sword carried by the English grandsiro of the wife, on the same field, and on the other side of the conflict. Under those crossed swords, in the restored harmony of domestic peace, lived a happy and contented and free family, under light of our republican liberties. (Applause.) I trust the time is not far distant when under the crossed swords and the locked shields of Americans, North and South, our people shall sleep in peace and rise in liberty, love, and harmony, under the union of our flag of the stars and stripes.” — General Garfield, at the dedication of a soldiers' monument at Painesville, Ohio, July 3, 1880.
“ When the rebellion was crushed, the heresy of secession, in every form and in every incident, went down forever. It is a thing of the dead past: we move forward, not backward.” —Letter of Gen. W. S. Hancock to Theodore Cook, Sept. 23, 1880.PART III.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE STARS AND STRIPES.
1774-1777.
u Flag of the free heart’s hope and home !
By angel hands to valor given ,*
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were horn in heaven.
For ever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet
And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us ? ” — Drake.
The earliest suggestion of stars as a device for an American ensign prior to their adoption in 1777 is found in the ‘Massachusetts Spy’ for March 10, 1774, in a song written for the anniversary of the Boston Massacre (March 5). In a flight of poetic fancy, the writer foretells the triumph of the American ensign: —
u A ray of bright glory now beams from afar,
The American ensign now sparkles a star Which shall shortly flame wide through the skies.”
The earliest known instance of the thirteen stripes being used upon an American banner is found upon a standard presented to the Philadelphia troop of Light Horse in 1775, by Captain Abraham Markoe, which is now in the possession of that troop, and displayed at its anniversary dinners.1 As General Washington, when en route to take command of the army at Cambridge, accompanied by Generals Lee and Schuyler, was escorted by this troop of Light Horse from
1 I had a dim recollection of having seen a lithograph of this standard many years before, but I am indebted to my indefatigable friend, John A. McAllister, Esq., of Philadelphia, in a letter dated Oct. 26,1871, for my knowledge of this flag, which had escaped the notice of the previous historians of our flag.252
ORIGIN AND PRO GIRE SS OF THE
Philadelphia, June 21, 1775, to New York,1 he was doubtless familiar with the sight of this standard, and it is possible that it may have
Standard of the Philadelphia Light Horse, 1775. equipped themselves at their OWn
expense. The uniform adopted by them was a dark brown short-coat, faced and lined with white; high-topped boots; a round black hat, bound with silver cord and a buck’s tail. Their housings were brown edged with white, with the letters ‘ L. H.’ worked on them. Their arms were a carbine, a pair of pistols in holsters, and a horseman’s sword, with white belts for the sword and carbine. Such was the appearance of the troop when it escorted General Washington to New York, and afterward fought under this standard at Trenton and Princeton.
1 Sparks’s Life of Washington, p. 143, also Bancroft’s History of the United States. “ On the 23d of June, the day after Congress had heard the first rumors of the battle at Charlestown, Washington was escorted out of Philadelphia by the Massachusetts delegates and many others, with music, officers of militia, and a cavalcade of light horse in uniform. On Sunday, the 25th, all New York was in motion. Washington, accompanied by Lee and Schuyler, under escort of the Philadelphia Light Horse, was known to have reached Newark. On the news that he was to cross the Hudson, bells were rung, the militia paraded in their gayest trim, and at four o’clock in the afternoon the commander-in-chief, dressed in a uniform of blue, was received at Lispenard’s by the mass of inhabitants. Drawn in an open carriage by a pair of white horses, he was escorted into the city by nine companies of infantry, while multitudes of all ages bent their eyes on him from house-tops, the windows, and the streets. That night the royal governor, Tryon, landed without any such popular parade.” — Bancroft's History of the United
“ Nov. 21, 1775, Lady Washington was escorted from Schuylkill Ferry into the city by the Light Horse,” &c.
“Nov. 27, 1775, Lady Washington, attended by a troop of horse, two companies of light infantry, &c., left Philadelphia on her journey to the camp at Cambridge.” — Passages from the Diary of Christopher Marshall, voi. i., 1774-77, edited by William Duane, pub. Phila., 1839.
suggested to him the striped union flag he raised at Cambridge six months later.
The first Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia, September, 1774 ; and on the 17th of November twenty-eight gentlemen of the highest respectability and fortunes voluntarily associated, constituted themselves the Philadelphia troop of Light Horse, and elected Abraham Markoe captain. The members
States.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
253
Captain Markoe resigned his commission late in 1775, an edict of Christian VIII., king of Denmark, forbidding his subjects to engage in the war against Great Britain, under penalty of confiscation of their property.1 He presented this standard to the troop before his resignation, and it was their first standard; this fixes the date of its manufacture in 1775, and prior to the union flag raising at Cambridge. For this reason this flag is considered a relic of priceless value by the troop.
The following minute description of this interesting Bevolutionary relic is furnished by Mr. Charles J. Lukens, of Philadelphia :2 —
“ The flag of the Light Horse of Philadelphia is forty inches long and thirty-four inches broad. Its canton is twelve and one-half inches long, and nine and one-half inches wide. The armorial achievement in its centre occupies the proportional space shown in the drawing; both sides of the flag exhibit the same attributes. The left side shows every thing as if the material were transparent, giving the right side entirely in reverse, except the ciphers f L. H./ and the motto, “ For these we strive/’ The ciphers, the running vine on both sides, the cord and tassels, and the fringe, are of silver bullion twist. The spear-head and the upper ferrule, taken together eight inches in length, are of solid silver. The staff is of dark wood, in three carefully ferruled divisions screwing together. Ten screw rings at irregular intervals, from two and one-half to three and three-fourths inches, are used to attach the flag to the staff* by means of a cord laced through corresponding eyelets in the flag.
“ The flag is formed of two sides very strongly hemmed together along the edges, each side being of two equal pieces attached together by means of a horizontal seam, the material of the flag being a light, bright yellow silk, and apparently the same tint as that of the present artillery flag of the United States. The canton of the flag is c Barry of thirteen azure and argent/	The azure being
deep ultramarine, the argent silver leaf. The achievement in the centre of the flag is: Azure, a round knot of three interlacings, with thirteen divergent, wavy, bellied, double foliated ends or, whereof two ends are in chief,
1	By-Laws, Muster Roll, and Papers of the First Troop of the Philadelphia City Cavalry, Philadelphia, 1856 ; History of the First Troop, 1876. The edict was dated Oct. 4, 1/75.
2	Letters of C. J. Lukens, Nov. 6, 1871, March 21, 1872, &c. Mr. Lukens says the254
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
and one in base as per margin. The scrolled edging of the shield is gold, with outer and inner rims of silver.
“ Orest [without a wreath] a horse’s head bay, with a white star on the forehead, erased at the shoulders, maned sable, bitted and rosetted or, and bridled azure. Over the head of the charger is the monogram ‘ L. H.,’ for Light Horse, though it has been suggested these letters are the monogram of Levi Hollingsworth, who was quartermaster of the troop at the battle of Trenton.
“ Beneath the shield, the motto, ‘ For these ive strive,’1 in black Roman capitals of the Elizabethan style, on a floating silver scroll, upon the upcurled ends of which stand the supporters, Dexter, a continental masquerading as an American Indian (probably of the Boston tea-party, Dec. 16, 1773), with a bow or, the loosened string blue floating on the wind, in his left hand, and in his right a gold rod upholding a liberty cap,2 with tassel azure, the lining silver, head-
first troop have always prized their standard very highly, but never suspected its value in the history of the stars and stripes. Since the publication of the first edition of this work the flag has been placed between two plates of glass, and deposited in an iron fireproof safe, built expressly for its reception in the troop’s new armory.
1	Evidently referring to fame and liberty, represented by the supporters.
2	Many persons entertain a belief that the liberty cap was first used in modern times as an emblem of freedom by the French in 1790. That this was not the case is proved
by its being one of the devices on the flag of the Philadelphia Light Horse, and by the following resolve : —
“ Philadelphia, August 31s£, 1775. At a meeting of the Committee of Safety, held this day, Resolved, That Owen Biddle provide a seal for the use of the board, about the size of a dollar, with a cap of liberty, with this motto, ‘ This is my right, and I will defend it.’ ”
The liberty cap is of Phrygian origin, and belongs to classical times. It was granted to freedmen as a token of manumission from bondage. The Saxons of England used it as their ordinary head-dress, but without the meaning we attach to it. It was on American coins in 1783. The Bryges, a warlike people from the southwest shores of the Euxine, conquered the east of Asia Minor, which they called * Brigia, ’—afterwards changed to Phrygia. This people distinguished themselves from the primitive inhabitants by wearing their national cap as a sign of their independence, and it was stamped on their coins. The Romans adopted it, and, when a slave was manumitted, placed a small red cap called ‘a pileus’ on his head, proclaimed him a freedman, and registered his name as such. When Saturnius took the capital in 263, he hoisted a cap on a spear to indicate that all slaves who joined him should be free. When Caesar was murdered, the conspirators raised a Phrygian cap on a spear as a token of liberty. The Goddess of Liberty on the Aventine Mount held in her hand a cap, the symbol of freedom. In France, the Jacobins wore a red cap. In England, the symbol of liberty is a blue cap with a white border ; and Britannia is represented holding such a cap on the end of a spear. The American cap of liberty has been adopted from the British, and is blue with a white border or bottom on which are thirteen stars. There is no positive regulation in regard to it beyond its shape and color, so far as America is concerned.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
255
dress and kilt (or ga-ka-ah) of feathers, the former of five alternately of dark red and gold, with fillet of crimson. The latter of seven alternately of gold and of dark red. This may he of eight, and then it would he 5 -f- 8 = 13, alternately of dark red and of gold, as the gold at least occupies the extreme natural right of the kilt. The uncertainty arises from age, and the fact that the dependent ends of a crimson shoulder sash or scarf worn from left to right with knot at the waist hound the left edge of the kilt, which itself is supported hy a narrow girdle, with pendent loops of gold, and the looped spaces red. The quiver is of gold, supported over the right shoulder hy a blue strap; its arrows are proper. A continental officer’s crescent, gold, suspended around the neck hy a blue string, rests just where the clavicles meet the sternum. The mocassins are buff with feather tops, I think alternated dark red and gold. The Indian has deep black hair, but his skin is intermediate between the Caucasian and the aboriginal hues, rather inclining to the former, and his cheek is decidedly ruddy, almost rosy. He approaches the shield in profile, as does also the sinister supporter, which represents an angel of florid tint, roseate cheek, with auburn curly hair, and blue eyes, blowing a golden trumpet, with his right hand, and holding in his left a gold rod. His wings are a light bluish gray with changeable flashes of silver. His flowing robe from the right shoulder to the left flank is purple. These supporters not being heraldic in position and motion for human or angelic figures, their left and right action have the natural and not heraldic significations.
“ This flag is in admirable condition, considering that more than one hundred years have elapsed since it was made. The whole is a model of good taste and judgment, and evidences that Captain Markoe spared no expense.”
The presentation is not found chronicled in the Philadelphia papers of the time.1
A lithograph of this flag, presenting a fair idea of its appearance, was published in William Huddy’s ‘ Military Magazine,’ Philadelphia, 1839. The picture is accompanied by some spirited lines by Andrew McMakin, which are dedicated to it.2 A fine colored representation
1	The ‘ Germantown Telegraph,’ some twenty years ago, stated that the old flag of the first troop of Philadelphia county cavalry was in existence, and said : “It was painted in 1774, at the organization of the corps, and is believed to he the only relic now extant of the first flag adopted hy the colonies. ” A correspondent of the ‘ Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch’ says : “The newspapers of 1774 contain nothing about the presentation of this flag, nor about the formation of the troop of Light Horse, and I have searched the newspapers of 1774 and ’75, without finding any mention of the presentation.”
2	These lines were given in full in the first edition of this book.256
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
of the flag is given in the ‘ Centennial History of the Troop/ published in 1875.
On the semi-centennial anniversary of the troop, Nov. 17, 1824, this banner was displayed; and David Paul Brown, when called upon for a toast, gave impromptu : —
u Our Banner !
For fifty years, at fray or feast,
O’er deadly foe or gentle guest,
Triumphantly unfurled!
And FIFTY more our flag shall wave In memory of the Good and Brave Who dignified the world,
And tyranny and time defy In freedom’s immortality.”
Mr. Lukens considered this flag to bear intrinsic evidence of having existed before the invention of the star-spangled banner, “ because it has no stars save a white star in the forehead of the horse-head used as a crest; it also symbolizes the thirteen colonies by a golden knot of thirteen divergent wavy, floating, foliated ends upon a blue shield; and although this in itself is a very beautiful type of the United Colonies, it never would have been selected for the purpose by anybody after the invention of the thirteen stars on blue, equivalent to thirteen stars in the heavens; as the latter, being a higher and more significant symbol, would instantly have swayed every heart in its favor.” 1
Fortunately, solving all doubts as to the early date of this standard, William Camac, a great-grandson of Captain Markoe, and at one time a lieutenant of the City Troop, discovered among his ancestor’s papers, in November, 1874, the original bills for designing and painting it, and has presented them to the troop. A fac-simile of them will be found on the following page.
The first bill, it will be observed, is for a pair of colors, that is, both sides of the standard, which were made separately and sewed together; and includes a charge for a ‘ union/ that is, the stripes, showing that it was not an after addition, as has been suggested.
Nothing on these bills fixes the precise date of ordering the flag. The bill for designing is dated a week later than the bill for painting, and it is reasonable to suppose the standard was completed some time before these bills were presented. Georgia, the thirteenth State to
1 Mr. Lukens’s lecture on ‘ The Heraldry of the American Flag,’ as reported in the ‘Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch.’FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
257
join the confederacy, assented in her provincial congress to all the measures of resistance, and united with the other colonies on the


i




6th of July, 1775, three months earlier, though her delegates did not take their seats in Congress until September; and the thirteen blue and white stripes on the union of this flag may have symbolized those events, or anticipated them. And it may be that it was borne by the troop when it accompanied Washington, June 21, 1775, from Philadelphia to New York, when, being a new flag and device, it would naturally have attracted his attention. Colonel Joseph Eeed, his military secretary, was at that time a resident of Philadelphia, and had doubtless opportunities of seeing the flag carried by the troop, and he may have suggested the stripes to Washington. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that he was secretary of the Committee of Conference sent by Congress to arrange with General Washington the details of the organization of the army, which went into being Jan. 2, 1776, and Colonel Eeed, while the committee was
1 James Claypoole was a painter in Philadelphia as early as 1749. He died in Philadelphia in 1784. Nothing is known of John Folwell. — History of the First Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry, 1774-1874.
17258
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
in session, had the subject of a flag under consideration. This standard was carried by the troop on all important parades until about 1830, when its condition, owing to age and the risk of its exposure, prevented its use in service. It was, however, often displayed at the anniversary dinners.
As from its increasing age the standard required careful preservation, and would not permit of its being handled, in 1872, immediately after the publication of the first edition of this book, in which attention was called to its exceeding value, the City Troop had a handsome frame and case made for its safe-keeping. The frame is of black walnut, in the form of a screen, in which is set the case made of two plates of plate-glass, between which the flag is placed. On either side, and below the case, in one face of the frame, are attached the three sections of the staff. In the ornamental head of the same is a small semicircular opening, faced on either side with glass, which contains the spear-head and tassels. In the construction of the troop’s new armory, in 1874, a fire-proof safe was built for the special purpose of containing this frame, in which is kept the original bills, since discovered. On the 17th of November, 1874, at the centennial anniversary of the troop, the standard was displayed to the assembled guests in its new and safe quarters. A fine, large, colored illustration of it was published in the Centennial History of the troop, in 1875.1
The ‘Pennsylvania Magazine,’ vol. i., 1775, has for frontispiece two flags crossed, one of which, it has been asserted, is blazoned with the thirteen stripes, but has no stars. An examination of the engraving, however, shows that both flags are plain, and that the stripes are only a shaded representation of the folds of the flag. The same magazine has “ a correct view of the battle at Charlestown, June 17, 1775,” in which the British flag is plainly to be seen, but no other flag is visible.
1 History of the First Troop, City Cavalry, 1774. Nov. 17, 1874. 1 vol. 4to, pp. 150.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
25»
THE THIRTEEN STARS AND THIRTEEN STRIPES DURING
THE REVOLUTION.
1777-1783.
u Red, white, and blue, wave on ;
Never may sire or son
Thy glory mar;
Sacred to liberty,
Honored on land and sea,
Unsoiled for ever be
Each stripe and star.”
W. P. Tilden.
On Saturday, the 14th of June, 1777, the American Congress “Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” 1 Thus, full fledged, and without any debate or previous legislation, our flag was flung as a new constellation among the nations. A careful examination of the Rough and Smooth MS. Journals of Congress in the Library of Congress, and of the files of the original drafts of motions made in the Continental Congress in the Department of State, instituted at my request by the‘'Librarian of Congress, shows that this is the first legislative action of which there is any record for the establishment of a national flag for the sovereign United States of America, declared independent July 4, 1776,2 nearly a year previous, and proclaims the official birth of a new constellation as the symbol of their union. In the ‘ Rough Journal ’ the resolve reads: “ 1777, Saturday, June 14. ... Resolved, That the flag of the United States of [‘of’ changed to ‘by’] 13 stripes, alternate red
1	MS. Journal of Congress, copied by Charles Thomson, No. 2, vol. vi. p. 1537, also in 1823 ed., vol. i. p. 165 ; Arnold’s History of Ehode Island ; Hamilton’s History of the U. S. Flag; Sarmiento’s History of our Flag ; Boston Gazette, Sept. 15, 1777, &c.
2	Professor S. F. B. Morse, President of the American Academy of Design, said that,
entering the studio of Benjamin West, long after the death of his patron and friend, George III., he found him copying a portrait of that king. As he sat at his work and talked, according to his custom, he said : “This picture is remarkable for one circumstance. The king was sitting to me when a messenger brought him ‘ the Declaration of Independence.’ ”	“ How did he receive the news ? ” I asked. “ He was agitated at
first,” replied West, “then sat silent and thoughtful ; at length he said, ‘ Well, if they cannot be happy under my government, I hope they may not change it for a worse. I wish them no ill.’ ” —Dunlop's History of the Arts of Design in America.260
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
and white; that the union he 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.’’1 This resolve was printed in the papers in August, but was not officially promulgated over the signature of the Secretary of Congress at Philadelphia until September 3, and at other places still later. An officer of the American army records in his diary, under the date Aug. 3, 1777: “ It appears by the papers that Congress resolved, on the 14th of June last, that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field,” &c.2 3 This tardy resolve of Congress, it will be observed, was not passed until eighteen months after the union flag raising at Cambridge, and the sailing of the first American fleet from Philadelphia, under continental colors, — nearly a year after the declaration of the entire separation of the colonies from Great Britain, and another two and a half months were allowed to elapse before it was promulgated officially. There was red tape in those early days as well as now. No record of the discussions which must have preceded the adoption of the stars and stripes has been preserved, and we do not know to whom we are indebted for their beautiful and soul-inspiring devices. It does not appear from the record whether it was the device of a committee or of an individual, or who presented the resolve. It seems probable, however, it emanated from the Marine Committee, if not from a special one, and such is the tradition. There are many theories as to its origin, but, though less than a century has elapsed, none are satisfactory.
The stripes, as already stated, some have supposed to have been borrowed from the Dutch or from the designating stripes on the coats of the continental soldiers. Both stars and stripes, others have considered, were suggested by the arms of Washington, which, by a singular coincidence, contain both. The arms of William, Lord Douglas, however, also bear on a shield argent a chief azure, a heart imperially crowned proper, and three mullets (five-pointed stars) argent. The stars and shield, it will be observed, of the Douglas arms, are the color of our union, while those on the Washington arms are not.
u The Hodye harte in the Dowglas armes Hys standere stood on hye That every man myght fule well knowe)
By side stode starres three.77 3
1	Rough MS. Journal, No. 1, vol. ix. p. 243.
2	Military Journal during the American Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1783, by James Thatcher, M.D., late Surgeon in the Amenia.
3	Battle of Otterburne (written cir. Henry VI.).FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Had any banner been blazoned with the coat armor of Washington, it is reasonable to suppose he would have chosen its devices for the banner of his own Life Guard; but that had no such device.1
A British antiquarian2 supports the idea that Washington’s arms furnished the device for “ our flag.”
“Like Oliver Cromwell, the American patriot was fond of genealogy, and corresponded with our heralds on the subject of his own pedigree.3 Yes! that George Washington, who gave sanction if not birth to that most democratical of all sentiments, ‘ that all men are free and equal/4 was, as the phrase goes, a gentleman of blood, of ancient time, and coat-armor, nor was he slow to acknowledge the fact.5 6 When the Americans, in their most righteous revolt against the tyranny of the mother country, cast about for an ensign with which to distinguish themselves from their English oppressors, what did they ultimately adopt ? Why! nothing more nor less than a gentleman’s badge, a modification of the old English coat of arms borne by their leader and deliverer. A few stars had, in the old chivalrous times, distinguished his ancestors from their compeers in the tournament and upon the battle-field; more stars and additional stripes, denoting the number of States that joined in the struggle, now became the standard around which the patriots of the West so successfully rallied. It is not a little curious that the poor worn-out ray of feudalism, as so many would count it, should have expanded into the bright and ample banner that now waves from every sea.”
The assumption of this writer finds denial in this, — that Washington, in his correspondence or writings, has not mentioned any connection of his arms with our flag, as he would have been likely to have done had there been any, for he would certainly have been proud
1 See illustration, p. 10.	2 Lowes.	3 Not until 1792.
4 He gives to Washington credit due to Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, in which all men are declared to he created equal; or rather to Hon. George
Mason, of Virginia, who wrote, May, 1776, “that all men are created equally free and independent,” the commencing words of the Declaration of Rights, on a copy of which he
indorsed, “ The first declaration of the kind in America.” The document can he found in Niles’s ‘American Revolution.’
6 Washington to Sir Isaac Heard, “Philadelphia, May 2, 1792,” in answer to his queries about the genealogy, &c., of the Washington family, says : “This is a subject to which I confess I have paid very little attention. ”	“ The arms enclosed in your letter
are the same that are held by the family here.”
Mrs. Lewis, of Woodlawn, Va., has the little robe in which Washington was baptized. It is made of lohite silk lined with red (crimson) silk, and trimmed with blue ribbon, our national colors, red, white, blue. — Lossing’s Hist. Record, March, 1872.262
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
of the connection; and there is no allusion to the subject in the published correspondence of his contemporaries.
Mr. Haven favors the supposition that the devices of our flag were taken from the arms of the Washington family, and were used out of respect to the commander-in-chief. He thought, also, the stars on the Washington shield might be of Roman origin. “ Virgil speaks of returning to the stars, redire ad astra, implying a home of peace and happiness ; and the Romans worshipped the stars, which bore the name of their gods. They also used scourges, producing stripes on the bodies of those they punished.” From these symbolic antecedents we may, he says, “ derive our star-bearing banner, the heaven-sent ensign of our union, freedom, and independence, the stripes only to be used as a scourge to our enemies.” 1
A correspondent of the 'Hew York Inquirer’ beautifully said: “ Every nation has its symbolic ensign, — some have beasts, some birds, some fishes, some reptiles, in their banners. Our fathers chose the stars and stripes, — the red telling of the blood shed by them for their country ; the blue, of the heavens and their protection ; and the stars, of the separate States embodied in one nationality, ‘ E Pluribus TJnum.’ ”
Alfred B. Street, alluding to our flag as first unfurled at the sur-7 render of Burgoyne, says : —
“ The stars of the new flag represent a constellation of States rising in the West. The idea was taken from the constellation Lyra, which in the hands of Orpheus signified harmony. The blue of the field was taken from the edges of the Covenanters’ banner in Scotland,2 significant also of the league and covenant of the United Colonies against oppression, and involving the virtues of vigilance, perseverance, and justice. The stars were disposed in a circle, symbolizing the perpetuity of the union ; the ring, like the circling serpent of the Egyptians, signifying eternity. The thirteen stripes showed with the stars the number of the United Colonies, and denoted the subordination of the States to the Union, as well as equality among themselves. The whole was a blending of the various flags, previous to the union flag, — the red flag of the army and the white one of the floating batteries. The red color, which in Roman days was the signal of defiance,3 * denotes daring, and the white purity.”
1	Paper read before the New Jersey Historical Society, January, 1872.
2	See p. 189 for description of the Covenanters’ banner.
3	Admiral Farragut used the old Roman signal when he designated two red lights as;
a signal for battle previous to passing the forts below New Orleans. In ancient militaryFLAGr OF THE UNITED STATES.
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“ "What eloquence do the stars breathe when their full significance is known! a new constellation, union, perpetuity, a covenant against oppression, justice, equality, subordination, courage, and purity.55
I have been unable to find that his poetic and fanciful description is supported by contemporaneous proof, or that it was ever required the stars should be arranged in a circle, though in Trumbull’s painting of the ‘ Surrender of Burgoyne,5 and Peale’s portrait of Washington, the stars are so arranged by those artists. The resolution of June 14, 1777, does not direct as to their arrangement in the union. It does say, however, that they represent, not f Lyra,5 or any known heavenly cluster of stars, but fa new constellation.5 The idea that the new constellation was a representation of Lyra is advocated in Schuyler Hamilton’s ‘ History of the Flag;5 but I cannot deem the evidence conclusive. The constellation of Lyra is a symbol of harmony and unity, and consists of the required number of stars; but to represent it in the union of a flag would be difficult and objectionable. John Adams is said to have proposed Lyra as the emblem of union; and when John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State, in 1820, he gave color to the idea by removing the United States arms from the United States passports, and substituting in place of them a circle of thirteen stars, surrounding an eagle holding in his beak the constellation Lyra, and the motto, “ Nunc siclera ducit”
Our Bevolutionary fathers, when originating a national flag, undoubtedly met with difficulty in finding a device at once simple, tasteful, inspiriting, and easily manufactured. The number of States whose unity was to be symbolized was a stumbling-block. The stripes represented them; but what could be found to replace the crosses emblematic of the union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England, whose authority they had renounced ? The rattlesnake, which had been used for a time as a symbol of the necessity of union and defiance, rather than of union itself, was repulsive to many, from being akin to the tempter of our first parents, and the cause of their expulsion from Paradise, bearing also the curse of the Almighty.
One of the best of the devices suggested for a union was a circle of
history, a gilded shield hung out of the admiral’s galley was a signal for battle. Sometimes it was a red garment or banner. During the elevation of this signal, the fight continued, and by its depression or inclination to the right or left, the ships were directed how to attack their enemies or to retreat from them. In matters of military parade, probably derived from this ancient custom, it is usual to fix a red flag, called a e signal-staff,’ somewhat larger than a camp color, to point out the spot where the general or officer commanding takes his station. — London Encyclopedia, vol. xx.
A red flag is the danger-signal on all modern railroads.264
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
thirteen mailed hands, issuing from a cloud, and grasping as many
links of an endless chain. An instance of this device exists in the flag or color of a Newburyport company, which was on exhibition in the National Museum in Philadelphia, in 1876. It had the addition of a pine-tree in the centre of the surrounding links.
A mailed hand grasping a bundle of thirteen arrows had been a device for privateers ; but that was a symbol of war and defiance rather than of union. A round knot with thirteen floating ends was the beautiful device, signifying strength in union, of the standard of the Philadelphia Light Horse. A checkered union of blue and white or blue and red squares might have answered, but the odd number of the colonies prevented that or any similar device. Thirteen terrestrial objects, such as eagles, bears, trees, would have been absurd, and equally so would have been thirteen suns or moons; besides, the crescent was the chosen emblem of Mohammedanism, and therefore unfitted to represent a Christian people. Thirteen crosses would have shocked the sentiments of a portion of the people, who looked upon the cross as an emblem of popish idolatry. There remained then only the stars, and the creation of a new constellation to represent the birth of the rising republic.1 No other object, heavenly or terrestrial, could have been more appropriate. They were of like
1 An English writer, a few years later, thus ridicules the fondness of the American colonists for the number thirteen : —
“ Thirteen is a number peculiarly belonging to the rebels. A party of naval prisoners lately returned from Jersey say that the rations among the rebels are thirteen dried clams per day ; that the titular Lord Stirling takes thirteen glasses of grog every morning, has thirteen enormous rum bunches on his nose, and that (when duly impregnated) he always makes thirteen attempts before he can walk ; that Mr. Washington has thirteen toes to his feet (the extra ones having grown since the Declaration of Independence), and the same number of teeth in each jaw ; that the Sachem Schuyler has a topknot of thirteen stiff hairs, which erect themselves on the crown of his head when he grows mad ; that old Putnam had thirteen pounds of his posterior bit off in an encounter with a Connecticut bear (’twas then he lost the balance of his mind); that it takes thirteen Congress paper dollars to equal one penny sterling ; that Polly Wayne was just thirteen hours in subduing Stony Point, and as many seconds in leaving it; that a well-organized rebel household has thirteen children, all of whom expect to be generals and members of the high and mighty Congress of the ‘ thirteen united States ’ when they attain thirteen years ; that Mrs. Washington has a mottled tomcat (which she calls in a complimentary way Hamilton) with thirteen yellow rings around his tail, and that his flaunting it suggested to the Congress the adoption of the same number of stripes for the rebel flag.” — Journal of Captain Smythe, B. A., January, 1780.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
265
form and size, typifying the similarity of the several States, and, grouped in a constellation, represented their unity.
It will probably never be known who designed our union of stars. The records of Congress being silent upon the subject, and there being no mention or suggestion of it in any of the voluminous correspondence or diaries of the time, public or private, which have been published.
It has been asked why the stars on our banner are five-pointed, while those on our coins are, and always have been, six-pointed. The answer is, that the designer of our early coins followed the English, and the designer of our flag the European, custom.1 In the heraldic language of England, the star has six points; in the heraldry of Holland, France, and Germany, the star is five-pointed.
Mr. William J. Canby, in 1870, read before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania a paper on the American Flag, in which he claimed that
his maternal grandmother, Mrs. John Boss,2 was the maker and partial designer of the first flag combining the stars and stripes. The house where this flag was made is now No. 239 Arch Street, below Third; it is a small two-storied and attic tenement, formerly No. 89, and w7as occupied by Mrs. Boss after the death of her first husband. The illustration is from a photograph furnished by Mr. Canby.
A committee of Congress, he asserts, accompanied by General Washington, in June, 1776,3 called upon Mrs. Boss, who was
1	Editor Historical Magazine.
2	Mrs. Ross’s maiden name was Griscom. After tlie death of Mr. Ross, she married, second, Ashburn, who died a prisoner of war in the Mill Prison, England ; and, third, John Claypole, a lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Mrs. Ross’s first husband was-the nephew of Colonel George Ross, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
3	Washington was called from New York to Philadelphia, June, 1776, to advise with Congress on the state of affairs just previous to the Declaration of Independence, and was absent from New York fifteen days. — Sparkss Washington, p. 177.
House where the first Stars and Stripes are said to have been made.266
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
an upholsterer, and engaged her to make the hag from a rough drawing, which, at her suggestion, was redrawn by General Washington in pencil in her back parlor. The hag thus designed was adopted by Congress, and was, according to Mr. Canby, the first star-spangled banner which ever hoated on the breeze.
Mrs. Ross received the employment of hag-making for government, and continued in it for many years. Three of Mrs. Ross’s daughters were living when Mr. Canby wrote his paper, and confirm its statements, founding their belief upon what their mother had told them concerning it. A niece, Miss Margaret Boggs, then living at Germantown, aged ninety-five, was also cognizant of the fact. As related by them, Colonel George Ross and General Washington visited Mrs. Ross and asked her to make the hag. She said, “I don’t know whether I can, but I’ll try; ” and directly suggested to the gentlemen that the design was wrong, the stars being six-cornered and not five-cornered [pointed], as they should be. This was altered, and ■other changes made.
.: Mr. Canby, in a letter written soon after reading his paper, says :1 “It is not tradition, it is report from the lips of the principal participator in the transaction, directly told not to one or two, but a dozen or more living witnesses, of whom I myself am one, though but a little boy when I heard it. I was eleven years old when Mrs. Ross died in our house, and well remember her telling the story. My mother and two of her sisters are living, and in good memory. I have the narrative from the lips of the oldest one of my aunts, now ■deceased, reduced to writing in 1857. This aunt, Mrs. Clarissa Wilson, succeeded to the business, and continued making flags for the navy-yard and arsenals and for the mercantile marine for many years, until, being conscientious on the subject of war, she gave up the government business, but continued the mercantile until 1857. Washington was a frequent visitor at my grandmother’s house before receiving command of the army. She embroidered his shirt ruffles, and did many other things for him. He knew her skill with the needle. Colonel Ross, with Robert Morris and General Washington, called upon Mrs. Ross, and told her they were a committee of Congress, and wanted her to make the flag from the drawing, a rough one, which, upon her suggestions, was redrawn by General Washington in pencil in her back parlor. This was prior to the Declaration of Independence. I fix the date to be during Washington’s visit to Congress from New York in June, 1776, when he came to confer
1 Letters from W. J. Canby, March 29, 1870 ; Nov. 9, 1871.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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upon the affairs of the army, the flag being, no doubt, one of these affairs/’1
Mr. Canby contends that the stars and stripes were in common if not general use soon after the Declaration of Independence, nearly a year before the resolution of Congress proclaiming them the flag of the United States of America; but I cannot agree with him.
He finds evidence of this in the fact that regiments were allowed compensation for altering their colors after July 4, 1776, and that Indian tribes during that year petitioned Congress for a flag of the United States. He probably refers to the following, which is dated eleven days earlier than the resolve giving birth to the new constellation: “ Philadelphia, June 3, 1777, Colonial Records, vol. xi. p. 212. The President laid before the council three strings of wampum, which had been delivered to him some time before by Thomas Green, a nominal Indian of the nation, requesting that a flag of the United States might be delivered to hiin to take to the chiefs of the nation, to be used by them for their security and protection, when they may have occasion to visit us their brethren, and that his Excellency had referred him to Congress for an answer to his request.” 2 He also regards as evidence the statements of Miss Montgomery,8 that her father, Captain Hugh Montgomery, early in July, 1776, hoisted the stars and stripes. Her statement is that Robert Morris, in the winter of 1775, chartered the brig Nancy, commanded by her father, who was one of the owners of the brig. In March, 1776, she sailed for Porto Rico under English colors, thence to other West India islands, and finally to St. Thomas, where, when her cargo was nearly completed, information was received that independence was declared, with a description of the colors adopted. “ This was cheering intelligence to the captain, and would divest him of acting clandestinely. Now they
1	A ridiculous pamphlet has been published entitled ‘ The History of the First United States Flag and the Patriotism of Betsy Ross, the immortal heroine that originated the First Flag of the Union. Dedicated to the Ladies of the United States. By Colonel J. Franklin Reigart, author of the “ Life of Robert Fulton.” Harrisburg, Pa.: Lane S. Hart, Printer and Binder, 1878.’ It is a handsome 4to of twenty-five pages, illustrated with a pretended portrait of Mrs. Betsy Ross (printed in colors) making the first flag, but which is really the portrait of a Quaker lady of Lancaster, now living, and taken from a photograph! His facts and dates and assumptions are equally unreliable. Mr. Canby repudiates the book, and says it does not correctly present the modest Quaker lady (his grandmother) or her claim. The book is a literary curiosity.
2	In the orderly book of the army at Williamsburg, under date April 8, 1776, the colonels are desired to provide themselves with colors, but “it doeth not signify of what sort they are.”
3	Reminiscences of Wilmington, in Familiar Village Tales, Ancient and New, by Elizabeth Montgomery, pp. 176-179. Philadelphia : T. K. Collins, Jr., 1851.268
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
could show their true colors. The material was at once procured, and a young man on board set to work privately to make them.” He was well known in after years as Captain Thomas Mendenhall. The number of men was increased, the brig armed for defence, and all things put in order. The day they sailed, the captain invited the governor and his suite, with twenty other gentlemen, on board to dine. A sumptuous dinner was cooked; and a sea-turtle being prepared, gave it the usual name of a turtle feast.
“ As the custom-house barges approached with the company, they were ordered to lay on their oars while a salute of thirteen guns was fired. Amid this firing Mendenhall was ordered to haul down the English flag and hoist the first American stars ever seen in a foreign port.1 Cheers for the national congress; cries of ' Down with the lion, up with the stars and stripes ! ’ were shouted. This caused great excitement to the numberless vessels then lying in the harbor, and to the distinguished guests was a most animating scene. After the entertainment was hurried over, they returned in their boats, and the brig was soon under full sail.” Miss Montgomery then narrates the Nancy’s approach to our coast, and her being run ashore and blown up to avoid capture by a British fleet, and says, “ One tottering mast, with the national flag flying, seemed only left to guess her fate. Still a quantity of powder and merchandise was left below, and it was resolved, ere she was abandoned, to prevent these stores from falling into the hands of the enemy by blowing her up. The plan was arranged so that the men could have time to leave, and the captain and four hands were the last to quit. As the boat distanced the wreck, one man, John Hancock, jumped overboard, as he said, 'to save the beloved banner or perish in the attempt.’ His movement was so sudden that no chance was afforded to prevent his boldness, and they looked on with terror to see him ascend the shivering mast, and deliberately unfasten the flag, then plunge into the sea and bear it to the shore.” The enemy, taking this act as a signal of surrender, hastened in their boats “ to take possession of the prize, and was involved in the subsequent explosion.” Miss Montgomery’s narrative proves, if any thing, not that her father hoisted the stars and stripes, but the continental flag; for the Nancy was blown up on the 29th of June, 1776, five days before the Declaration of Independence, and before a drawing of Mrs. Ross’s flag, in accordance with Mr. Canby’s theory, could have reached her in the West Indies, as will be seen by the
1 A beautiful mezzotinto engraving of the Nancy flying the stars and stripes (!) furnishes a frontispiece to Miss Montgomery’s ‘ Reminiscences.’FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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following statement in a newspaper, dated “ Philadelphia, June 29, 1776. The brig Nancy, Captain Montgomery, of six 3-pounders and eleven men, from St. Croix and St. Thomas, for this port, with three hundred and eighty-six barrels of gunpowder, fifty firelocks, one hundred and one hogsheads of rum, and sixty-two hogsheads of sugar, &c., on board, in the morning of the 29th of June, when standing for Cape May, discovered six sail of men-of-war, tenders, &c., making towards him, as also a row-boat. The boat and tenders he soon after engaged and beat off, stood close alongshore, and got assistance from Captains Wickes and Barry, when it was agreed to run the brig ashore, which was done; and, under favor of a fog, they saved two hundred and sixty-eight barrels of powder, fifty arms, and some dry-goods, when the fog clearing away, Captain Montgomeiy discovered the enemy’s ships very near him, and five boats coming to board the brig, on which he started a quantity of powder in the cabin, and fifty pounds in the mainsail, in the folds of which he put fire, and then quitted her. The men-of-war’s boats (some say two, some three) boarded the brig, and took possession of her, with three cheers; soon after which the fire took the desired effect, and blew the pirates forty or fifty yards into the air and much shattered one of their boats under her stern; eleven dead bodies have since come on shore, with two gold-laced hats and a leg with a garter. From the number of limbs floating and driven ashore, it is supposed thirty or forty of them were destroyed by the explosion. A number of people from on board our ships of war, and a number of the inhabitants of Cape May, mounted a gun on shore, with which they kept up a fire at the barges, which the men-of-war, &c., returned, and killed Mr. Wickes, third lieutenant of the continental ship Reprisal, and wounded a boy in the thigh.” 1 Although the flag of thirteen stripes had been displayed Jan. 2, 1776, the following order shows conclusively that no common flag had been adopted for the continental army in February:2 —
“ Head-quarters, 20th February, 1776.
“Parole, ‘Manchester.’ Countersign, ‘Boyle.’
“ As it is necessary that every regiment should be furnished with colors, and that those colors bear some kind of similitude to the regiment to which they belong, the colonels, with their respective brigadiers and with the quartermaster-general, may fix upon any such as are proper and can be procured. There must be for each regiment the standard for regimental colors, and colors for each grand division, — the whole to be small and light. The
1	American Archives, 4th series, vol. vi. p. 1132.
2	See note ante, p. 226, letter and order on same subject, dated May 28 and 31, 1776.270
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number of the regiment is to be marked on the colors, and such motto as the colonels may choose, in fixing upon which the general advises a consultation among them. The colonels are to delay no time in getting the matter fixed, that the quartermaster-general may provide the colors for them as soon as possible.	“ Go. Washington.’'
Washington’s first requisition on arriving in camp was for one hundred axes, and bunting for colors. At the battle of Long Island, fought August, 1776, a regimental color of red damask, having only the word ‘ Liberty ’ on the field, was captured by the British.
On the 24th of February, 1776, the Committee of Safety at Philadelphia ordered “ that Captain Proctor procure a flag-staff for the fort, with a flag of the United Colonies1 and that Commodore Caldwell and Captain Proctor fix upon proper signals for the fleet, merchantmen, and battery. Under date Aug. 19, 1776, Captain William Richards writes to the Pennsylvania Council of Safety: —
“ Gentlemen, I hope you have agreed what sort of color I am to have made for the galleys, &c., as they are much wanted; ” and under date “Oct 15, 1776: “ Gentlemen, the commodore was with me this morning, and says the fleet has not any colors to hoist if they should be called to duty. It is not in my power to get them done, until there is a design to make the colors by.” 2
The colors he asked a design for were State colors, but the request shows that no national colors had been adopted, and the continental flag was still in use.
The first colors made for this fleet, of which there is record, were made by Mrs. Elizabeth Ross, as is shown by the following, extracted from the minutes of the Navy Board: —
“State Navy Boaed, May 29, 1777. “Present:	William Bradford, Joseph Marsh,
Joseph Blewer,	Paul Cox.
“An order on William Webb to Elizabeth Ross for fourteen pounds, twelve shillings, and two pence, for making ship’s colours, &c., put into William Richards store. <£14. 12. 2.” 3
1	Pennsylvania Colonial Records, vol. x. p. 494.
2	Pennsylvania Archives, vol. v. pp. 13, 14.
3	Pennsylvania Archives, 1st series, vol. v. p. 46.
Joseph Webb was paid by the Massachusetts Board of War, May 5, 1777, “To mending an ensign and sewing in a pine tree, 6s.
1777.	State of Massachusetts Bay to Jos. Webb, Dr.
Aug. 20. To making a suit Colours, 44s.; thread, 12s.; painting Pine
Trees, &c., 24s.........................................¿64. 0. 0
For Brig Freedom, Capt. Clouston.
To 22 yards narrow crimson Bunting added, 2s.................. 2. 4. 0
John Clouston.	£6. 4. 0FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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When the Declaration of Independence was received at Easton, Penn., July 8, the colonel and all the other field-officers of the first battalion repaired to the court-house, the light infantry company marching there with their drums beating, fifes playing, “and the standard (the device for which is the thirteen United Colonies), which was ordered to be displayed.” 1
The Declaration was read in ISTew York in the presence of Washington by one of his aids, on the 9th of July, 1776, in the centre of a hollow square of the troops, drawn up on the Park near where there is now a fountain, and the “ grand union ” flag of Cambridge was then, if it had not been earlier, unfurled in ISTew York. On the 10th the Declaration was read at the head of the several brigades.
On the 9th it was proclaimed from the old State House in Philadelphia, by the Committee of Safety, and the king’s arms were taken from the court-house and committed to a bonfire in front of it.
Thursday, July 18, 1776, it was proclaimed from the balcony of the State House in Boston, and the king’s arms and every sign of them taken down and burnt, bells rung, &c.
It was not until Sept. 9, 1776, that Congress ordered “all continental commissions and instruments should be made to read ‘ United States,’ where heretofore the words f United Colonies ’ had been used.”
The first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1777, was celebrated in Philadelphia, with demonstrations of joy and festivity. About noon, all the armed ships and galleys in the river were drawn up before the city, dressed in the gayest manner, with the colors of the United States and streamers flying. At one o’clock, the yards being manned, they celebrated the day by a discharge of thirteen cannon from each ship, and one from each of the thirteen galleys, in honor of the thirteen United States. In the afternoon, an elegant dinner was provided by Congress, when toasts were drank and feio-de-joies were fired. The troops were reviewed by Congress and the General Officers, and the day closed with the ringing of bells and exhibition of fireworks, which began and ended with thirteen rockets. The city was beautifully illuminated.2
At Charleston, S. C., at sunrise the same day, American colors were displayed from all the forts, batteries, and vessels in the harbor,3 and at one o’clock the forts discharged seventy-six pieces, alluding to the glorious year 1776.
1	Pennsylvania Evening Post, July 11, 1776 ; New England Chronicle, vol. viii. No. 414, July 25, 1776.
2	Pennsylvania Journal, July 9, 1777.	3 Independent Chronicle, July 31, 1777.272
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Similar rejoicings and displays of the 'United States’ colors were had all over the country.
The portrait of Washington at the battle of Trenton, Dec. 26-27, 1776, painted by Charles Wilson Peale in 1779, represents the union jack, with the thirteen stars arranged in a circle; but it affords only presumptive proof that such a flag was carried. Mr. Peale’s son, Titian R. Peale, writing a friend in 1870, says: "Whether the union jack was my father’s design, original or not, I cannot say, but I suppose it was, because he has somewhat marred the artistic effect by showing the stars, and flattening the field to show their arrangement ; ” and in another letter he says : “ I have just had time to visit the Smithsonian Institution to see the portrait of Washington painted by my father, C. W. Peale, after the battle of Trenton. It is marked in his handwriting, 1779. The flag represented is a blue field with white stars arranged in a circle. I don’t know that I ever heard my father speak of that flag, but the trophies at Washington’s feet I know he painted from the flags then captured, and which were left with him for the purpose. He was always very particular in matters of historic record in his pictures (the service sword in that picture is an instance, and probably caused its acceptance by Congress). The blue ribbon has also excited comment, — the badge of a field-marshal of France in that day.1 I have no other authority, but feel assured that flag was the flag of our army at the time, 1779.2 My father commanded a company at the battles of Germantown, Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth, and was soldier as well as painter, and, I am sure, represented the flag then in use, not a regimental flag, but one to mark the new republic.” 3
An unfinished sketch of the battle of Princeton, Jan. 3, 1777, in the Trumbull Gallery at Hew Haven, represents the American flag with thirteen white stars on a blue field, arranged as in the diagram, — and with thirteen stripes, red and white alternately. As Colonel Trumbull was in active service until February, 1777, his representation of the flag carried by the troops, with which he must have been familiar, is worthy of attention.2
Arthur Lee, one of our commissioners to France, writing Henry
1	Washington’s general order, July 24, 1775, prescribes a broad purple ribbon as tbe distinguishing mark of a major-general. See note, ante, p. 224.
2	Possibly in 1779 ; but in December, 1776, or in January, 1777, the stars had no place on our flag. See ante, p. 198.
3	Letter to John A. McAllister, 1872.
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Laurens, the President of the Continental Congress, Sept. 20, 1778, a year after the public promulgation of the law of June, 1777, which prescribed the thirteen stripes to be red and white alternately, says: “ The ship’s colors should be white, red, and blue alternately, to thirteen, and in the upper angle [canton] next the staff a blue field with thirteen white stars.”
I am indebted to Miss Sarah Smith Stafford for the following account of the presentation of the first star-gemmed banner by ladies of Philadelphia to Paul Jones. This story she received from Mrs. Patrick Hayes, who had it from her aunt, Miss Sarah Austin, one of the donors. Miss Austin became later the second wife of Commodore John Barry, U. S. N. “The patriotic ladies of Philadelphia met at the Swedes’ Church in that city, and under the direction of John
Swedes’ Church, Philadelphia.
Brown, Esq., secretary of the new Board of Marine, formed or arranged a flag, which was presented to Jones by Misses Mary and Sarah Austin in behalf of the patriotic ladies of Philadelphia. Captain Jones was so delighted and enthusiastic, that after the presentation he procured a small boat, and, unfurling the flag, sailed up and down the river before Philadelphia, showing it to thousands.on shore.”1
Paul Jones claimed it was his good fortune to be the first to dis-
1 Miss Sarah. Smith Stafford, Letter, Jan. 15, 1873. I can find no notice of this event in the church records or in the newspapers of the time, and the fact, if fact it be, rests on the statement of Miss Stafford and her informants.
18274
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
play the stars and stripes on a naval vessel, as it had been his to hoist with his own hand the “ flag of America ” for the first time on board the Alfred. He also claimed to have' obtained and received for our star-spangled banner the first salute granted to it in Europe.
The day that Congress passed the resolve in relation to the flag of the thirteen United States, June 14,1777, it also “Resolved, That Paul Jones be appointed to the command of the Ranger; ” and soon after he hoisted the new flag on board of that vessel at Portsmouth. The Ranger, however, did not get to sea until the 1st of November, nearly five months later. Her battery of sixteen 6-pounders, throwing only forty-eight pounds of shot from a broadside excites a smile of contempt in these days of heavy guns; otherwise, she was poorly equipped. Among her deficiencies Jones laments having only thirty gallons of rum for the crew to drink on their passage to Nantes. He also represented her as slow and crank, but nevertheless managed to capture two prizes on his passage to Europe, and reached Nantes in thirty days from Portsmouth, N. H.
From Nantes Jones sailed to Quiberon Bay, convoying some American vessels, and placing them under the protection and convoy of the French fleet commanded by Admiral La Motte Piquet. From him, after some correspondence, Jones succeeded in obtaining the first salute ever paid by a foreign naval power to the stars and stripes. The story is best told in Jones’s letter to the Naval Committee, dated Feb. 22, 1778: —
“ I am happy,” he says, “ to have it in my power to congratulate on my having seen the American flag, for the first time, recognized in the fullest and completest manner by the flag of France. I was off this bay on the 13th inst., and sent my boat in the next day to know if the admiral would return my salute. He answered that he would return to me as the senior American continental officer in Europe the same salute as he was authorized to,return to an admiral of Holland or any other republic, which was four guns less than the salute given. I hesitated at this, for I had demanded gun for gun.
“ Therefore I anchored in the entrance of the bay at a distance from the French fleet; but after a very particular inquiry on the 14th, finding that he really told the truth, I was induced to accept his offer, the more as it ivas an acknowledgment of American Independence.
“ The wind being contrary and blowing hard, it was after sunset before the Ranger1 was near enough to salute La Motte Piquet with
1 Jones, in his letter to the American commissioners at Paris, dated Brest, May 27, 1778, mentions that in the action between the Ranger and the Drake on the 24th ofFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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thirteen guns, which he returned with nine. However, to put the matter beyond a doubt, I did not suffer the Independence to salute until the next morning, when I sent word to the admiral that I would sail through his fleet in the brig, and would salute him in open day. He was exceedingly pleasant, and returned the compliment also with nine guns.”1
As if Providence delighted to honor Jones over all others in connection with our flag, and was determined to entwine his name with its early history, was assigned to him the honorable duty of displaying it for the first time on board the first ship of the line built for the United States, and fitly named ‘ The America!
This ship, like the Kanger, was built at Portsmouth, IST. H., and Jones appointed to command her. Before she could be launched, the Magnifique, one of the finest ships of the line of the French navy, was stranded near Boston harbor, and to replace her, the America, by a resolve of the American Congress, was presented to our ally, the sovereign of France. Jones, however, was retained in command, and superintended her construction; and on the 5th of November, 1782, displaying the French and American flags from her stern, he launched her into the waters of Portsmouth harbor, and delivered her to the Chevalier Martigne, who had commanded the Magnifique. It seems probable that Jones hoisted the stars and stripes over her the preceding summer, when, at his own expense, he celebrated the birthday of the Dauphin of France, as it is recorded the ship on that occasion was decorated with the flags of different nations, that of France being in front, and that salutes were fired, and at night the ship brilliantly illuminated, &c.
April preceding, when the latter hoisted the English colors, “the American stars were displayed on board the Ranger.” — Sherburne’s Life of Jones. This is the first recorded action under the new flag.
The Ranger was taken with other vessels in the port of Charleston, S. C., on the surrender of that city to the British. — CharnocJc’s Biographie Navalis, vol. vi. p. 5.
“The continental colors” borne on the General Mifflin, Captain William McNeil, had been saluted at Brest, August, 1777, much to the indignation of the English ambassador, Lord Stormont, and had been saluted at St. Eustatia by the Dutch governor, De Graff, Nov. 16, 1776, in acknowledgment of a salute from the brig Andrea Doria, Captain Robertson. See ante, p. 244. The evidence of the pamphlet proves the striped continental flag was saluted at St. Eustatia.
1 Dr. Ezra Green, the surgeon of the Ranger, mentions the salute in his diary, under date “.Saturday, 14th Eeb. Very squally weather, came to sail at 4 o’clock p.m. Saluted the french Admiral, & rec’d nine guns in return. This is the first salute ever pay’d the American flagg.
“ Sunday, 15th Eeb’y. Brig Independence saluted the french Flagg, which was returned.”276
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
The first military incident connected with the new flag occurred on the 2d of August, 1777, when Lieutenants Bird and Brant invested Fort Stanwix,1 then commanded by Colonel Peter Gansevoort. The garrison was without a flag when the enemy appeared, but their patriotism and ingenuity soon supplied one in conformity to the pattern just adopted by the Continental Congress. Shirts were cut up to form the white stripes, bits of scarlet cloth were joined for the red, and the blue ground for the stars was composed of a cloth cloak belonging to Captain Abraham Swartwout, of Dutchess County, who was then in the fort. Before sunset, this curious mosaic standard, as precious to the beleaguered garrison as the most beautiful wrought flag of silk and needle-work, was floating over one of the bastions. The siege was raised on the 22d of August, but we are not told what became of the improvised flag.
The narrative of Colonel Marinus Willett presents a different version of this story. He says, “ The fort had never been supplied with a flag. The necessity of having one, upon the arrival of the enemy, taxed the invention of the garrison, and a decent one was soon contrived. The white stripes were cut out of ammunition shirts furnished by the soldiers; the blue out of the camlet cloak taken from the enemy at Peekskill; while the red stripes were made of different pieces of stuff procured from one and another of the garrison.”
In his statement to Governor Trumbull, Aug. 21, 1777, of the occurrences at and near Fort Stanwix, Colonel Willett mentions as one of the results of his sally from the fort on the 6th, preceding, that he captured and brought off five of the enemy’s colors, the whole of which on his return to the fort were displayed on the flag-staff under the impromptu made continental flag.2
Mr. Haven, in a paper read before the New Jersey Historical Society, says: “ From traditional reports in circulation here, the first time that our national flag was used after the enactment concerning it by Congress was by General Washington, in the hurried and critical stand made by him on the banks of the Assanpink, when he repulsed Cornwallis, Jan. 2,1777. As this conflict was the turning-point, in connection with what succeeded at Princeton, of the struggle for independence, and the glorious consequences which followed, does
1	Fort Stanwix was built in 1758 by an English general of that name, and was renamed ‘Schuyler’ by Colonel Dayton in 1777. In ‘Harper’s Magazine’ for July, 1877, there is a picture of the site of Fort Schuyler, and portraits of Colonels Gansevoort and Willett. The present town of Rome covers the site of Fort Schuyler.
2	Lossing’s Field-Book of American Revolution, vol. i. p. 242.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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not this signal baptism of the stars and stripes, with the hope and confidence regenerated by it, seem providential? Freedom’s vital spark was then rekindled, and onr own country and the whole civilized world are now illumined with its beams.”
But this occurrence took place six months before the stars and stripes were adopted, and tradition must be mistaken. It is true, Leutze, in his great picture of Washington crossing the Delaware, has painted Colonel Munroe in the boat holding the stars and stripes, but it is with an artist’s license.1
Beyond a doubt, the thirteen stars and thirteen stripes were unfurled at the battle of Brandywine, Sept. 11, 1777, eight days after the official promulgation of them at Philadelphia, and at Germantown on the 4th of October following; they witnessed the operations against and the surrender of Burgoyne, after the battle of Saratoga, Oct. 17, 1777; and the sight of this new constellation helped to cheer the patriots of the army amid their sufferings around the camp fires at Yalley Forge the ensuing winter. They waved triumphant at the surrender of Corn walks at Yorktown, Sept. 19, 1781; looked down upon the evacuation of New York, Nov. 25, 1783; and shared in all the glories of the latter days of the Bevolution.
A monument which is to be erected in commemoration of the battle of Saratoga will cover the exact spot where the marquee of General Gates was situated, which witnessed the formal surrender of Burgoyne, and the formal unfurling of the stars and stripes.
On the 28th of January, 1778, the stars and stripes for the first time waved over a foreign fortress. About eleven o’clock the night previous, the American sloop-of-war Providence,2 Captain John Bath-burne, mounting twelve 4-pounders, with a crew of fifty men, landed twenty-five of her crew on the island of New Providence. They were joined by about eighteen or twenty Americans escaped from British prison-ships, and who were waiting an opportunity to return home. This small body of men took possession of Fort Nassau, with the cannon, ammunition, and three hundred stand of small-arms, and hoisted the stars and stripes.
In the port lay a 16-gun ship, with a crew of forty-five men, and five vessels, all prizes to the British sloop Grayton. At daybreak, four men were sent on board the 16-gun ship to take possession of her, and send the officers and crew into the fort. Her prize captain was shown the American flag hoisted on the fort, and informed his ship would be
1	See ante, p. 198.
2	The Providence was captured when Charleston was taken, 1780.278
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instantly sunk should lie hesitate to surrender. Thus intimidated, he gave her up, and the five prize vessels were secured in a similar manner. Possession was also taken of the western fort, its cannon spiked, and its powder and small-arms removed to Fort Nassau. About twelve o’clock, some two hundred armed people assembled and threatened to attack the fort ; but, on being informed if they fired a single gun the town would be laid in ashes, they dispersed. Soon after the Providence had anchored, the British ship Grayton hove in sight. The American colors were immediately taken down, and the guns of the Providence housed, hoping the Grayton would come to anchor. But the inhabitants signalled to her the state of affairs, and she stood off. The fort opened fire upon her, but she made her escape.
About three o’clock the next morning, some five hundred men with several pieces of artillery marched within sight of the fort, and summoned it to surrender, threatening at the same time to storm the place and put all to the sword without mercy. The Americans, however, in the presence of the messenger, nailed their colors to the flag-staff, and returned answer that, while a man of them survived, they would not surrender.
The following morning the prizes were manned, the guns of the fort spiked, the ammunition and small-arms conveyed on board the Providence, and the whole American garrison was embarked and put to sea, after having held possession of the fort two days. Two of the prizes, being of little value, were burnt, the others were sent to the United States.
When the news that the treaty of alliance with France (the first treaty of our new republic with a foreign power) which had been signed at Paris, Feb. 6, 1778,1 was received, General Washington, from his head-quarters at Valley Forge, ordered, on May 2d, that the following day should be set apart “for gratefully acknowledging the divine goodness and celebrating the important event which we owe to his benign interposition.” Accordingly, the army was reviewed by the commander-in-chief, with banners waving, and at given signals, after the discharge of thirteen cannon and a running fire of infantry, the whole army huzzaed, “Long live the King of France !” then, after a like salute of thirteen guns and a second general discharge of musketry, “ Huzza ! long live the friendly European powers ! ” then a final discharge of thirteen pieces of artillery, followed by a general running fire and “ Huzza for the American States ! ” 2
1	Pennsylvania Packet, March 28, 1778.
2	The French alliance was looked npon as a wonderful interposition of Providence,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The officers approached the place of entertainment thirteen abreast and closely linked in each other’s arms, thus signifying the thirteen American States, and the interweaving of arms a complete union and most perfect confederation.1
The next interesting incident connected with the new constellation occurred on the 7th of March, 1778, when the continental ship Randolph, 32, Captain Nicholas Biddle, was blown up in an engagement with the Yarmouth, 64, Captain Vincent.
and. every measure that could be, was taken to extend a sentiment of confidence in tlie result of the struggle after this happy event. As one means of effecting this end, the following curious statement was published throughout the United States : —
“ Wonderful Appearances and Omens.
“1. After the surrender of Burgoyne, and while the treaty of alliance with France was on the carpet, the American heavens were illuminated at intervals for whole months together. The aurora borealis, or northern lights, were the greatest ever seen in America.
“ 2. When the fleet of his most Christian majesty, twelve ships of the line, and by the capture of a British ship of force, thirteen, and commanded by the admiral, the illustrious D’Estaing, hove in sight of our capes, the artillery of the skies was discharged, and thirteen thunders were distinctly heard on the coast of the Delaware.
“ 3. On the morning after the arrival of his plenipotentiary, the illustrious Gerard, being the thirteenth of the month, an aloe-tree — the only one in this State — immediately shot forth its spire, which it never does but once in its existence, and in some other climates only once in a hundred years. It has been planted forty years in the neighborhood of this city, and previously only produced four leaves a year, until this year, when it produced thirteen. The spire is remarkable, being thirteen inches round, and having grown thirteen feet in the first thirteen days. The Scotch talk much of the thistle, and the South Britons of the Glastonbury thorn. Much finer things may be said of the aloe of America and the fleur-de-hs of France.”— Westcott’s History of Philadelphia, published in Sunday Dispatch, April, 1872.
In 178*1, on the occasion of Washington’s visit to Philadelphia, among other devices was a painting representing the British lion lying exhausted, wounded with thirteen arrows, a cock, emblem of France, standing on his body, with the motto, “ Gallus victum super leonem cantatAt another window was the Genius of America trampling on discord, clothed in white, covered by a purple mantle strewed with stars, a fillet on her head with the word “PerseveranceIn one hand a banner of thirteen stripes, with the words, ‘‘Equal Eights.”
On the left-hand corner of the membership certificate of the Society of the Cincinnati, issued in 1785, is represented a strong armed man, bearing in one hand a union flag, and in the other a naked sword. Beneath his feet are British flags, a broken spear, shield, and chain. Hovering by his side is the eagle, our national emblem, from whose talons the lightning of destruction is flashing upon the British lion, and Britannia, with the crown falling from her head, is hastening to make her escape in a boat to the fleet.
The union flag of this certificate is composed of thirteen alternate red and white stripes and a lohite union, in which is painted the present arms of the United States, adopted in 1782. A flag of this kind may have been in use in the army earlier.
1 A full account of this joyful occasion can be found in the ‘ New Jersey Gazette,’ May 13, 1778, ‘New York Journal,’ June 15, and is copied in Frank Moore’s ‘Diary of the Revolution,’ vol. ii. pp. 48-52.280
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The Randolph, built in Philadelphia in 1775-76, sailed from Charleston, S. C., on her last cruise, early in February, 1778. On the afternoon of March 7, when about fifty leagues to the eastwaxd of Bar-badoes, being in company with the General Moultrie, of 18 guns, she discovered a ship, which proved to be the Yarmouth, 64. The Randolph and Moultrie hove to and allowed the stranger to come within hail about eight p.m., when several questions and answers passed between the vessels. Lieutenant Barnes, of the Randolph, at last called out, “ This is the Randolph/’ hoisted her colors, and gave the Yarmouth a broadside. The action was continued about twenty minutes, and the surgeon was engaged in examining Captain Biddle’s wound when the Randolph blew up. The two ships were in such close action that many fragments of the Randolph struck the Yarmouth, and among other things an American ensign, rolled up, was blown in upon the forecastle of the Yarmouth.1 * * * * The flag was not singed. Cooper, in his novel, ‘Le Feu Follet/ seizes upon this incident, when he describes the flag of that rover after her sudden disappearance as washed upon the forecastle of the ship in chase.
Five days after the engagement, the Yarmouth discovered a piece of the w7reck with four men on it, the only survivors of a crew of of three hundred and fifteen who had so gallantly sustained the action.
A model of the Randolph has been preserved, and in 1842 was to be seen in the hall of the Naval Asylum at Philadelphia.
In the agreement (June, 1779) between John Paul Jones, captain of the Bon Homme Richard, Pierre Landais, captain of the Alliance, Dennis Nicolas Cottineaux, captain of the Pallas, Joseph Varage, captain of the Le Cerf, and Philip Nicolas Recot, captain of the Vengeance, it was stipulated the Franco-American squadron should fly “ the flag of the United States,” and that it should be commanded by the oldest officer of the highest grade, and so in succession in case of death or retreat. The frigate Alliance, named in honor of the treaty with France, and commanded by the obstinate, ill-tempered Frenchman, Landais, was the only American-built vessel of the squadron.
At a meeting of the New Jersey Historical Society, January, 1872,
1 It was fortunate for us that we were to windward of her ; as it was, our ship was in
a manner covered with parts of her. A great piece of a top timber, six feet long, fell on
our poop ; another piece of timber stuck in our foretop-gallantsail (then upon the cap) ;
an American ensign, rolled up, blown upon the forecastle, not so much as singed.” — Cap-
tain Vincent to Admiral Young, March 17, 1778.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Mr. C. C. Haven made some interesting remarks concerning the origin of our flag, and said that, in the conflict between the Bon Homme Bichard and Serapis, “ James Bayard Stafford was cut down by a British officer, but rescued and rehoisted her flag, which probably had no stars or stripes ” As that action was fought Sept. 23, 1779, two and a half years after their establishment, and the agreement above recited stipulates that the American squadron should fly “the flag of the United States/’ Mr. Haven was evidently in error. Moreover, Freneau, in his poem on “ that memorable victory of Paul Jones,” thus alludes to the flag: —
“Go on, great man, to scourge the foe, And hid the haughty Britons know They to our thirteen stars shall bend: The stars that, clad in dark attire,
Long glimmered with a feeble fire,
But radiant now ascend.”
And Jones, when in command of the Banger, had received a salute to the stars and stripes on the 14th of February, 1778.
Placing the matter beyond a doubt, Miss Sarah Smith Stafford, of Trenton, N. J., has in her possession the following letter :1 —
1 Miss Stafford died at Trenton, 1ST. J., Jan. 6, 1880, and the flag was willed by her to her brother, Samuel Bayard Stafford. The autography is half the size of the original»282
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Our illustration, showing twelve stars and thirteen stripes, is from a photograph of the flag taken in 1872. Miss Stafford’s story of the flag is this : —
“ About ten days before the battle between the Bon Homme Richard and Serapis, Paul Jones captured a British vessel of war and her prize, an armed ship called the Kitty, commanded by Captain Philip Stafford. The Englishman had put the Kitty’s crew in irons, which were now transferred to them. The crew of the Kitty volunteered to serve on board the Serapis. Among these volunteers was James Bayard Stafford, a nephew of the captain of the Kitty, and the father of the present owner of the flag. Being educated, he was made an officer on board the Richard. During the battle, her flag was shot away, and young Stafford jumped into the sea and recovered it, and was engaged in replacing it when he was cut down by an officer of the Serapis. When the Bon Homme Richard was sinking, the flag was seized by a sailor and transferred by Jones to the Serapis, and accompanied him to the Alliance, when he assumed the command of that frigate at the Texal. After the sale of the Alliance, the flag
was sent to Stafford, as the letter we have given shows. This relic was preserved by Lieutenant Stafford, and by his widow until her death, Aug. 9, 1861, when it came into the possession of their daughter, whose death has been recently announced. Miss Stafford states that her father exhibited this cherished
flag to several of the crew of the Bon Homme Richard who called upon him, for which they expressed the deepest reverence. Miss Stafford’s earliest recollection of the flag is in 1806, when she
Flag of tlie Boil Homme Richard, said to have been worn during her Action with the Serapis, Sept. 23, 1779.
was not quite four years old, when, on the occasion of a family moving, as a great favor she was permitted to carry it across the street.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Why so small a flag was used — scarcely larger than a boat ensign of the present day — may perhaps be explained by the action having been fought at night, and because of the high cost of the English material and the difficulty in procuring it. The flag has been loaned to fairs and festivals. It was exhibited at the sanitary fairs in Philadelphia and New York, and at the great fair in Trenton in 1862, and was at the Centennial Exhibition. A piece (shown in the illustration) cut from the head of it at the beginning of our civil war, was, by direction of Mrs. Stafford, sent to President Lincoln.
The flag is of English bunting, and about eight and one-half yards long and one yard five inches wide. It is sewed with flax thread, and contains twelve white stars in a blue union, and thirteen white stripes, alternately red and white. The stars are arranged in four horizontal lines, three stars in each line.
Why its union has only twelve stars, unless they could find no symmetrical place for the odd star, is a mystery. It has been suggested that only twelve of the colonies had consented to the confederation at the date of its manufacture; but all the colonies had confederated before the adoption of the stars in 1777, and the consent of Georgia, the last to assent, was symbolized in the flag of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, at Cambridge, as early as Jan. 1, 1776. In the agreement signed by Jones and the captains of his Franco-American squadron, June, 1779, it was stipulated the squadron should fly the “ flag of the United States.” So we may be sure the stars and stripes were flown in the fight between the Eichard and Serapis, as they had been in the fight between the Eanger and Drake six months before, as Jones himself stated. ' The remarkable action between the Bon Homme Eichard and the Serapis, fought within sight of the shores of England, exercised as important an influence upon our affairs in Europe as did the fight between the Kearsarge and Alabama in recent times.
At the 4th of July celebration in Philadelphia, 1788, consequent upon the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there was in the procession a Federal ship called “the Union,” thirty-three feet in length, the bottom of which was made from the barge of the frigate Alliance, and which was also the barge of Serapis when she was captured by the Bon Homme Eichard. This little vessel is described in the newspaper of the day “ as a masterpiece of elegant workmanship, perfectly proportioned and complete throughout, and decorated with emblematical carving,” and, what was “ truly astonishing, she was begun and fully completed in less than four days, fully prepared to join the284
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
grand procession. She was subsequently placed in the State House yard, and, later, removed to Gray’s Ferry. Her ultimate fate is unknown.”
How slowly the new flags came into general use is shown by the following notices: A manuscript written by an officer on board the privateer Cumberland, Captain John Manly, early in 1779, says, alluding to the flag, in particular, of that vessel, “ At this time we had no national colors, and every ship had the right, or took it, to wear what kind of fancy flag the captain pleased.”1 The diary of a surgeon of the British forces in Charleston harbor, under date 1780, April 3, says: “In the evening I walked across James Island to the mouth of Wapoo Creek in Ashley Biver; saw the American thirteen-striped flag displayed on the works opposite the shore redoubts commanded by Major Mackleroth, and two other flags displayed in their new works opposite our forces on Charleston Heck, — while there they cannonaded our working party on the N eck, — their great battery fronting Charleston harbor had the American flag of thirteen stripes displayed. This, up to this day, had been a blue flag ivith field and thirteen stars. The other flag never hoisted until to-day.” 2
The striped flag then hoisted was destined soon to come down, for in a private letter dated “Broad Street, Charlestown, May 22, 1780,” the writer says: “ On the memorable 12th of this month I had the pleasure to see the thirteen stripes with several white pendants levelled to the ground, and the gates of Charlestown opened to receive our conquering heroes, General Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Arbuth-not.” And another letter, dated “May 19, 1780,” says: “May 7, they [the continentals] marched out, and Captain Hudson of the navy marched in [to Fort Moultrie], took possession, levelled the thirteen stripes with the dust, and the triumphant English flag was raised on the staff.” 3
The ‘Pennsylvania Gazette’ of April 23, 1783, contains the resolve respecting the flag of June 14, 1777, and requests that the printers insert the resolution in their respective newspapers in order that it
1	I. J. Greenwood, on Revolutionary Uniforms and Flags, in Potter’s American Monthly, 1876, vol. vi. p. 34.
2	Extract from the MS. diary of Dr. John Jeffries, now in the possession of his grandson, Dr. B. Joy Jeffries, of Boston, Mass. Dr. John Jeffries was a graduate of Harvard, and, Jan. 7, 1785, in furtherance of his experiments in atmospheric temperature, made a remarkable balloon voyage from Dover Cliffs over the English Channel, alighting in the forest of Guienne, France. In 1789, he returned to Boston, where he was born in 1744, and where his descendants reside.
3	From the Siege of Charleston, S. C;, published by J. Munsell, 1867.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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may be generally known. The same paper states that “ at a meeting of the respectable inhabitants of Pittsgrove and the town adjacent, in Salem County, State of New Jersey, for the celebration of peace, the day was introduced with the raising of a monument of great height, on which was displayed the ensign of peace with thirteen stripes.”
Another number of the f Gazette5 3 says : “ It is positively asserted that the flag of the thirteen United States of America has been grossly insulted in New York, and not permitted to be hoisted on board any American vessel in that port. Congress should demand immediate reparation for the indignity wantonly offered to all America, and, unless satisfactory concessions are instantly made, the British flag, which now streams without interruption in our harbor, Philadelphia, should be torn down, and treated with every mark of indignation and contempt.”
The 25th of November, 1783, is memorable in the history of our flag as the day of the evacuation of New York by the British troops. On the morning of that day, — a cold, frosty, clear but brilliant morning, — General Knox marched to the Bowery Lane, and remained until one P.M., when the British left their posts and marched to Whitehall. The American troops followed, and before three p.m. General Knox took possession of Fort George. The British claimed the right of possession until noon. Mr. Day, who kept a tavern at the lower end of Murray Street, run up the American flag in the morning, the first displayed in the city. Cunningham, the British provost-marshal, ordered it down, and, on the man’s refusal to take it down, attempted to pull it down himself. He was met at the door by the proprietor’s wife, a stout woman, fair, fat, and forty, who came at and beat Cunningham so vigorously over the head with her broomstick, that he was obliged to decamp amid the jeers and laughter of the few spectators, and leave the star-spangled banner waving. Dr. Alexander Anderson, well known as the first wood engraver in America, and who died in 1870, remembered seeing the powder fly from Cunningham’s wig, and related the story to Mr. Bushnell in 1863, when eighty-nine years of age.1
The flag hoisted on the evacuation of the city was for a long time preserved in the American Museum at New York, and was destroyed when that building was burnt. Mr. Barnum informs me that the flag was well authenticated when presented to Mr. Scudder, founder of the Museum, in 1810. The flag was of bunting, about nine or ten
1	Pennsylvania Gazette, May 28, 1788.
2	Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Levi Hanford, a soldier of the Revolution. By Charles J. Bushnell, New York. 8vo. Privately printed, 1863, p. 72.286
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
feet wide by twelve or fifteen in length, and had the thirteen stars and stripes; the arrangement of the stars is not remembered. It was always run out in front of the Museum on the anniversaries of Evacuation Day and 4th of July, and was always saluted by the military when passing.1
The British left their flag nailed to its staff on the battery, and removed the halyards and greased the pole. There are several stories as to how the flag was removed, but it is generally believed John Yan Orsdell, or Arsdale, a sailor, procuring a number of cleats, climbed the pole, nailing the cleats as he went, and, tearing down the British flag, nailed up the stars and stripes in its place. He died in 1836, and was buried with military honors by the veteran corps of artillery, of which he was the first lieutenant. His son, David Yan Arsdale, Nov. 25, 1879, aged eighty-four, hoisted the stars and stripes over the battery,— a ceremony he had performed for many years. After raising the flag, the veteran proposed “ three cheers for our flag, three cheers for the day we celebrate, and three more for the wives and daughters of our country! ” which were given with a will. The old gentleman was then presented with a portrait of himself, elegantly framed, and in his endeavor to reply broke down completely.
At the conclusion of the revolutionary struggle on the 28th of February, 1784, the officers of the line of the Rhode Island continental battalion presented to the assembly the colors they had so gallantly borne, with the following address : —
“ To the Honorable the General Assembly of the State of Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations:
“ The officers of the line of this State beg liberty to approach this honorable assembly with the warmest gratitude, upon exchanging their military employment for the rank of citizens; the glorious objects of the late controversy with Great Britain being happily accomplished, they resume their former conditions with a satisfaction peculiar to freemen. If they have deserved the approbation of their country; if they have gained the confidence of the States ; if they have endured hardships and encountered difficulties,— they feel themselves still indebted for your constant attention in every period of the war. If their conduct in the field; if their wounds, and the blood of their companions who have nobly fallen by their side, — have entitled them to any share in the laurels of their countrymen, they are fully rewarded in surrendering to your Honors, upon this occasion, the standards of their corps, which have often been distinguished by the bravery of your soldiers upon the most critical and important occasions. They beg you will be pleased
1 Letter of P. T. Barnum, Nov. 22, 1871.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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to accept them with their most cordial acknowledgments, and he assured of the profound deference with which they have the honor to he
“Your most obedient humble servants,
“Jeremiah Olney.
“Providence, Feb. 28, a.d. 1784. In behalf of the officers.”
The committee to whom this address was referred prepared the following answer, which the assembly voted should be engrossed in a fair copy by the secretary, and signed by his excellency the governor and the honorable the speaker in behalf of the assembly, and presented by the secretary to Colonel Jeremiah Olney; and that the standards should be carefully preserved under the immediate care of the governor, to perpetuate the noble exploits of the brave corps : —
“ Gentlemen, — The governor and company, in general assembly convened, wdth the most pleasing sensations receive your affectionate and polite address. They congratulate you upon the happy termination of a glorious war, and upon your return to participate with citizens and freemen in the blessings of peace. With peculiar satisfaction, they recollect the bravery and good conduct of the officers of the line of this State, who, after suffering all the toils and fatigues of a long and bloody contest, crowned with laurels have reassumed domestic life.
“ They are happy in receiving those standards, which have been often displayed with glory and bravery in the face of very powerful enemies, and will carefully preserve the same, to commemorate the achievements of so brave a corps.
“We are, gentlemen, in behalf of both houses of assembly,
“With respect and esteem, your very humble servants,
“William Greene, Governor.
“Feb. 28, a.d. 1784.	William Bradford, Speaker.
“ To the Officers of the Line of this State’s late Continental Battalion.” 1
These colors are preserved in the office of the Secretary of State of Rhode Island, and from a recent examination of them I obtain the following description :2 —
No. 1 is of white silk, ninety inches long and sixty-five inches wide, and contains thirteen gilt stars in the corner, on a very light blue ground (probably faded with time). The outline of each star is marked with a darker shade of blue, with a shadow on the left side, thereby making the gilt star more prominent. The relative position of the stars in parallel lines is shown in Fig. 15, Plate Y. In the
1	Rhode Island Colonial Records, vol. x. pp. 14, 15.
2	Letters from Hon. J. R. Bartlett, Secretary of State of Rhode Island, Dec. 26, 1871, and Jan. 4, 1872.288
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
centre of the flag is an anchor and a piece of rope twining around it, of light blue silk, the same shade as the blue union, sewed on. Above the anchor is a scroll painted in oil colors, inscribed “Hope,” the motto of this State. The oil and paint have so rotted the silk that this part of the flag is gone; otherwise, save a little of the edge which is torn and worn away, the flag is entire. At the commencement of the War of the Rebellion, this flag was taken to Washington by the Second Rhode Island Regiment, but was soon returned.
Flag No. 2 is of white silk, fifty-one inches in width, and its present length forty-five inches; but a portion of the fly is gone, and the flag is much torn.
It contains a light blue corner or canton of silk sewed on to a white field of silk. The canton contains thirteen white five-pointed stars or mullets painted on the silk and arranged in parallel lines as in No. 1, though not so well formed. In the centre of the field of the flag, painted on both sides, there is a scroll upon which was painted “R. Island Regt.” Both these flags are regimental, and not blazoned with stripes. The date of their presentation to the regiments has not been preserved.
It has been asserted that Madame Wooster and Mrs. Roger Sher-
man gave to the Connecticut troops the first national flag ever used in that State, and that it was composed of portions of their dresses. Mrs. Ellet1 says that they made the flag is certain, but it could not have
1 Eilet’s Women of tlie American Revolution.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
289
been the first one, nor did they heroically rob their own persons to furnish it. The flag made by them was displayed at New Haven on the public rejoicing for the peace, and is thus described and illustrated in the Diary of President Ezra Stiles, of Yale College, preserved in the college library : —
“ April 24, 1783. Public Pejoicing for the Peace in New Haven. At sunrise 13 cannon discharged in the Green, and the continental flag displayed, being a grand silk flag presented by the ladies, cost 120 dollars. The stripes red and white, with an azure field in the upper part charged with 13 stars. On the same field and among the stars was the arms of the United States, the field of which contained a ship, a plough, and 3 sheaves of wheat; the crest an eagle volant; the supporters two white horses. The arms were put on with paint and gilding. It took------yards. When displayed it appeared well.”
It will be seen that the good man’s drawing is a rude attempt to depict the flag, and that it has the Pennsylvania motto, “ Virtue, Liberty, Independence,” not mentioned in his description. The fact being, according to Mrs. Ellet, that the ladies, unacquainted with the arms of the United States adopted the year before, turned in unsuspecting confidence to a family Bible published in Philadelphia, and took as their guide the arms emblazoned on its title-page, which were those of Pennsylvania. The mistake was rectified when Eoger Sherman returned from Congress.
Dr. Eodney King, of Eoxboro, Philadelphia, wrote me, in 1875, that he had in his possession a bill, found among the papers of his grandfather, the Hon. Daniel Eodney, ex-Governor of the State of Delaware, dated 1783, for “materials for a Continental Elag,” one of the items of which was “ for a piece of Green silk.” Was green, excepting for the branches of a pine-tree, ever any part of a ‘ continental flag ’ ? According to the ‘ Port Folio,’ on the 4th of July, 1807, the Volunteer Company of Dangers of Georgia were presented with an elegant standard, the field of which was of white lustring, with the accustomed devices, the stripes formed of alternate green and white, affording a charming contrast. The words “ E Pluribus Unum ” above, the “ Augusta Volunteer Dangers ” below, the eagle, which was incomparably finished, as well as the stars.290
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
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H. W. Longfellow.
The independence of the United States of America having been recognized by Great Britain, the stars and stripes became henceforward the recognized symbol of a new nation, and their history is an exhibit of its military, naval, civil, and commercial progress. Many incidents personal to its history, however, it will be interesting for us to narrate. It will also be our pleasant duty to chronicle its first appearance in various places, and its progress in peace as well as its triumphs in war.
The treaty of peace with Great Britain was no sooner announced than the white wings of our commerce began to expand all over theFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
291
watery globe, under the genial union of the stars and stripes, displaying them everywhere to the wondering gaze of distant nations and the furthermost isles of the seas.
The honor of having first hoisted the stars and stripes after the treaty of peace in a British port has been claimed for several vessels,, and been the occasion of a controversy, in which claimants for New-buryport, Philadelphia, Nantucket, and New Bedford have taken part. After a careful examination of the conflicting accounts, I am clearly of opinion that to the ship Bedford, of Nantucket, Captain William Mooers, and owned by William Botch, of New Bedford, must be assigned the honor.1
A London periodical, published in 1783, thus speaks of her arrival in the Thames :1 —
“ The ship Bedford, Captain Mooers, belonging to Massachusetts, arrived in the Downs on the 3d of February, passed Gravesend the 3d, and was reported at the custom-house on the 6th inst. She was not allowed regular entry until some consultation had taken place between the Commissioners of the Customs and the Lords of Council, on account of the many acts of Parliament in force against the rebels of America. She was loaded with four hundred and eighty-seven butts of whale oil, is American built, manned wholly by American seamen, wears the rebel colors, and belongs to the island of Nantucket, in Massachusetts. This is the first vessel which has displayed the thirteen rebellious stripes of America in any British port. The vessel is at Horsledown, a little below the Tower, and is intended to return immediately to> New England.”
In the summary of parliamentary debates in the same magazine, under date February 7, —
“ Mr. Hammet begged leave to inform the House of a very recent and extraordinary event. There was, he said, at the time of his speaking, an American ship in the Thames, with the thirteen stripes flying on board. The ship had offered to enter at the custom-house, but the officers were all at a loss how to behave. His motive for mentioning the subject was that ministers might take such steps with the American commissioners as would secure free intercourse between this country and America.”
Another London newspaper of the same date reports the Bedford
1 The Political Magazine. Barnard’s History of England (p. 705), a somewhat rare hook, contains the same account. The American and British Chronicle of War and Politics, under date “Feh. 7, 1783,” also records, “ First American ship in the Thames, from Nantucket.”292
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ as the first vessel that has entered the river belonging to the United States/’ And an original letter from Peter Yan Schaack, dated London, Feb. 19, 1783, contains this paragraph: “ One or two vessels with the thirteen stripes flying are now in the river Thames, and their crews caressed.”
The ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1783 corroborates these statements, and says: “Monday, Feb. 3, 1783: Two vessels were entered at the custom-house from Nantucket, an American island near Rhode Island; a third ship is in the river. They are entirely laden with oil, and come under a pass from Admiral Digby, the inhabitants having agreed to remain neutral during the war.”
In further confirmation of the Bedford’s being the first to display the stars and stripes in the Thames, we have the following letter from William Rotch, Jr., one of her owners. There is a discrepancy as to the date of her arrival; but as his letter was written nearly sixty years after the event he narrates, it may be presumed the contemporaneous accounts are right in that respect, and that he is wrong.
“New Bedford, 8th mo. 3d, 1842.
“Dear Friend, —In my reply to thy letter of the 21st ult., received last evening, according to the best of my recollection, my father had a vessel built by Ichabod Thomas, at North River, just before the Revolution, for himself and Champion & Dickason, of London, for the London trade. After the war commenced, she laid at Nantucket several years, until a license was procured for her to go to London with a cargo of oil, Timothy Folger, commander. Several gentlemen from Boston took passage in her, among whom were the late Governor Winthrop, Thomas K. Jones, . . . Hutchinson, and some others whose names I do not recollect.
“In 1781, Admiral Digby granted thirty licenses for our vessels to go after whales. I was then connected with my father and I. Rodman in business. Considerable oil was obtained in 1782. In the fall of that year, I went to New York, and procured from Admiral Digby licenses for the Bedford, William Mooers, master, and, I think, the Industry, John Chadwick, master. They loaded. The Bedford sailed first, and arrived in the Downs on the 23d [3d] of February, the day of the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace between the United States, France, and England! and went up to London, and there displayed for the first time the United States flag. The Industry arrived afterwards, and was, I suppose, the second to display it. The widow of George Hayley, who did much business with New England, would visit the old Bedford, and see the flag displayed. She was the sister of the celebrated John Wilkes.
“We sent the sloop Speedwell to Aux Cayes (St. Domingo). She was taken and carried into Jamaica, but her captain was released one day after.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
293
By the treaty, the war ceased in that latitude, and she was released when she showed the first United States flag there. On her return home, every thing was very low by the return of peace. We put on hoard two hundred boxes of candles, and with William Johnson (whose widow, I learned, lives at Quassi) as supercargo, sent her to Quebec, where hers was the first United States flag exhibited.
“ Should thee wish any further information within my recollection, I will freely communicate it.
“ I am, with love to thy wife,
“ Thy affectionate friend,
“ Wm. Botch, Jum”
The London papers of the 6th notice the Bedford’s arrival on the 3d.
Thomas Kempton, of New Bedford, who was living in 1866, said the Bedford was built at New Bedford, before the year 1770, probably by James Lowden, as he was the proprietor of the only ship-yard there at that time. She was first rigged as a schooner, afterwards changed to a brig, and finally rebuilt, raised upon, furnished with an additional deck, and rigged as a ship. After all these alterations, she measured only 170 or 180 tons.1 No portrait of her has been preserved, and her history, after this notable cruise, is unknown.
The coinciding testimony of these contemporary English periodicals, the discussion in Parliament, the evidence of f Barnard’s History/ and the statement of one of her owners, make it conclusive that the Bedford was the first vessel to hoist the stars and stripes in a British port. The honor has, however, been claimed for the ship United States, of Boston, owned by John Hancock; for a Newburyport ship, the Comte de Grasse, Nicholas Johnson, master; for the ship William Penn, of Philadelphia, Captain Josiah;2 and for the bark Maria, belonging to the owners of the Bedford.
In 1859, there were three veterans living in Nantucket who remembered the Bedford, and who were deeply impressed with her
1	The Bedford returned to Nantucket and entered at the custom-house, May 31,1783, from London. She made a voyage to the Brazils, 1773-76.
The tea-ships whose cargoes were turned into Boston harbor, Dec. 16, 1773, were freighted by the Botches for the East India Company, and “a few years since the freight for that tea was paid for, every dollar of it, to the said Botches by the East India Company, of London.” — Letter of F. Q. Sanford, of Nantucket, Oct. 29, 1871.
William Botch, Jun., died at New Bedford, April 17, 1850.
2	A correspondent of the ‘Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch,’ December, 1871, says, that when Captain Josiah displayed the American flag in England, he commanded the Andrea Doria.294
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
departure for England, which, after the sufferings of the long and distressing war, seemed like sending out a harbinger of peace.
The preliminaries of peace were signed on the last of November,, 1782, but up to the 21st of January, 1783, it was only known as a rumor in the British capital.
The first publication of the terms of the treaty was Jan. 28, 1783, in a postscript of the London papers, about a week before the arrival of the Bedford. The king’s proclamation was not published until the 15th of February, twelve days after her arrival. The news was first received in Boston, April 23d, but the treaty was not signed until September. It is no wonder, then, when the master of the Bedford appeared and demanded to enter his vessel at the custom-house, with her cargo of oil, coming from a country and people who were still considered rebels, his appearance created some consternation. That, under the circumstances, there should have been hesitancy in entering her was as natural as that her arrival should be noted and remembered.
Captain William Mooers, the master of the Bedford, is traditionally reported as one of nature’s noblemen, and his prowess as a whaleman is familiar to all who have made themselves acquainted with that hazardous branch of our national enterprise. Erect and commanding in appearance, standing over six feet, and weighing more than two hundred pounds, he would have been a marked man out of a thousand.
The Madame Hayley, alluded to in Mr. Rotch’s letter, was a sister of John Wilkes, and a valuable friend to Boston and America during the Revolution. Both she and Mr. Rotch were passengers in the United States (one of the claimants for the Bedford’s honors), on her return from London to Boston, as I found on her log-book, which I saw and examined in 1865. She was a woman of much energy and great mercantile endowments. While in Boston, she gave £100 towards building Charlestown Bridge, and was privileged to be the first person to pass over it when completed.1
1 The first pier of this bridge was laid on the 14th of June, 1785, and the bridge was thrown open for travel June 17, 1786. It was considered at the time the greatest enterprise ever undertaken in America. It was the longest bridge in the world, and, except the abutments, wTas entirely of wood. The architect of the bridge was Captain John Stone, of Concord; and Lemuel Cox, an ingenious shipwright, its constructor. The opening of this structure upon the anniversary of the battle of Bunker’s Hill, and only eleven years after that event, attracted upwards of twenty thousand spectators. A public procession was formed, consisting of both branches of the Legislature, the proprietors and artisans of the bridge, military and civil societies. Salutes were fired from the Castle, Copp’s and Breed’s Hill; and two tables, each three hundred and twenty feet long, were laid on Breed’s Hill, at which eight hundred guests sat down, and prolonged the festivi-FLAGr OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The Maria, a claimant of the Bedford’s honors, belonged to the same owners. Mrs. Farrar, a granddaughter of William Botch, in her ‘ Becollections of Seventy Years,’ says, “ I have often heard the old gentleman [William Botch] tell, with pride and pleasure, that the Maria was the first ship that ever unfurled the flag of the United States in the Thames.”1 Mrs. Farrar has certainty confounded the Maria with the Bedford, for the Maria was not built until the autumn of 1782, and was tying at Nantucket when the Bedford was at anchor in the Downs. Mr. Botch’s letter was in reply to inquiries respecting the Maria.
The Maria was built at Pembroke, now called Hanson, for a privateer. According to her register she was eighty-six feet long, twenty-three feet one inch wide, eleven feet six and a half inches deep, and measured 202-§-| tons. She was purchased by Mr. Botch, and brought by Captain Mooers to Nantucket, previous to his sailing thence in the Bedford. On his return from that voyage he took the Maria to London with a cargo of oil, and on a subsequent voyage he made in her the passage from Nantucket to Dover in twenty-one days. His owner was a passenger on board.2 It is narrated that on the passage Mr. Botch, during a storm, became alarmed, and, venturing part way out of the cabin gangway, said, “ Captain Mooers, it would be more conducive to our safety for thee to take in some sail, thee had better do so! ” To which Captain Mooers replied, “ Mr. Botch, I have undertaken to carry you to England; there is a comfortable cabin for you ; I am commander of the ship, and will look to her safety ! ” He could not brook directions even from his owner.
The Maria, under the name of “Maria Pochoco ” and the Chilian flag, continued her cruising in the Pacific until 1870, when a notice of her springing aleak and foundering at sea was published in the San Francisco newspapers. At the time of her loss she was in such good condition she bade fair to outlast her century. The flag she first wore,
ties until evening. — See Snow’s History of Boston; Drake’s Ancient Landmarks of Boston, and his Fields and Mansions of Middlesex; also Columbian Centinel, and the In-dependent Chronicle. Doubtless the stars and stripes were flying, though no mention is made of them.
1	Mrs. P. A. Hanaford, in her * Field, Gunboat, Hospital, and Prison,’ perpetuates Mrs. Farrar’s erroneous statement, and makes the further mistake of calling William Botch the father of Mrs. Farrar, and the Maria a whale-ship at the time of her voyage to England. The pride and pleasure of the venerable owner of the Maria were all right, as he was the owner of the Bedford, and both ships were commanded by Captain Mooers.
2	The Maria, William Mooers, master, sailed from Nantucket for London, 7th mo. 4th, 1785. William and Benjamin Botch, the father and brother of William Botch, Jun., on board as passengers, going to establish the whale fishery from an English port.296
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
though in shreds, is said to be in existence in New Bedford. In 1852, she was hauled upon the Fairhaven railway for repairs, but no essential improvement or alteration in her model was ever made.
After her voyage to London, she was employed in the whale fishery, and for fifty or sixty years was owned by Samuel Rodman, of New
Bedford, and his descendants. Our illustration represents her as she appeared in 1859. It is said there then stood to her credit $250,000; and she had been of no expense to her underwriters but once, and then only for a trifling amount. She made two voyages to the Pacific within the short space of two years, returning each time with a full cargo of oil. She concluded her first whaling voyage on the 26th of September, 1795, and sailed from New Bedford, on her twenty-seventh and last whaling voyage, under our flag on the 29th of September, 1859.
The Maria, 1859	°	r
On these voyages she is credited with having taken 24,419 barrels of sperm, and 134 barrels of whale oil.1 In 1856, Mr. Hardhitch, of Fairhaven, who, sixty-four years before, had assisted in making her a suit of sails, was again employed on the same service for her. Feb. 24, 1863, she was repaired and sold at Talcahu-ana, and passed under the Chilian flag, probably to avoid the risk of her capture by rebel cruisers. Her purchasers, Messrs. Burton & Trumbull, of Talcahuana, employed her in the coal trade. In July 1, 1866, she was fitted out for Talcahuana, on a whaling voyage, under command of David Briggs, of Dartmouth, Mass., and foundered in 1870, or, according to another account, was sunk that year in the harbor of Payta.2 I believe the latter to be correct.
The honor of displaying our flag in England for the first time does not, however, rest with any vessel, if a painted representation of it can be considered. In that case, to John Singleton Copley, of Boston, Mass., the American painter, father of the late Lord Lyndhurst, must be assigned that honor.
Elkanah Watson, of Philadelphia, a distinguished patriot and philanthropist, relates in his f Reminiscences ’ that, at the close of our revolutionary struggle, having on the occasion of Lord Howe’s relief of Gibraltar received one hundred guineas as the result of a wager,
1	A detailed statement of these voyages, with the names of her commanders from 1795 to 1856, can he found in Ricketson’s ‘History of New Bedford.’
2	Boston Advertiser, July 14, 1870.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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and the same day dining with Copley, he resolved to devote that sum to a portrait of himself. The painting was finished all but the background, that being reserved by Copley to represent a ship bearing to America intelligence of the acknowledgment of independence, — a rising sun gilding the stars and stripes of the new-born nation streaming from her gaff. All was completed save the flag, which the painter did not think it prudent to insert, as his gallery was a constant resort of the royal family and nobility. I dined, says Watson, with the artist on the glorious 5th of December, 1782, after listening with him to the speech of the king formally receiving and recognizing the United States of America as one of the nations of the earth. Previous to dining, and immediately after our return from the House of Lords, Copley invited us into his studio, and there and then, with a bold hand, master touch, and American heart, attached to the ship the stars and stripes. Thus, while the words of acknowledgment were still warm from the king’s lips, the late rebel, but henceforth free colors, were displayed in his own kingdom, and within a few rods of his own palace.1
In the grand federal procession in Philadelphia, July 4, 1788, to celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the Constitution, among the numerous flags carried was one of white silk, having three fleurs-de-lis and thirteen stars in the union, over the words, Sixth of Feb., 1778, in honor of the French alliance. The calico printers’ flag had in the centre thirteen stars in a blue field, and thirteen red stripes in a white field, surrounded by an edge of thirty-seven prints of various colors, and the motto, “May the Union government protect the manufacturers of America! ” The merchants and traders carried the flag of a merchant ship; in the union were ten illuminated stars, and three traced round in silver, but not yet illuminated. There were also other devices on the flag.
When Washington passed through Philadelphia, April 20, 1789, en route to New York, to assume the office of President, he was received with distinguished honors. In the river were boats gayly adorned with ensigns, “ among which was what was then a novelty, —: an American jack which bore eleven stars,” representing the eleven
1 Life and Reminiscences of Elkanah Watson. 8vo. Through the kindness of D. Appleton & Co. we are able to give an engraving of this historic portrait, which was attached to the ‘ Reminiscences.’ Greville, in his ‘Memoirs/ relates that at a naval review the Duke of Richmond, who hated George III., when Lord Lieutenant of Sussex, during the American war, sailed in a yacht through the fleet where the king was, with American colors at his masthead. The date of this transaction is not given, and it is not certain the stars and stripes were the American colors hoisted.'298
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
States which had at that time ratified the Constitution. On the centre of the floating bridge at Grey’s Ferry was raised an American •ensign; and on another part of the bridge was a high pole, which bore a striped liberty cap ornamented with stars, and beneath it a blue flag, with the device of a rattlesnake, and motto, “ Don't tread on me."
Amid many conflicting claims, there seems little doubt that to the ship Empress, of China, 360 tons, Captain John Green, the honor belongs of being the first vessel to carry our flag into the Chinese sea. She sailed from New York on the 22d of February, 1784, touched at Cape de Yerde on her outward voyage, arrived at Macao August 23, and at Whampoa August 28, where she saluted the shipping with thirteen guns. On the 13th of September she was visited with great ceremony by the Hoppo, or chief of customs, who was saluted with nine guns on his arriving on board, and thirteen guns on his leaving the ship. She returned to New York the 11th of May, 1785, having made the round voyage in less than fifteen months.1 She was wrecked off Dublin Bay, Feb. 22, 1791, then bearing the name of ‘ Clara.’ 2
When the thirteen stripes and stars first appeared at Canton much curiosity was excited among the people. News was circulated that a strange ship had arrived from the farther end of the world, bearing a flag as beautiful as a flower. Everybody went to see the Faw-kee--cheun, or flower-flag ship. This name at once established itself in the language, and America is now called Faw-kee-koh, the flower-flag country, and an American, Faiv-kee-koch-yin, flower-flag country man, — a more complimentary designation than that of red-headed barbarian, the name first bestowed on the Dutch.
Foreign names, however unmeaning originally, when written in Chinese acquire a significance which is often strikingly curious. Thus, the two Chinese characters, Yong-kee (Yankee), signify the flag of the ocean, and Washington, or Wo-shing-tung, as it would be written, signifies rescue and glory at last.3
The young prefect of I-ton-hien said : “ We call the In-ki-li (English) ‘ Houng-mao-jin,’ that is, ‘ men of red hair,’ because it is said they have hair of that color; and we give to the Ya-mely-kien (Americans) the name of the ‘ men of the flower banner/ because they carry at the masts of their vessels a flag striped with various colors, and from the resemblance of the stars to the blossoms of the plum-tree.” 4
The ship Franklin, of Salem, Captain James Devereaux, is believed to have been the first to carry our flag to Japan. She sailed from
1 Shaw’s Journal. -	2 New York Evening Gazette of April 2, 1791.
3 American newspaper.	4 M. Hue’s Journey through the Chinese Empire.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Boston Dec. 11, 1798, arrived at Batavia April 28, 1799, reached Japan July 19, 1799, and arrived home May 20, 1800. Her log-book is preserved in the library of the Essex Institute at Salem.
The second vessel to carry our flag direct to Eastern seas was the appropriately named sloop Enterprise, Captain Stewart Dean, a little sloop-rigged vessel of eighty tons, built at Albany, 1ST. Y., and like the ordinary North River craft. She sailed in 1785, and returned home within the year. The English factory at Canton, notwithstanding the jealousies and interests of trade, struck with the boldness of the experiment, received these adventurers with kindness and hospitality.
The next vessel to make the adventure to China was the Canton, of Philadelphia, Captain Thomas Truxton, which sailed from that port early in 1786, and returned to the same port May, 1787, after a successful voyage. Congress granted a sea-letter to this vessel, which was addressed to the “ Most serene and most puissant, high, illustrious, noble, honorable, venerable, wise, and prudent emperors, kings, republics, princes, dukes, earls, barons, lords, burgomasters, counsellors, as also judges, officers, justiciaries, and regents of all the good cities and places, whether ecclesiastical or secular, who shall see these presents or hear them read,” — which would seem to be sufficiently comprehensive for her protection.
The frigate Alliance, the last of the continental frigates retained by government, was sold at Philadelphia, June, 1785, and converted into an Indiaman. She sailed from Philadelphia for Canton in June, 1785, owned by Robert Morris, and under command of Captain Thomas Reed, and was the second vessel from Philadelphia to China. She returned to Philadelphia Sept. 17, 1788. The Alliance, taking soundings off the Cape of Good Hope, steered southeast and encircled all the eastern and southern islands of the Indian Ocean. Passing the south cape of New Holland in the course northward to Canton, between the latitudes of 7° and 4° S., and between longitudes 156° and 162° E., they discovered a number of islands, the inhabitants of which were black, and had woolly, curled hair. The islands were also inhabited by brown people, with straight black hair. Captain Reed believed himself to be the discoverer of these islands, and named the principal one Morris Island, and another Alliance Island.1
The honor of being the first to carry our flag around the world is
1 In 1786, at an entertainment given to the Americans by the Portuguese residents of Macao, at dessert the tables were ornamented with gilded paper castles, pagodas, and other Chinese edifices, in which were confined numerous small birds. The first toast was “Liberty” and at the word the doors of these paper prisons were set open and the little captives released, and, flying about in every direction, seemed to enjoy their liberty. — Shaw's Journal.300
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assigned to the auspiciously and appropriately named ship Columbia, which, under command of Captains Kendrick and Gray, circumnavigated the globe in 1789-90.1
The Columbia, Captain John Kendrick, and sloop Washington, Captain Robert Gray, sailed from Boston Sept. 30, 1787, and proceeded to the Cape de Yerde, and thence to the Falkland Islands. January, 1788, they doubled Cape Horn, and immediately after were separated in a violent gale. Thet Washington, continuing her course through the Pacific, made the northwest coast in August near latitude 46° NT. Here Captain Gray thought he perceived indications of the mouth of a river, but was unable to ascertain the fact, in consequence of his vessel grounding and his being attacked by savages. With the loss, of one man killed and the mate wounded, the Washington arrived at Nootka Sound on the 17th of September, where, some days later, she was joined by the Columbia.
The two vessels spent the winter in the Sound; and the Columbia lay there during the following summer, while Captain Gray, in the Washington, explored the adjacent waters. On his return to Nootka, it was agreed by the two captains that Kendrick should take command of the sloop and remain upon the coast, while Captain Gray, in the Columbia, should carry to Canton the furs which had been collected by both vessels. This was done; and Gray arrived on the 6th of December at Canton, where he sold his furs, and took a cargo of tea, with which he entered Boston on the 10th of August, 1790, having carried the thirteen stars and thirteen stripes for the first time around the world.2
Kendrick, immediately on parting with the Columbia, proceeded with the Washington to the Straits of Fuca, which he sailed through to its issue in the Pacific in latitude 51° NT. To him belongs the credit of ascertaining that Nootka and the parts adjacent are an island, to which the name of ‘ Vancouver Island ’ has since been given. Vancouver was the British commander who followed in the track of the Americans a year later. The injustice done to Kendrick is but one of many similar instances, — the greatest of all being that our continent bears the name, not of Columbus or Cabot, but of a subsequent navigator.
Captain Kendrick, during the time occupied by Gray on his return voyage, besides collecting furs, engaged in various speculations, one of
1	Bulfinch’s Oregon and Eldorado.
2	“I find the ship Columbia has been arrived some days. The concerned in that enterprise have sunk fifty per cent of their capital. This is a heavy disappointment to them, as they calculated every owner to make an independent fortune.” — MS. Letter, General Henry Jackson, dated Boston, 22d August, 1790.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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which was the collection and transportation to China of sandal-wood, which grows on many of the tropical islands of the Pacific, and is in great demand throughout the Celestial Empire for ornamental fabrics and medicinal purposes.
Captain Kendrick was killed in exchanging salutes with a Spanish vessel at the Sandwich Islands. The wad from one of the Spaniard’s guns struck him as he stood on the deck of his vessel in his dress-coat and cocked hat, as the commander of the expedition, and was instantly fatal.
The Columbia, as has been stated, returned to Boston under the command of Gray. Her cargo of Chinese articles did not cover the expense of the voyage; nevertheless, her owners refitted her for a similar cruise. Again, under the command of Gray, she sailed from Boston on the 28th of September, 1790, and arrived at Clyoquot, near the Straits of Fuca, June 5, 1791. There and in neighboring waters she remained through the following summer and winter, trading with the natives and exploring. Early in 1792, Gray sailed on a cruise southward along the coast, bent on ascertaining the truth of the appearances which on his former voyage led him to suspect the existence of a river discharging its waters at or about the latitude of 46°. During this cruise he met with Yancouver. On the 29th of April, Vancouver writes in his journal: “ At four o’clock, a sail was discovered at the westward, standing in shore. This was a very great novelty, not having seen any vessel but our consort during the last eight months. She soon hoisted American colors, and fired a gun to leeward. At six we spoke her. She proved to be the ship Columbia, commanded by Captain Robert Gray, belonging to Boston, whence she had been absent nineteen months. I sent two of my officers on board to acquire such information as might be serviceable in our future operations. Captain Gray informed them of his having been off the mouth of a river, in latitude of 46° 10 north, for nine days ; but the outset or reflux was so strong as to prevent his entering.”
Yancouver gave no credit to Captain Gray’s statement, and remarks : “ I was thoroughly persuaded, as were most persons of observation on board, that we could not have passed any safe navigable opening, harbor, or place of security for shipping, from Cape Mendocino to Lucans Strait.”
After parting with the English ship, Gray sailed along the coast southward, and on the 7th of May, 1792, “ saw an entrance which had a very good appearance of a harbor.” Passing through this entrance, he found himself in a bay, “ well sheltered from the sea by long sand-302
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bars and spits/’ where he remained three days trading with the natives, and then resumed his voyage, bestowing on the place thus discovered the name of f Bulfinch’s Harbor/ in honor of one of the owners of the ship. This is now known as ‘ Gray’s Harbor.’
At daybreak on the 11th, after leaving Bulfinch’s Harbor, Gray observed the entrance of his desired port, bearing east-southeast, distant six leagues, and running into it with all sails set, between the breakers, he anchored at one o’clock in a large river of fresh water ten miles above its mouth. At this spot he remained three days, engaged in trading with the natives and filling his casks with water; and then sailed up the river about twelve miles along its northern shore, where, finding he could proceed no farther, from having taken the wrong channel, he came to anchor. On the 20th, he recrossed the bar at the. mouth of the river and regained the Pacific.
On leaving the river, Gray gave it the name of his ship, the Columbia, the name it still bears. He called the southern point of land at the entrance f Cape Adams/ and the northern, ‘ Cape Hancock.’ The first of these retains its name on our maps, but the latter promontory is known as ‘ Cape Disappointment/ a name given to it by Lieutenant Meares, an English navigator, who, like Captain Gray, judged from appearances there was the outlet of a river at that point, but failed finding one, and so recorded his failure in the name of this conspicuous headland, which marked the place of his fruitless search.
From the mouth of Columbia, Gray sailed to Nootka Sound, where he communicated his discoveries to the Spanish commandant, Quadra; to whom he also gave charts, with descriptions of Bulfinch’s Harbor and the mouth of the Columbia. He departed for Canton in September, and sailed thence for the United States.
The following medal was struck in commemoration of these events.
The voyages of Kendrick and Gray were not profitable to the adventurers, yet of benefit to the country. They opened the way toFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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enterprises in the same region which were eminently successful. In another point of view, these expeditions were fraught with consequences of the utmost importance. Gray’s discovery of the Columbia was the point most relied upon by our negotiators for establishing the claim of the United States to the part of the continent through which it flows; and it is in a great measure owing to his discover}^ that the State of Oregon is now a part of the American Eepublic.
From the date of the discovery of the Columbia River to the war of 1812-14, the direct trade between the American coast and China was almost entirely in the hands of citizens of the United States. The British merchants were restrained from pursuing it by the opposition of their East India Company; the Russians were not admitted into Chinese ports, and few ships of any other nation were seen in that part of the ocean.1
The whaling-ship Washington, of Nantucket, under command of Captain George Bunker, was the first to show the American flag in a Spanish Pacific port.
About a year after the Columbia had completed her voyage around the world, in the summer of 1791, six ships, three of them new and three old, were sent out from Nantucket to cruise for whales in that ocean. All sailed under the new-born “ Flag of the free.” The new ships were the Bearce, Hector, and Washington; the old, the Rebecca, Favorite, and Warren. None of them exceeded two hundred and fifty tons in burthen, and all were heavy, dull sailers, without copper on their bottoms, and poorly and scantily fitted; but they were manned by men of an iron nerve and an energy that knew no turning. They all passed around Cape Horn, and a part went down the coast while the others remained on the coast of Chili.
The Washington went to Callao, on the coast of Peru, and on the 4th of duly, 1792, two months after the discovery of the Columbia River by Gray, displayed the stars and stripes in that port. Lying there was an English tyhaling vessel, and a French brig, both manned by Nantucket men, who assisted Captain Bunker in his commemoration of the day.2
In 1790, a rather singular incident in connection with the stars and stripes happened at Londonderry, in Ireland. Mr. Lemuel Cox, who had gained considerable reputation as the builder of the bridge connecting Boston with Charlestown, Mass.,3 went to England, where he
1	Bulfinch’s Oregon and Eldorado, and Vancouver’s Voyage. The Spanish silver dollars with which the trade was conducted received the name of 4 Boston dollars ’ from the natives, a name they are still known hy.
2	Letter, F. C. Sanford, of Nantucket.	3 See ante, p. 293.304
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contracted for and built several bridges on the same general plan; among others, for a bridge across the Foyle, at Londonderry, where the river was near one thousand feet wide, and the water forty feet deep at high water, — an engineering feat which had been pronounced by English engineers impracticable. However, with twenty Bostonians and a few laborers Mr. Cox set to work and completed this bridge, consisting of fifty-eight arches, all of American oak, in four months. Not a log of the wood was imported before the 1st of May, and the bridge was completed in November. The cost was about f^OOO.1
“The bridge being completed, or nearly so, on the 22d of November, 1790, Mr. Cox gave the people leave to pass over free, in order to save them the expense of ferriage; and the first day that persons were admitted to pass over, with the consent of the authorities he hoisted the American flag in the midst of it, without the smallest intention of giving the least offence. This proceeding was looked upon by every person in an innocent point of view, until about four o’clock in the afternoon, when detachments from the Fortieth Regiment, under the command of the mayor, marched to the bridge, and a desperate affray ensued, the American flag flying all the time. The workmen were all Bostonians, who, in the very teeth of the magistracy and soldiery, cut, with their axes, the entrance to the bridge open, in order to let the people pass. Three men, viz.----------Cunning-
ham, of Dollartown, a master weaver, Alexander Reed, weaver,
and------McLaughlin, a laborer, wTere killed, and several severely
wounded. During the whole action the army fought under the thirteen stripes; and, what is very extraordinary, an officer fired the first shot.” 2
This was undoubtedly the first action fought in Ireland under the stars and stripes, and probably the last. Mr. Cox was taken to the jail for safe-keeping from the fury of the populace, and that the disturbance lasted several days is evident from the following notice issued by the mayor three days later: —
1	British Chronicle or Union Gazette, Kelso, Oct. 15, 1790.
Murray’s Handbook of Ireland says : “It was a great curiosity, being 1,068 feet long and 40 feet wide, and laid on oak piles, the pieces of which were 16 feet asunder, bound together by thirteen string pieces equally divided and transversely bolted. It is now superseded by a new bridge, costing £100,000, which serves both for the Northern Counties Railway and a public road. In Hall’s Ireland, vol. iii. p. 212, Cox’s bridge is described, and a view of it given.
2	Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser, March 17, 1791, and Columbian Centinel, March 19, 1791, under heading ‘Londonderry,’ Nov. 23, 1790.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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“ Common Hall.
“ The mayor requests the citizens of ’Derry may meet him this day at twelve o’clock, in the town-hall, in order to consider of such measures as may he deemed necessary to maintain the laws, and preserve the public tranquillity.
“ Tuesday Morning, Nov. 25, 1790.”
The cause of the riot is not so clear, as there are several versions of it, though all agree that the American flag was hoisted over the bridge, and in the number of killed and wounded. It seems to have been an Irish shindy. The 'Columbian Centinel,’ in commenting upon it, says: “ Upon inquiry, we find Mr. Cox received orders from the mayor and corporation of ’Derry to open the bridge on the day mentioned, for the benefit of the people, and, as the workmen and timber were American, permitted him to display upon the bridge the American flag. The novelty of these circumstances drew together a large concourse of people. The watermen who were thus thrown out of business, collected in numbers to oppose the passing and repassing of the people; this occasioned a fracas,” &C.1
Later, the Centinel contains extracts from an English paper, assigning the following as the causes of the disturbances, and which probably is a correct account of them. “ From the day that the communication was opened by means of the bridge, an idea prevailed among the lower orders of the people that the passage was to be entirely free, and that no toll would be exacted. . . . For the first week, the corporation did not think it necessary to assert their right, and permitted a free passage. Unfortunately, this indulgence was misconstrued, and the populace confirmed in their opinion that there was no power to oblige them to pay toll. Under this idea, when the gate was erected for the purpose of collecting toll, the multitude, as they came to market, were discontented, and many, heated with liquor, refused to pay any toll. The mayor, sheriff, and several magistrates endeavored to persuade them from their'illegal opposition; but the numbers increased, and they boldly proceeded down the toll-gate in spite of the magistrates, who were obliged to call for a guard of soldiers, and, the riot increasing, to bring to their support nearly the whole of the Fortieth Regiment. The military, charging their bayonets, drove the rioters across the hridge to the water-side, but they had no sooner got upon the street than they turned about and gave battle to the soldiers with repeated volleys of stones and brickbats. Again the magistrates entreated the
1 Columbian Centinel, March 19, 1791.
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rioters to disperse, and warned them of the fatal consequences of their outrages; but they continued the attack. At first, the military were ordered to fire in the air, then at the tops of houses; but the desperation of the mob increasing, the soldiers were ordered to level their muskets. About five in the evening the mob dispersed.” 1
Mr. Cox returned to the United States, where he pursued his mechanical tastes, and in 1796 was granted one thousand acres of land in Maine by the legislature of Massachusetts, for his various inventions, and died at Charlestown, Mass., Feb. 18,1806. The rude wood-cut at the head of the f broadside ’ circulated at the opening of the Charlestown bridge was executed “ by that masterpiece of ingenuity, Mr. Lemuel Cox.” 2
On Monday, May 2, 1791, H. B. M. ship Alligator, 28, Isaac Coffin, Esq., commander, from Halifax, arrived at Boston, and on passing the Castle saluted the flag of the United States with thirteen guns, which was immediately returned by the fortress. “ This mutual attention in powers,” says the f Columbian Centinel,’ “who were lately hostile to each other, shows the superior liberality of the age in which we live, and proclaims to the world the verification of that memorable instrument, the Declaration of Independence, in which our political fathers, declared that they ‘ should hold the king and subjects of Great Britain as they did the rest of the world, — enemies in war; in peace,, friends.’ ” 3
This was probably the first salute in Boston to our flag by a British vessel of war, and it will be observed her commander was an American by birth. The vessel had recently left England, only stopping at Halifax on her passage out.
FIFTEEN STARS AND FIFTEEN STRIPES.
1795-1818.
Early in 1794, in consequence of the admission of Vermont, March 4, 1791, and Kentucky, June 1, 1792, into the sisterhood of the Union, an act was passed increasing the stars and stripes on our flag from thirteen to fifteen, but not to take effect until May, 1795.
The act for this alteration originated in the Senate, and when it
1	Columbian Centinel, April 2, 1791. Letter from Londonderry, Nov. 30, 1790.
2	See Francis S. Drake’s American Biographical Dictionary, and Samuel Adams Drake’s Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex.
3	Columbian Centinel, May 3, 1791.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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came down to the House was the occasion of considerable debate and opposition, illustrating the temper of the time as well as the design of the flag.
“ Jan. 7, 1794. The House resolved itself into a committee of the whole House on the bill sent from the Senate, entitled, ‘An Act making an alteration in the flag of the United States.’
“ Mr. Goodhue thought it a trifling business, which ought not to engross the attention of the House, when it was its duty to discuss matters of infinitely greater consequence. If we alter the flag from thirteen to fifteen stripes, and two additional stars, because Vermont and Kentucky have been added, we may go on adding and altering at this rate for one hundred years to come. It is very likely before fifteen years elapse we shall consist of twenty States. The flag ought to be permanent.”
In almost literal fulfilment of this opinion, when the flag was remodelled, in 1818, twenty-four years later, the new union contained twenty stars, representatives of as many States.
“ Mr. Lyman differed in opinion with Mr. Goodhue. He thought it of the greatest importance not to offend new States.
“ Mr. Thatcher ridiculed the idea of being at so much trouble on a consummate piece of frivolity. At this rate, every State should alter its public seal when an additional county or township was formed. He was sorry to see the House take up their time with such trifles.
“Mr. Greenup considered it of very great consequence to inform the rest of the world we had added two additional States.
“ Mr. Mies was very sorry such a matter should for a moment have hindered the House from going into more important matters. He did not think the alteration either worth the trouble of adopting or rejecting, but he supposed the shortest way to get rid of it was to agree to it; and for that reason, and no other, he advised to pass it as soon as possible.”
The committee having agreed upon the alteration, the chairman reported the bill, and the House took it up.
“ Mr. Boudinot said he thought it of consequence to keep the citizens of Vermont and Kentucky in good humor. They might be affronted at our rejecting the bill.
“ Mr. Goodhue, continuing his opposition, said he felt for the honor of the House when spending their time in such sort of business;1 but since it must be passed, he had only to beg as a favor that it might
1 What would he say to the business habits of our modem Congresses, and the time wasted in frivolous debates and buncombe speeches.308
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not appear upon the journal and go into the world as the first bill passed this session.
“ Mr. Madison was for the bill passing.
“ Mr. Giles thought it proper that the idea should be preserved of the number of our States and the number of stripes corresponding. The expense was but trifling, compared with that of forming the government of a new State.
“ Mr. Smith said that this alteration would cost him five hundred dollars, and every vessel in the Union sixty dollars. He could not conceive what the Senate meant by sending them such bills. He supposed it was for want of something better to do. He should indulge them, but let us have no more alterations of the sort. Let the flag be permanent.”
The bill thus debated was finally passed and approved on the 13th day of January, 1794. It was the first bill completed at that session of Congress, and reads as follows: —
“ Be it enacted, &e., That from and after the first day of May, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-five, the flag of the United States be fifteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be fifteen stars, white in a blue field.”
The same Congress, on the 27th of March, 1794, authorized the building of the frigate Constitution and five other frigates, the commencement of a new navy. The new flag floated over her and all of our vessels of war throughout the war of 1812-14.
When Mr. Monroe, the United States minister, presented his credentials on the 14th of August, 1794, to the French Republic, and communicated feo the National Convention the wish of his fellow-citizens for the prosperity of the nation, the convention, on the report of the Committee of Public Safety, to whom his credentials had been referred, decreed that he should be introduced into the bosom of the convention, and the president should give him the fraternal embrace, as a symbol of the friendship which united the American and French people.
In the National Convention, Aug. 15, 1794, the discussions on the organization of the several committees were commenced, but the deliberation was soon after interrupted by the arrival of the minister plenipotentiary from the United States. He was conducted into the centre of the hall, and the secretary read the translation of his discourse and credential letters, signed by George Washington, President of the United States, and Edmund Randolph, Secretary of State, at Philadelphia, May 28. The reading of this was accompanied byFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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repeated snouts of “ Vive la Bepublique ! Vive les Bepubliques ! and unusual acclamations of applause.” The discourse was ordered to be printed in the French and American languages; and was, in part, as follows: —
“ Among other things, Mr. Monroe observed that as a certain proof of the great desire of his countrymen for the freedom, prosperity, and happiness of the French Bepublic, he assured them that the Continental Congress had requested the President to make known to them this sentiment, and while acting agreeably to the desire of the two Houses, the President enjoined him to declare the congeniality of his sentiment with theirs.”
The secretary then read the letter of credentials, and the president of the convention replied : —
“ The French people have never forgotten that they owe to the Americans the imitation of liberty. They admired the sublime insurrection of the American people against Albion of old, so proud and now so disgraced. They sent their armies to assist the Americans, and in strengthening the independence of that country, the French, at the same time, learned to break the sceptre of their own tyranny, and erect a statue of liberty on the ruins of a throne founded upon the corruption and the crimes of fourscore centuries.”
The President proceeded to remark “ that the alliance between the two republics was not merely a diplomatic transaction, but an alliance of cordial friendship.” He hoped that this alliance would be indissoluble, and prove the scourge of tyrants and the protection of the rights of man. He observed how differently an American ambassador would have been received in France six years before, by the usurper of the liberty of the people; and how much merit he would have claimed for having graciously condescended to take the United States under his protection. “At this day,” he said, “ it is the sovereign people itself, represented by its faithful deputies, that receives the ambassador with real attachment, while affected mortality (?) is at an end.” He longed to crown it with the fraternal embrace. “ I am charged,” said he, “ to give it in the name of the nation. Come and receive it in the name of the American nation, and let this scene destroy the last hope of the impious coalition of tyrants.”
The President then gave the fraternal kiss and embrace to the minister, and declared that he recognized James Monroe in this quality.
“ It was then decreed, on the motion of Mons. Bayle, that the colors of both nations should be suspended at the vault of the hall, as a sign310
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of perpetual alliance and union.” The Minister took his seat on the mountain on the left of the President, and received the fraternal kiss from several deputies. The sitting of the convention was suspended.
On the 25 Fructidor (September 25th), about a month after this scene, the President “ Bernard of Saints ” announced to the convention the receipt of a stand of colors by the hands of an officer of the United States from the minister plenipotentiary of the United States, to be placed in the hall of the National Convention at the side of the French colors, accompanied by the following letter: —
“ The Minister of the United States of America to the President of the
National Convention:
“ Citizen President, — The convention having decreed that the colors of the American and French republics should be united and stream together in the place of its sittings, as a testimony of the union and friendship which ought to subsist for ever between the two nations, I thought that I could not better manifest the deep impression which this decree has made on me, and express the thankful sensations of my constituents, than by procuring their colors to be carefully executed, and in offering them in the name of the American people to the representatives of the French nation.
“ I have had them made in the form lately decreed by Congress [fifteen stripes and fifteen stars], and have trusted them to Captain Barney, an officer of distinguished merit, who has rendered us great services by sea, in the course of our revolution. He is charged to present and to deposit them on the spot which you shall judge proper to appoint for them. Accept, citizen president, this standard as a new pledge of the sensibility with which the American people always receive the interest and friendship which their good and brave allies give them ; as also of the pleasure and ardor with which they seize every opportunity of cementing and consolidating the union and good understanding between the two nations.”
Captain Barney being ordered to be admitted, entered the bar with the standard, amidst universal shouts of applause, which also accompanied the reading of Mr. Monroe’s letter.
In delivering the standard, Captain Barney said: —
“ Citizen President : Having been directed by the minister plenipotentiary of the United States of America to present the National Convention the flag asked of him, — the flag under the auspices of which I have had the honor to fight against our common enemy during the war which has assured liberty and independence, — I discharge the duty with the most lively satisfaction, and deliver it to you. Henceforth, suspended on the side of that of the French Republic, it will become the symbol of the union which subsists between the twoFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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nations, and last, I hope, as long as the freedom which they have so bravely acquired and so wisely consolidated/'
A member said : “ The citizen who has just spoke at the bar is one of the most distinguished sea-officers of America. He has rendered great service to the liberty of his country, and he could render the same to the liberty of France. I demand that this observation be referred to the examination of the Committee of Public Safety, and that the fraternal embrace be given to this brave officer/’
This proposition was received with applause. Several voices cried, “ The fraternal embrace ! ” which was decreed ; and Barney went up to the chair of the President and received the fraternal embrace, amidst unanimous acclamation and applause. The fraternal embrace consisted of a hug, and a kiss upon each cheek. A member arose in his place (a Matthieu) and proposed that their new brother, citoyen Barney, should be employed in the navy of the republic. The resolution passed unanimously ; but Barney was at the time, from his other engagements, obliged to decline the honor. Subsequently he received and accepted the rank of capitaine de vaisseau du premier, and a commission as chef de division des armées navales, answering to the rank of commodore in our service.
When the grand ceremony decreed by the National Convention in honor of Jean Jacques Bousseau, on depositing his remains in the Pantheon, took place, Mr. Monroe and all the Americans at Paris wrere especially invited to be present. The population of Paris united in one moving mass to honor them. The urn containing the ashes of Jean Jacques was placed on a platform erected over the centre of the basin of the principal jet d'eau in the Garden of the Tuileries, where it remained until the procession was formed and prepared to advance ; it was then taken down, and, surrounded by the trappings of mourning, removed to the place assigned it in the procession. The American minister, and the citizens of the United States who accompanied him, were placed immediately in front of the members of the National Convention, who appeared in official costumes. The American flag, so recently presented to the convention by Mr. Monroe, borne by Captain Joshua Barney and a nephew of Mr. Monroe, preceded the column of Americans, all honor which the National Convention appointed to them. A tricolored cordon, supported by the orphan sons of revolutionary soldiers, (<les élèves de la nationf crossed the front, and led down each flank of the two columns composed of Americans and the members of the National Convention. These youths -were dressed in blue jackets and trousers, and scarlet vests, and were several hundreds in number. The procession moved from312
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the Palace of the Tuileries down the principal avenue of the garden, to the Place de la Revolution, thence, by the boulevards, through Rue St. Honoré and other principal streets to the Pont Neuf, and thence to the Pantheon. The windows of every house from top to bottom, on either hand, throughout the whole extent of the march, were crowded with full-dressed females waving handkerchiefs and small tricolored flags, while from every story of each house a large flag of the same description permanently projected. The distance from the Palace of the Tuileries to the Pantheon, computing the meandering of the procession, was about two miles. Arrived at the Pantheon, Mr. Monroe and his suite were the only persons permitted to enter , the National Convention, to witness the conclusion of the ceremony.1
It is a little singular that, after all these ceremonies, Mr. Monroe omitted to make any mention of them in his official despatches. In a postscript to a despatch to the Secretary of State, dated March 6,1795,2 six months after these occurrences, he says he had “ forgotten to notify him officially of his having presented the French National Convention with our flag/’ and adds : “ It was done in consequence of an order of its body, for its suspension in its halls, and an intimation from the President himself that they had none, and were ignorant of the model”
In return, on the 1st of January, 179 6,3 the minister of the French Republic to the United States presented the colors of France 4 to the United States, and addressed the President as follows : —
“ Mr. President : I come to acquit myself of a duty very dear to my heart. I come to deposit in your hands, and in the midst of a
1	Life of Commodore Joshua Barney.
2	American State Papers, vol. i. 1832 edition, p. 698.
3	Washington received a communication from the French minister on the 22d of December, and proposed to receive the colors on the first day of the new year, a day of general joy and congratulation.
4	These colors were the tricolor which had "been established by the following decree, and succeeded the colors, &c., decreed by the National Assembly, Oct. 21, 1790, and were hoisted over the fleet at Brest with ceremonies and festivity, Jan. 11, 1791.
Feb. 15, 1793. The National Convention of France, in consequence of the report of St. André, passed the following decree : —
“ 1st. The maritime flag decreed by the National Constitutional Assembly is sup* pressed.
“ 2d. The national flag shall henceforth be formed of the three national colors disposed in three equal bands, put in a vertical direction, in such a manner that the blue be affixed to the staff of the flag, the white in the middle, and the red floating in the air.
“ 3d. The flag called the ‘jack;’ and the flag on the stern of the ships, shall be disposed in the same manner, observing the usual proportion of size.
“ 4th. The streamers (pennants) shall likewise be formed of three colors ; of which one-fifth shall be blue, one-fifth white, and three-fifths red.
“ 5th. The national flag shall be hoisted in all the ships of the republic on the 20th of May; and the minister of marine shall give the necessary orders for that purpose.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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people justly renowned for their courage and their love of liberty, the symbol of the triumphs and of the enfranchisement of my nation. . . . The National Convention, the organ of the will of the French nation, have more than once expressed their sentiments to the American people ; but, above all, these burst forth on that august day, when the minister of the United States presented to the national representation the colors of his country. Desiring never to lose recollections so dear to Frenchmen, as they must be to Americans, the convention ordered that these colors should be placed in the hall of their sittings. They had experienced sensations too agreeable not to cause them to be partaken of by their allies, and decreed that to them the national colors should be presented.
“ Mr. President : I do not doubt their expectations will be fulfilled, and I am convinced that every citizen will receive, with pleasing emotion, this flag, elsewhere the terror of the enemies of liberty, here the certain pledge of faithful friendship-; especially when they recollect that it guides to combat men who have shared their toils, and who were prepared for liberty, by aiding them to acquire their own.”
General Washington, in his reply the same day to this address,, after expressing his congratulations on the formation and establishment of the French Eepublic, said : “ I receive, sir, with lively sensibility, the symbol of the triumphs and of the enfranchisement of your nation, the colors of France, which you have now presented to the United States. The transaction will be announced to Congress, and the colors will be deposited with those archives of the United States which are at once the evidence and the memorial of their freedom and independence. May these be perpetual ! and may the friendship of the two republics be commensurate with their existence ! ”1
The House proceeded at. once to consider the above, and
“ Resolved, unanimously, That the President be requested to make known to the representatives of the French people that this House had received with the most sincere and lively sensibility the communication of the Committee of Public Safety, dated the 21st of October, 1794, accompanied by the colors of the French Eepublic; and to assure them that the presentation of the colors of the French Eepublic to the Congress of the United States is deemed the most honorable testimonial of the existing sympathies and affections of the two republics founded upon their solid and reciprocal interests ; and that this-House rejoices in the opportunity thereby afforded to congratulate the French nation upon the brilliant and glorious achievements which have been accomplished under their influence during the present 1 American State Papers, 3d ed., vol. ii. p. 100.314
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afflicting war, and confidently hopes that those achievements will be attended with the perfect attainment of their object, — the permanent establishment of the liberties and happiness of a great and magnanimous people.”
Mr. Giles and Mr. Smith were appointed a committee to wait upon the President with this resolution.1
Mr. Adet, the French minister to the United States, was not satisfied with this disposition of the tricolor, and nine days later writes to Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, thus : “ When the National Convention decreed that the French flag should be presented by its minister to the United States, there was but one opinion as to the place in which it should be deposited. A decree had placed yours in the hall of the legislative body. Every one thought that the French flag would with you receive the same honor ; all my fellow-citizens have, one after another, contemplated that pledge of your friendship, and each one believed that the Americans would also have the same eagerness to view the symbol of the enfranchisement of a friendly nation, who, like them, had purchased their liberty at the price of blood. This expectation has not been fulfilled, and it has been decided that the French flag shall be shut up among the archives. Whatever may be the expression of friendship in the answer of the President, however amicable, also, are the resolutions of the House of Representatives, I cannot doubt, sir, that the order made for preserving a flag which the republic sent only to the United States will be looked upon by it as a mark of contempt or indifference. Pride, sir, you know, is the portion of a free people ; and it is never wounded but at the expense of friendship. The present circumstances are extremely delicate ; and when I am convinced the American government had no intention of leading the French Republic to think that the gift of her flag is worth nothing in its eyes, should it not give her authentic proof of it ? Would it not be convenient to fix this flag in a similar place to that which yours occupies in France, and where the national honor expected to see it ? ”
Mr. Pickering, in his reply, dated Jan. 15, 1796, regrets that the real and essential friendship of two free people should be wounded by a circumstance of this kind, resulting from the different ideas they entertain of the mode most proper for preserving the sign of their liberty, and of the victories and triumphs by which it was acquired, and
1 American State Papers, 3d ed., vol. ii. p. 100. It would be interesting to know the further history of these colors thus officially received, as also of the stars and stripes presented to the National Convention by Mr. Monroe. Is the French flag still “shut up among the archives ” of the State Department ?FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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■calls to mind that the representatives of the French people assembled in one room, and that their own colors were exhibited there when it was decreed the colors of the United States should be. That, on the ■contrary, the people of the United States were represented by the President or Executive, the Senate, and the House of Eepresentatives, the President being the sole constitutional organ of communication with foreign nations. “When, therefore, the colors of France were delivered to the President, they were in the only proper manner presented to the people of the United States of America, for whom the President is the only constitutional depositary of foreign communications. Of these, the President transmits to the two Houses of Congress such as he thinks proper for their information ; and thus the colors of France were exhibited to their view. But the United States have never made a public display of their own colors, except in their ships and in their military establishments.” “ Under these circumstances, what honor could be shown to the colors of France more respectful than to deposit them with the evidences and memorials of our own freedom and independence ? If to the United States only the colors of France have been presented, I answer that the colors of France alone have been deposited with our national archives, that both may be preserved with equal care.” He closes with this digni-hed rebuke to the minister for dictating the proper place for the deposit of the French flag : “ I must also remark that the people of the United States have exhibited nowhere in their deliberative assemblies any public spectacles as the tokens of their victories, the symbols of their triumphs, or the monuments of their freedom. Understanding in what true liberty consists, contented with its enjoyment, and knowing how to preserve it, they reverence their own customs, while they respect those of their sister republic. This I conceive, sir, is the way to maintain peace and good harmony between France and the United States, and not by demanding an adoption of the manners of the other : in these we must be mutually free.” “ This explanation, sir, I hope will be satisfactory to you and to your government, and in concurrence with the manner of receiving the French colors, and the unanimous sentiments of affection and good wishes expressed on the occasion by the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, effectually repel every idea that could wound the friendship subsisting between the two nations.”1
1 American State Papers, 1832, vol. i. p. 656. This captious Frenchman, a few months later, made official complaint that the ‘ Philadelphia Directory ’for 1796 gave precedence on its list of foreign ministers to the minister of Great Britain oyer those of316
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
In 1797, the little ship-rigged boat Betsey, of only ninety tons, Captain Edmund Fanning, sailed from New York, and carried the stars and stripes around the world; she returned at the end of two years with a valuable cargo of silks, teas, china, and nankeens, and with a healthy crew of young fellows all decked in China silk jackets and blanched chip hats trimmed with blue ribbons. The ship presented a daily sight at the Flymarket wharf, where hundreds were daily visitors to see a ship of war in beautiful miniature, with a battery tier of guns fore and aft. The voyage was a successful one, and resulted in one thousand dollars apiece to the seamen, and gifts of silk, nankeen, &c. The Betsey was at first intended for a New York and Charleston packet, and rigged as a brig. She was built in New York, in 1792, and so far up town as to be launched across three streets, her master-builder having a fancy to build her before his own door in Cheapside Street. She is probably the smallest ship that ever completed the circumnavigation of the globe.
Every thing connected with the frigate Constitution, of glorious, memories and victories, still existing to stimulate the patriotism of our naval aspirants, is of interest, and we are happy to be able to1 record the name of the person who first hoisted our flag over her, with no conception of the glorious history she would make for it. Her keel was laid in 1794, but she was not launched until Oct. 21, 1797. It was intended she should be the first vessel of the new and permanent navy. But two of the six frigates ordered to be built under the same law were launched before her; viz., The United States, launched July 10, 1797, and destroyed at Norfolk, April 20, 1861; and the Constellation, launched Sept. 7, 1797, broken up in 1854, and now represented by a razee ship of the same name.
The Constitution, better known as ‘ Old Ironsides/ often repaired and rebuilt, remains of the same model, and is of the same tonnage and general appearance as when launched. She was modelled by Joshua Humphries, and built by George Claghorne and Mr. Hartt, of Boston.
When ready to be launched, Commodore Samuel Nicholson, who had the superintendence of her construction, left the ship-yard to get his breakfast, leaving express orders not to hoist any flag over her until his return, intending to reserve that honor to himself. Among the workmen upon her was a shipwright and caulker named Samuel Bentley, who, with the assistance of Harris, another workman, bent
France and Spain. Mr. Pickering, of course, replies that the United States has no control over the publication of almanacs and directories.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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on and hoisted the stars and stripes during 'the commodore’s absence. When the commodore returned and saw the flag floating over her, he was very wrathy, and expressed himself to the offending workmen in words more strong than polite. Could he have foreseen the future of the noble frigate, he would have been still more excited at Bentley’s little coup d'état. He had, however, the satisfaction of being the first to command her, and she was the first of the new frigates to carry the fifteen stars and fifteen stripes under canvas upon the deep blue sea. Bentley died in Boston, in 1852.
The fifteen stars and fifteen stripes were worn by the Constitution before Tripoli, and throughout the war of 1812. It was the flag worn by the Constellation in her actions with L’lnsurgente and La Vengeance ; the flag that waved over Derne ; the flag of Lake Erie, Fort McHenry, and Hew Orleans, and of our naval victories on the Atlantic ; and which was carried around both Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope in the Essex, the first United States vessel of war to show a pennant beyond either.
On the 6th of January, 1800, the Essex, Captain Edward Preble, sailed from Hew York for Batavia, in company with the Congress. When six days out, the Congress was dismasted, and the Essex, knowing nothing of the disaster, proceeded on her voyage alone.
On the 28th of March, 1800, she doubled the Cape of Good Hope on her outward voyage, and on the 27th of August, 1800, repassed it after a tempestuous passage on her return home, and thus was the first vessel of the United States navy to pass and repass that stormy barrier, rightly named by its discoverer u Cabo de las Tormentas.” It was also the good fortune of the Essex under Commodore David Porter, on her last and most celebrated cruise, to be the first vessel of our navy to pass around Cape Horn. The Essex left St. Catharine’s, Brazil, on the 26th of January, 1813, passed the Cape on the 14th of February, and, after a most stormy and tempestuous time in weathering it, encountered a pleasant southwest breeze in the Pacific Ocean on the 5th, and arrived off Valparaiso on the 13th of March, where she anchored on the 15th of the same month.
The Cape was made on the 14th of February under the promising auspices of a tolerably clear horizon, a moderate wind from the westward, and a bright sun. Every man was exulting in their escape from the dreaded terrors of Cape Horn, when suddenly a tempest burst upon the ship which raised an irregular and dangerous sea, and reduced her flowing canvas to storm staysails. Storm succeeded storm, with intervals of deceitful calm, which encouraged the making318
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of sail, and added to the labor of the hard-working crew, who were immediately forced to reef again, to meet the coming blast.
On the last day of February, being in latitude 50° S., Captain Porter, as his ship glided on a smooth sea before a moderate breeze, congratulated himself upon the cheering prospect, and made preparations for fine weather, thinking the dangers and disagreeable attendants of a passage around the Cape all over. The wind, however, soon freshened to a gale, and blew with a fury exceeding any thing before experienced during the voyage. It was hoped, from the excessive violence of the wind, that it would soon blow out its strength. This hope failing, all on board, worn out with fatigue and anxiety, alarmed by the terrors of a lee-shore, and in momentary expectation of the loss of the masts and bowsprit, began to consider their safety hopeless. The ship, with her water-ways gaping and her timbers separating widely from the heavy and continued straining to which she had been so long exposed, now made a great deal of water, and, to add to the fearfulness of the danger, the pumps had become choked. The sea meantime had arisen to a great height, threatening to swallow the ship at every roll. For two days the storm continued unabated, but as the good ship had resisted its violence, “to the astonishment of all, without receiving any considerable injury,” it was hoped from her excellent qualities she might be able to weather the storm. Before the third day had passed, however, an enormous sea broke over the ship, and for an instant destroyed all hox^e. The gun-deck ports were burst in, both boats on the quarter stove, the spare spars washed from the chains, the head-rails swept away, the hammock stanchion crushed, and the ship perfectly deluged and water-logged. One man, an old sailor, the boatswain, who had been taken from an English packet, was so appalled that he cried out in his despair that the ship’s broadside was stove in, and that she was sinking. The alarm ran throughout the vessel from the spar-deck to the gun-deck, and was caught up by those below on the berth-deck, who, deluged by the torrents of water rushing down the hatchways, and swept by huge seas out of their hammocks, believed that the Essex was about to plunge for ever into the depths of the ocean. The men at the wheel, however, who were only able to keep to their post by clinging with all their might, distinguished themselves by their cool intrepidity, and were rewarded by Captain Porter after the storm by advancement in rank, while others, who had shrank from the terrors of the scene, were rebuked for their timidity.
Leaving this tempestuous weather behind, the Essex quickly passedFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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the inhospitable coasts of Patagonia and Lower Chili, and sailed into smoother seas and pleasant weather.
The Essex cruise furnishes one of the most remarkable chapters in our naval history. On the 19th of November, 1813, Captain Porter hoisted our flag and took possession of Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific, setting forth his claims to its possession in the following declaration, which was signed by himself and attested by fifteen of his officers as witnesses : —
“ Declaration.
“It is hereby made known to the world, that I, David Porter, a captain in the navy of the United States of America, and now in command of the United States frigate ‘ Essex/ have, on the part of the said United States, taken possession of the island called by the natives ‘Nookahiva/ generally known by the name of ‘ Sir Henry Martin’s Island/ but now called ‘ Madison Island.’ That by the request and assistance of the friendly tribes residing in the valley of Tienhoi, as well as of the tribes residing on the mountains, whom we have conquered and rendered tributary to our flag, I have caused the village of Madison to be built, consisting of six convenient houses, a rope-walk, bakery, and other appurtenances, and for the protection of the same, as well as for that of the friendly natives, I have constructed a fort, calculated for mounting sixteen guns, whereon I have mounted four, and called the same ‘ Fort Madison.’
“ Our right to this island, being founded on priority of discovery, conquest, and possession, cannot be disputed; but the natives, to secure to themselves that friendly protection which their defenceless situation so much required, have requested to be admitted into the great American family, whose pure republican policy approaches so near their own; and, in order to encourage these views to their own interest and happiness, as well as to render secure our claim to an island valuable on many considerations, I have taken on myself to promise them that they shall be so adopted; that our chief shall be their chief, and they have given assurances that such of their brethren as may hereafter visit them from the United States shall enjoy a welcome and hospitable reception among them, and be furnished with whatever refreshments and supplies the island may afford ; that they will protect them against all their enemies, and that, as far as lies in their power, they will prevent the subjects of Great Britain (knowing them to be such) from coming among them until peace shall have taken place between the two nations.
“Presents, consisting of the produce of the island to a great amount, have been brought in by every tribe in the island, not excepting the most remote, and have been enumerated as follows : [Here follows the enumeration of thirty-one tribes.] Most of the above have requested to be taken320
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under the protection of our flag; and all have been willing to purchase, on any terms, a friendship which promises them so many advantages.
“ Influenced by these considerations of humanity, which promise speedy civilization to those who enjoy every mental and bodily endowment which nature can bestow, and which requires only art to perfect, as well as by views of policy, which secures to my country a fruitful and populous island, possessing every advantage of security and supplies for vessels, and which of all others is most happily situated as respects climate and local position, I declare that I have, in the most solemn manner, under the American flag displayed in Fort Madison, and in the presence of numerous witnesses, taken possession of said island, called ‘ Madison Island,’ for the use of the United States, whereof I am a citizen, and that the act of taking possession was announced by a salute of seventeen guns from the artillery of Fort Madison, and returned by the shipping in the harbor, which is hereafter to be called ‘ Massachusetts Bay.’ And that our claim to this island may not hereafter be disputed, I have buried in a bottle at the foot of the flag-staff in Fort Madison a copy of this instrument, together with several pieces of money, the coin of the United States.
“ In witness whereof, I have hereunto affixed my signature, this 19th day of November, 1813.
“ David Porter.”
As the Marquesas Islands were discovered by the American captains, Ingraham and Roberts, we had an undoubted claim to them from priority of discovery, and Porter, in taking possession as he did of Nukahiva, only followed the custom of other maritime powers.
The revenue flag of the United States was created by an act of Congress approved March 2, 1799, which reads as follows: —
“ Section 102. And be it further enacted, That the cutters and boats employed in the service of the revenue shall be distinguished from other vessels by an ensign and pendant, with such marks thereon as shall be prescribed and directed by the President of the United States; and in case any ship or vessel liable to seizure or examination shall not bring to, on being required, or being chased by any cutter or boat having displayed the pendant and ensign prescribed for vessels in the revenue service, it shall be lawful for the captain, master, or other person having command of such cutter or boat to fire at or into such vessel which shali not bring to, after such pendant and ensign shall be hoisted, and a gun shall have been fired by such cutter or boat as a signal, and such captain, master, or other person as aforesaid, and all persons acting by or under his directions, shall be indemnified from any penalties or actions for damages for so doing; and if anyFLAGr OF THE UNITED STATES.
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person shall be killed or wounded by such firing, and the captain or master or other person aforesaid shall be prosecuted and arrested therefor, such captain, master, or other person shall be forthwith admitted to bail. And if any ship, vessel, or boat not employed in the service of the revenue, shall, within the jurisdiction of the United States, carry or hoist any ensign or pendant prescribed for vessels in the service aforesaid, the master or commander of the ship or vessel so offending shall forfeit and pay one hundred dollars.”
In accordance with this act, the Secretary of the Treasury, Aug. 1, 1799, prescribed the revenue flag as follows: —
“ The ensign and pendant directed by the President under the act of 2d of March, 1799, consists of sixteen perpendicular stripes alternate red and white, the union of the ensign bearing the arms of the United States in dark blue on a white field.” e (See Plate I.)
The stripes represent the number of States admitted to the union when the flag was adopted, and the ensign has undergone no change since. In 1871, thirteen blue stars in a white field were substituted for the eagle in the union of the pendant.
Whenever revenue vessels are employed beyond our coast, or in conjunction with the navy, they are allowed to wear the national in place of the revenue ensign.
The revenue ensign is always displayed over the custom-houses of the United States, and over the other buildings appertaining to the Treasury Department of the United States.
Our stars and stripes were first displayed in a Japanese port in 1797. The annual ship sent that year by the Dutch from Batavia to trade with Japan flew our flag, to avoid capture by the British. The vessel was named the Eliza, of JSTew York, and her captain was an Englishman. All the so-called Dutch traders to Japan from 1799 to 1809 were really American.
In 1807, the Boston ship Eclipse, chartered at Canton by the Russian American Company, entered the harbor of Nagasaki under Russian colors.
Mr. John Lee claims the honor of having first displayed our flag in the Oriental city of Smyrna. In a letter to a naval friend, dated 1837, he says : “ In 1797,1 caused to be waved on board the American vessel Ann, of Boston, Captain Daniel Sawyer, the American starry flag, the first that appeared in Smyrna, and just after a greater part of the city, my house among the rest, had been burnt. She came hither in 127 days from the Danish settlement of Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast, and brought to my house a valuable cargo, which I sold to a good profit.”
21322
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Our flag was, however, so little known at Smyrna, that nineteen years after, in August, 1812, two American vessels arriving in that port, and the United States having no treaty with the Porte, they were obliged to hoist English colors in order to obtain admission. The English factors were displeased on seeing a foreigner use their flag and obtain privileges under it, and by their representation the British consul forbade the Americans using it, and informed the custom-house the vessels were not of his nation. This subjected the Americans to six per cent additional duty; but on their threatening to leave without breaking bulk, they were permitted to land their cargo by paying a duty of four per cent, — one per cent more than was paid by English vessels. After they had cleared their holds, however, the customhouse officers seized six barrels of indigo, for which they could obtain no redress.1
Up to Oct. 20, 1795, the State of Mississippi had been a Spanish province. On that day, a treaty was signed at Madrid relinquishing the Spanish claim to all territory above 31° north latitude, and commissioners were appointed by both governments to determine the boundary. Andrew Ellicott, of Pennsylvania, was appointed by the President commissioner on the part of the United States to determine1
the boundary between the United States and the territories of his,
#
Catholic Majesty, beginning at the 31° north latitude, on the Mississippi River, and running to the head of St. Mary’s River in Florida. The American commissioners arrived at Natchez on the 29th of February, 1797; and the stars and stripes were then for the first time displayed.
On the 24th of April, 1797, Lieutenant Pope, U. S. A., with a company of infantry, arrived at Natchez, and the next day, attended by an escort from Bacon’s Landing, with music and colors displayed, marched up and deployed in front of the town, saluted the Spanish flag, and pitched tents on the bluff in view of the fort and the governor’s residence, and planted our flag on the bluff, where it now floats.
Ellicott’s party landed at Natchez, then occupied and garrisoned by the Spaniards, Nov. 24, 1797, communicated his credentials to Governor Gayoss, and on the 27th proceeded from his boats to the bluff, pitched his tents, &c., at the upper end of the bluff, a quarter of a mile from the Spanish fort, and on the 29th he hoisted the flag of the United States.
In the spring of 1797, Captain Isaac Guion, with two hundred in-
1 Select Review.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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fantry and fifteen pieces of artillery, proceeded down the Mississippi nnder orders, and halted at Chickasaw Bluffs, now Memphis, to deliver the Chickasaw annuity. The Spaniards had abandoned the position and destroyed their works, and Captain Guion erected a fort, called f Fort Adams/ at the lower Chickasaw Bluff, — afterwards known as Fort Pickering, — and displayed there, for the first time, the American flag. Towards the end of 1797, Major William Hersey, Third United States Artillery, took possession of Fort Nogales (now Vicksburg), and unfurled the flag. In a few months, Colonel John F. Hamtremack, First Regiment United States Artillery, concentrated the garrisons of Nogales and Natchez at Loftus Heights, and built Fort Adams, still known by that name. There the flag was displayed, and it was seen at no point on the river below that until Dec. 20,1803, when the standard of France was lowered on the Place des Armées in the city of New Orleans, and the American colors hoisted by Governor William C. C. Claiborne and General James Wilkinson, the United States commissioners.
The flag of the United States was first hoisted at the Bay of St. Louis, Biloxi, and Pascagoula, on the seaboard of Mississippi, January, 1811, by order of Governor Claiborne; in Mobile, April 15, 1813, when that place was captured by General Wilkinson from the Spaniards.1
In 1797, a schooner was launched at Erie, Penn. She was the first vessel under our flag to invade the waters of the Great Lake, and the parent of the extensive commerce which now sails over those inland seas. She was soon lost, and the enterprise was not followed up for several years.2
1	Letter, Hon. W. I. H. Claiborne, 1879.
2	In 1678, a brigantine of ten tons was built for the use of the French on Lake Ontario.
On the 7th of August, 1679, a small vessel left her anchorage and ascended the strong
rapids of the Niagara River into Lake Erie. She was a peculiar craft, of foreign model, full rigged and equipped, having many of the appointments of a man-of-war. A battery of seven small cannon, with some musketry, constituted her armament. A flag bearing the device of an eagle floated at her masthead, and her bow was ornamented with a carved griffin, in honor of the arms of Count Frontenac, Governor-General of Canada. The vessel was the Griffon, and her projector and builder the adventurous Chevalier de la Salle. She was named 'Le Griffon’ in compliment of Count Frontenac, on whose escutcheon two winged griflins were emblazoned as supporters. Being unable to stem the current, a dozen men were landed on the eastern shore, and drew her up the stream. A group of Senecas watched her movements and shouted their admiration. When the vessel had reached the lake, the men on shore embarked, a Te Deum was chanted, the artillery and firearms were discharged, and the vessel boldly ploughed, without chart or guide, the untried waters of the lake.
Three manuscript maps in the archives of the Ministère de la Marine in Paris furnish324
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In 1800, our constellation of stars was first displayed before the crescent under tbe walls of Constantinople by the frigate George Washington, Captain William Bainbridge, when she carried the tribute of the Dey of Algiers to the Sultan. When the nationality of the frigate was reported to the authorities, they returned answer that the government had never heard of the United States of America. On its being explained that the frigate came from the new world discovered by Columbus, a bunch of flowers and a lamp were sent on board, — the one as a welcome, the other as a token of amity.
Captain Bainbridge passed the forts and castles of the Bosphorus by a stratagem; as his ship approached the castles, he shortened sail, and made the usual preparations for anchoring. When nearly abreast of the anchorage, he commenced a salute, which was instantly returned from the shore. Under cover of the friendly smoke, sail was made, and before the Turks had recovered from their surprise at so unusual an occurrence the ship was beyond their batteries, pursuing her way to Constantinople.
At an entertainment subsequently given by Captain Bainbridge to the minister of the Sublime Porte, decanters of water were placed upon the table (the Mussulmans not drinking wine) from the four quarters of the globe, — some of the casks filled in America and Africa being still full, and the frigate then anchored between the shores of Europe and Asia. This incident, as unique as pleasing, attracted so much notice in the diplomatic circle of Constantinople, that the lady of the British ambassador borrowed the four decanters to grace her own table at an entertainment the following day.
indisputable evidence that this vessel was built at the mouth of the Cayuga Creek. "When she was launched, a salute was fired and the Te Deum was chanted ; the Frenchmen cheered as she entered the water. The Iroquois were unable to repress their astonishment, and the Senecas joined in celebrating the launch by partaking of the brandy which was liberally and freely distributed.
The Griffon sailed through Lakes Erie, Huron, St. Clair (which they named), and Michigan, or Illinois, as it was then called, bearing the flag of France, and started on her return well loaded with a valuable cargo of furs on the 18th of September. On the second day after she sailed, a storm arose which lasted five days. She is reported to have been seen among the islands in the northerly end of Lake Michigan two days after sailing by some Pottawatomies, who advised the pilot to wait for more favorable weather. They last saw her half a league from the shore, helplessly driven by the storm upon a sandbar, where she probably foundered. A hatchway, a cabin-door, the trunk of a flag-staff, and a few other articles were subsequently found and recognized as relics of the ill-fated ship, — the first vessel of size to traverse the Great Lakes. — The Building and Voyage of the Griffon in 1679, a paper read before the Buffalo Historical Society, by C. H. Marshall, in 1863, revised by the author, and printed in the publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, vol. i. No. 7, Aug. 1879 ; also in pamphlet form, pp. 34, 8vo.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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On the 27th of April, 1805, Lieutenant O’Bannon of the marines and Mr. Mann hauled down the Tripolitan colors displayed over the fortress of Derne, and unfolded “ our flag ” of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes in their place, —- the first American flag planted upon a fortress of the Old World.1
On the 17th of March, 1807, a squadron of United States vessels of war, consisting of the bomb ketchs Etna and Yesuvius, and gunboats ISTos. 11, 12, 13, and 14, and barge Victory, under the command of Commodore Shaw, anchored in the Mississippi Eiver opposite Natchez, and was the first naval squadron to display our flag there. They came at the request of General Wilkinson, with orders to capture or sink Burr’s flotilla, said to be very formidable, and daily expected down the river.
Previous to the declaration of war, in 1812, against Great Britain, it was determined at a cabinet council that our vessels of war should be placed in ordinary, it being thought unwise to jeopardize our few frigates and sloops of war in a contest with the gigantic navy of the enemy.2 Captain William Bainbridge, who was in Washington the day after war was declared, consulted with Captain Charles Stewart, who was also there, on the propriety of remonstrating against the measure. They accordingly wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, stating, in forcible language, that such a course would have a chilling and unhappy effect on the spirit of the navy. Even if we were to lose some of our vessels of war, it would be better to do so, they argued, than that they should be ingloriously laid up in harbor, while other branches of the service were gallantly contending in the field. Prom the high discipline of our navy, and the eagerness of the officers and crews to engage in the contest, they felt perfectly assured that if our vessels did not prove invariably triumphant, they would certainly never disgrace themselves or the nation.
Their letter had its effect : our men-of-war were permitted to cruise, and the result showed the truth of their predictions. One of the earliest triumphs for our flag was the capture of H. B. M. frigate Macedonian by the frigate United States off Madeira on the 25th of October.
When the United States and her prize arrived at New London, Decatur sent his report of the action and the colors of the Macedo-
1	July 4, 1820, at the celebration of the day at Brimfield, Mass., this flag was displayed and toasted. — Boston Gazette, 1820.
2	Life of Bainbridge ; Life of Stewart; Commodore Stewart’s Letter to the U. S. Nautical Magazine, 1846, vol. ii. pp. 172-185.
Our entire naval force capable of going to sea consisted of but 412 gnns, viz. : 274 in frigates, 62 in sloops of war, and 78 in brigs and schooners. —Stewart's Letter.326
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
nian to Washington by Lieutenant Hamilton, a son of the Secretary of the Navy. With them he arrived in Washington on the evening of the 8th of December, while a ball given to the officers of the navy, and particularly to Captain Charles Stewart, of the Constellation, in acknowledgment of his recent civilities to the citizens of Washington, was in progress. The occasion was graced by the presence of Captain Isaac Hull, the gallant victor of the Guerriere, by many public functionaries, and by those most distinguished in the society of the capital. The Secretary of the Navy being present, Lieutenant Hamilton proceeded to the ball-room with his despatches. He was received with acclamations, and, having acquitted himself of his errand, was welcomed by the embraces of his father, mother, and sisters, happily present to exult in the safety and success of a beloved son and brother.
The ball-room had been decorated with the trophies of our recent naval victories. A desire was expressed that the colors of the Macedonian should be added to those of the Constitution and Alert. They were accordingly borne in by Captains Stewart and Hull, and presented to Mrs. Madison, the wife of the President, amidst inspiring strains of music; while acclamations of patriotic exultation broke from the lips of the fair and the brave. Enthusiasm was at its height when, at the supper-table, “the health of Commodore Decatur and the officers and crew of the United States ” was proposed, and drank with all the honors.1
After the usual congratulations on this the third naval victory gained in a few months over the enemy, Mr. Hamilton, the secretary of the navy, said to Captain Stewart, “We are indebted to Bainbridge and yourself for these flags and victories. Had it not been for your strong remonstrance, not a vessel of war belonging to the government would have left its anchorage.”
u When Yankee meets the Briton Whose blood congenial flows,
By Heaven created to be friends,
By fortune rendered foes,
Hard must be the battle fray Ere well the fight is o’er.” 2
The flag worn by the United States brig Enterprise in her action with the British brig Boxer, Sept. 4, 1813, and afterwards the pall
1	McKenzie’s Life of Decatur, pp. 181, 182.
2	L. M. Sargent’s ode, sung at a dinner given to Captain Hull by the citizens of Boston, after the capture of the Guerriere.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
327
which covered the body of Captain Burrows at his funeral, had fifteen stripes and fifteen stars, the latter arranged in parallel lines. This
flag, which was an old one on the day of the engagement, and patched with a still older one, is now in the possession of H. Gf. Quincy, of Portland, and was exhibited at the Massachusetts Mechanics’ Charitable Fair, in Boston, October, 1878. After the action, it bore the marks of fifty-nine shot-holes, chiefly musketry. The illustration is from a photograph taken in 1873, when what was left of the venerable relic was stitched on canvas, in order that it might be photographed.1
Another interesting relic of the war of 1812 is the flag worn at Stonington when bombarded bv the British fleet, Aug. 10, 1814. The bombardment was
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Flag of the United States Brig Enterprise, Sept. 5, 1813

opened on that day by the Terror, Despatch, and Pactolus. The town was wholly defenceless, the supply of ammunition having given out,
and at the mercy of the invader, when a timid citizen proposed a formal surrender by lowering this ensign, which was flying over a one gun 18-pounder battery. “ No ! ” shouted Captain Holmes, indignantly, “ the flag shall never come down while I am alive! ” and when the wind died away and it hung drooping from its staff, the brave captain held it out on the point of a bayonet, that the British might see it. In that position several shots passed through it, and a companion of Holmes was held up on his shoulders, while he nailed it to the staff.2
The engraving is a sketch of its appearance in 1860, carefully taken at the house of its owner, Captain Almy, by Mr. Lossing. It will be observed that the flag has sixteen stars and thirteen stripes, one star more and two stripes less than the legal number at that time. The flag was about three and one half yards long by three in width. The en-
Stonington Flag.
1	See Three Historic Flags and Three September Victories, by G. H. P.
2	Lossing’s War of 1812-14.328
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE
graver, not understanding the heraldry of lines, has in our illustration made the field of the union red and the dark stripes blue, while the reverse is the case in the flag.
The close of the war with Great Britain created an interest in the trophies which had been gathered by our flag on land and on the sea; and in answer to a call from the House of Representatives inquiring into the present condition and disposition of the flags, standards, and colors taken by the forces of the United States from their enemies, John Armstrong, secretary of war, on the 14th of January, 1814, reported that of the standards and colors taken by the army of the United States during the Revolution, only six flags remained in the War Department. Others, it was understood, were deposited in Philadelphia, while Congress sat in that city; but whether they had been moved with the public offices to Washington, he did not know.1
Mr. Seybert, chairman of the committee to whom the preservation of these flags and trophies had been referred, reported, Feb. 4, 1814, “That the collection, preservation, and exhibition of such flags, standards, and colors as have been taken by the land and naval forces of the United States from their enemies is sanctioned by the practice of European nations, and more especially by the proceedings of the Congress of our Revolution. It is believed there cannot be a difference of opinion on this subject; it is natural to rejoice at the victories and glory of our country. In Europe, the trophies which have been gained in war are preserved with uncommon care. As monuments of national power, they have ever been cherished by all civilized nations. In England they are highly prized. Hot content that they should constitute the ornaments of military institutions, such standards are deemed proper subjects for the decorations of temples which have been consecrated to the purposes of religious worship. The sacred chapels, in common with the royal palaces, are the places in which the banners which the British forces have won from their enemies are displayed to every subject and traveller. It must be recollected that the standard of our Fourth Regiment of Infantry, which the enemy received at the lamentable surrender of
1 “Four standards were taken at Trenton.” — Major-General Heath to Governor Trumbull, Dec. 30, 1776.
Two flags out of the six which were captured from the Hessian division of the British army at Trenton, Dec. 26, 1776, are in the department on the hill at Harrisburg. —Letter, William Buehler to G. H. P., Nov. 18, 1871.
Twenty-four standards of colors taken from the British army under Cornwallis arrived at Philadelphia, Saturday, Nov. 3, 1781. — Westcott's History of Philadelphia,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
329
Detroit, was, in haste, conveyed to Europe.1 Immediately after its arrival in London the public prints informed us that it was triumphantly displayed in the council chamber at Whitehall. Such is the British practice.”
“ In France, the galleries of Notre Dame are blazoned with these splendid trophies; the chapel of the Hotel of the Invalids is richly embellished, and exhibits to the numerous visitors the many standards which that gigantic power has at different times taken from its enemies.2 The trophies of war ornament the places of worship in Prussia, Bohemia, and Austria. It affords no common satisfaction to the disabled tar or the superannuated soldier when he informs the inquisitive stranger that he gloriously fought in the battle which may have gained some of them; for the time he forgets his former sufferings and his present disabled condition; his consolation rests upon the power and glory of his country, so fully demonstrated by the sight of numerous ensigns which have been taken from other nations. Other instances in favor of the practice could have been furnished, but your committee are persuaded that the ardor of the illustrious congress of our Bevolution alone will justify the proposition which they submit for legislative consideration. As early as the 23d of June, 1778, it was ‘Resolved, That the board of war be directed to collect the standards and colors taken from the enemy by the army of the United States since the commencement of the war.’ Had this order been strictly observed, and somewhat extended, the present proceedings would be unnecessary. Far from any regulation having been adopted in pursuance of the recited resolutions, your committee laments the peculiar negligence which ensued. The Secretary of War now tells us that only six remain in his office; he cannot give any information concerning others; even their place of deposit is unknown to the department! The Navy Department possesses no knowledge of any flags which were taken ‘ anterior to the declaration of the present war.’ Such as have been captured with the public armed ships of the enemy subsequent to the 18th of June, 1812, ‘have been carefully preserved;’ thirteen of them have been already received, as will more fully appear by the annexed statement;3 of these, three belonged to the heavy frigates of the enemy, viz. the Guerriere, Macedonian, and Java. The Navy Department is also in possession of a royal standard of Great Britain, which was taken at York, and a union
1 Now preserved in Chelsea Hospital, see p. 154.	2 See page 116.
3 For the statement, see American State Papers (naval affairs), 1814, Doc. No. 108,
2d Session, 13th Congress, p. 299.330
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
jack and flag, which were captured at Fort George; the flags of five small vessels which were captured have not been received. Your committee regret that the journals of Congress do not exhibit statements of all the standards and colors which were taken during our Revolution by the army and navy of the United States ; the early attention of the legislature to this subject inclines them to believe they were very numerous. The capture of Earl Cornwallis alone furnished twenty-four of them ! In all probability, as many were taken from General Burgoyne.” 1
“ By some, the exhibitions which are contemplated may be considered as too trivial for legislative provision. Your committee would coincide with them in this opinion, did the practice only afford a momentary gratification to the curious. Experience must have taught European governments that national benefits were derived from the course which they have adopted, or it would long since have been discontinued. It is presumed that essential consequences proceed from the practice, more especially when a nation shall be engaged in war, such trophies excite the spirit of a nation, — the result is national character. The arrival of an enemy’s flag is sufficient to rouse the population of London or Paris. On such occasions the finest national feelings are developed; and, to the honor of our fellow-citizens be it said, they have not been found to want this species of national sensibility, when the flags of the Guerriere, Macedonian, Java, &c., were exhibited to them. It was indifferent whether they consid-
1 “ General Riedesel commanded that the colors should not he surrendered with the arms at Saratoga, hut, on the contrary, that the staffs should he burnt and the flags carefully packed up ; this was done as ordered, so that each of the German regiments really kept possession of their colors.” — Memoirs Baroness Riedesel.
On Saturday, Nov. 3, 1781, between three and four o’clock in the afternoon, there arrived at Philadelphia twenty-four standards of colors taken with the British army under the command of Earl Cornwallis. The volunteer cavalry of the city received these trophies of victory at Schuylkill, from whence they escorted and ushered them into town amidst the declamations of a numerous concourse of people. Continental and French colors at a distance preceded the British, and thus they were paraded down Market Street to the State House. They were then carried into Congress and “laid at their feet.” A newspaper account of this ceremony says : —
“ The crowd, exulting, fills with shouts the sky ;
The walls, the woods, and long canals reply.
Base Britons ! Tyrant Britons ! Knock under,
Taken ’s your earl, soldiers, and plunder.
Huzza! what colors of the bloody foe !
Twenty-four in number at the State House door!
Look ! they are British standards, how they fall At the President’s feet, Congress and all! ”
Westcott's History of Philadelphia,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
331
ered themselves of the war or the peace party; each was ambitious to rank the victor with himself! The national taste and propensity is strongly marked by the eagerness with which all view representations of our late unparalleled naval victories! If, then, the art and the genius of the painter can thus excite our natures, may we not look for much more when we have the physical facts placed before us, instead of fancy ? These flags, the trophies won by our gallant tars, demonstrate to us and the world that the invincibility of the British naval power has been very much exaggerated. In battle will the recollection of them sustain our sailors and our soldiers, and impart additional skill and valor in support of the cause of our country ! The value of standards does not depend upon the gaudy colors which they exhibit, no more than upon the nature of the stuff of which they may be fabricated. They have been at all times regarded as the insignia of fame and power; their surrender is the act of submission. The last wish of the proud bearer is the preservation of his eagle; too often is the loss of it sealed with the loss of life. In Europe, where military operations are on a large scale, though the result of a battle should prove destructive to thousands of those who were engaged, the capture of a single standard constitutes a prominent feature in the details of the action, and adds much to the brilliancy of the achievement. Colors taken from the enemy were considered a present worthy of the nation to General "Washington, for his signal services in the capture of Earl Cornwallis ! The records of the proceedings of Congress, during our whole Devolution, mention but two instances where this highly honorable and distinguishing mark of approbation was noted! In fine, we have declared the flag shall guarantee the safety of our citizens. Can a higher value be set upon it ? Can we attach more honor to it ?
“ It may be asked, What will be the effects of a public display of the flags which have been taken from our enemies ? This view is considered important. Ho one can doubt that the government and the people of England would rather we had taken millions of their merchandise, than that we should have it in our power to exhibit the flag of a single sloop of war, which was gained by equal force. If the enemy will expose to the view of the British nation, and every traveller who may visit them, the one or two flags which they have captured from us, shall we conceal the many we have taken from them, and thus lead others to doubt our possessing any ? Shall we permit the numerous trophies of our Bevolution to moulder into dust by a voluntary concealment, without any effort for their preservation ? If332
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
this shall have happened to the proud monuments of our independence, shall the fate of those which are now perfect, and which have been so lately won on our own coast, on that of South America, off the Azores, on the lakes, in short, in all latitudes where our tars have come in contact with the enemy, be the same ? Is not the preservation of these flags a duty which we owe to the people of the United States ?1 Are the achievements of that gallant little navy, which a few months ago was the object of derision with the statesmen and people of England, but now the cause of their fears, to be buried in oblivion ? Shall we put at rest the inquiry which the glorious deeds of our sailors have excited in the Parliament of Great Britain ? Shall we, at our expense, approve the labored calculations of the enemy ? with her, confound reason and common sense, and attribute simple truths to fallacious causes, or shall we give in to a practice so generally cherished by other nations ? Our successes on the ocean constitute the pride of our country; they have secured to us the respect of foreign nations. In Europe we again hold that rank which our ancestors had obtained by their many hard-fought conflicts, which we had nearly forfeited. Have we not accomplished more than Spain did with her ‘ invincible armadas; ’ than did Holland with her De Witts, Yan Tromps, and De Ruyters; than France could achieve, when she was in the zenith of her naval power; than did Great Britain with her Nelsons, Rodneys, Howes, and St. Vincents ? The naval annals of England furnish no instance in which every vessel belonging to a hostile fleet was captured.”
“ Some may doubt our possessing a number of standards sufficient to warrant their public exhibition. Had we but few of them, we should not deny our sanction to the principle. Your committee regret that special order had not been taken by Congress immediately after the receipt of the first present of this kind: we alluded to the colors which were taken by General Montgomery from the Seventh British Regiment at Chamblee, on the 18th of October, 1775.
“ The French pride themselves on their ability to exhibit the two
1 The flags of the following British vessels of war are preserved in the gunnery-room of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, viz. : Alert, 20 ; Beresford, 1 ; Boxer, 14 ; Chippaway, 1 ; Chubb, 11 ; Confiance, 37 ; Cyane, 24 ; Detroit, 20 ; Dominica, 16 ; Duke of Gloucester, 14 ; Epervier, 18 ; Frolic, 22 ; Guerriere, 38 ; Hunter, 10 ; Java, 18 ; Lady Provost, 13 ; Levant, 20 ; Little Belt, 3 ; Linnet, 16 ; Macedonian, 38 ; Peacock, 20 ; Penguin, 18 ; Reindeer, 18 ; St. Lawrence, 15 ; and a royal standard captured at York, Canada. There is also preserved there the flags of the French vessels of war : La Berceau, 24 ; LTnsurgente, 40 ; Algerine frigate Mezoura, 46 ; and brig Estudis, 22 guns ; also several flags captured from the Mexicans in 1845-48.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
333
which they have taken from our present enemy; for so lately as the year 1800 they had only two of the naval flags of Great Britain! Though the War and Navy Departments can immediately furnish hut twenty or twenty-five of these flags, it is probable the place of deposit will be ascertained, so as to put within our power many of those which were gained during our Revolution. Where are those which were won during the dispute with France in 1798 ?2 The same maybe asked of those which the defeats of Derne and Tripoli should furnish.
“ The only project which now remains for consideration is the place most proper for their exhibition. This should be public, and easy of access; at the same time, it should be properly secure from villanous attempts. These flags should be placed so as to be seen by every citizen who might wish to observe them. It will be of advantage that they should be noticed by every foreigner who may visit the United States. Can any objection be made to the spacious national apartments which are devoted to legislative purposes ? What ornaments can be more suitable ? Go abroad, and you may see the walls of the British House of Lords decorated with representations of some of the celebrated battles which were fought by the troops of Great Britain. At home we find the principle already established by one branch of the legislature of the United States. In the senate chamber observe engravings of some of the battles of our Revolution; and, had time allowed the execution of the original design of the architect, the precedent would have had existence in the chamber of the representatives of the United States. It was contemplated that the frieze over the capitals of the Corinthian columns which sustain the dome should present, in relievo, a regular series of the battles which secured our independence. Such decorations might gratify the artist, and afford an opportunity to display his talents ; but, in a national point of view, little or no effect would be produced. It must be conceded that much more will be communicated to the spectators by the display of the captured standards.
“ No one can pretend that any difference exists between the representations which we have noticed, and the standards which have been taken from the enemy, as will warrant the public exhibition of the one, and preclude that of the other; these subjects are most intimately connected, and their tendency must be the same. The public exhibition of these trophies is due to the very superior skill and valor which achieved them. The sight of them will bring to recollection
1 The colors of the Bereeau and Insurgente are (1880) in the gunnery-room of the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.334
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
every circumstance of cause and effect. They will constitute valuable records of illustrious portions of our history; they will form a collection of the proudest monuments to commemorate the brilliant deeds of a rising nation.”1
The result of this exhaustive and interesting paper was the enactment of the following law, approved April 18, 1814, a fortnight after the report: —
“ An Act to 'provide for the collection and preservation of such flags, standards,
and colors as shall have been or may hereafter be taken by the land and
naval forces of the United States from their enemies.2
“ Section 1. That the secretaries of the War and Navy Departments be, and they are hereby, directed to cause to be collected and transmitted to them, at the seat of the government of the United States, all such flags, standards, and colors as shall have been or may hereafter be taken by the army and navy of the United States from their enemies.
“ Sect. 2. That all the flags, standards, and colors of the description aforesaid, and such as may be hereafter transmitted to them, be, with all convenient despatch, delivered to the President of the United States, for the purpose of being, under his direction, preserved and displayed in such public place as he shall deem proper.
“ Sect. 3. [$500 appropriated].”
Forty years later, on the 3d of March, 1855, the subject was revived, and one of the provisions of an act making appropriations for the civil and diplomatic expenses of the government directed the Secretary of War "to cause to be constructed in a central position on the public grounds in Washington a suitable building for the care and preservation of the arms, &c., of the militia of the District of Columbia, and for the care and preservation of the military trophies of the Revolutionary and other %vars, and for the deposit of newly invented and model arms,” &c., and thirty thousand dollars was appropriated for carrying the act into effect.
Neither of these laws have been very strictly enforced; for, on inquiry of the War Department, I learn that "no building has been erected as a place of general deposit for flags, and that all the flags captured by the army prior to the War of the Rebellion have been sent to West Point, including one or two British flagsf No printed list of them is in the possession of the War Department.3
1	American State Papers, folio 1832, vol. i. pp. 488-490.
2	Laws of the United States, vol. iii. p. 133.
3	Letter from Secretary of War, Dec. 21, 1871, enclosing memorandum from the Adjutant-General U. S. Army.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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All flags captured by the navy which have been preserved are now deposited in the gunnery-room of the Naval Academy, Annapolis.
Hon. William L. Marcy, afterwards governor of the State of New York and Secretary of State for the United States, but in the war of 1812-14 a young lieutenant in Captain Lewis’s company of militia, on the 14th of October, 1812, captured the first British flag taken in the war, — the flag that waved over a block-house at St. Begis, in Canada. He bore it in triumph to French Mills, and it was presented to the people of the State of New York in the Capitol at Albany.
In June, 1815, a few days before the corner-stone of the Washington monument at Baltimore was laid, Mr. Custis, accompanied by Messrs. Lewis and Grymes, sailed from Alexandria for Pope’s Creek in the Lady of the Lake, a small vessel belonging to Mr. Custis, for the purpose of placing a freestone slab over the birthplace of Washington, with this simple inscription, —
“Here the 11th of February [0. S.] 1732,
George Washington was born.”
“ Desirous of making the ceremonial as imposing as circumstances would permit,” says Mr. Custis, “ we enveloped the stone in the Star Spangled Banner of our country, and it was borne to its resting-place in the arms of the descendants of four revolutionary patriots and soldiers, — Samuel Lewis, a captain in Baylor’s regiment of horse, and a nephew of Washington; William Grymes, the son of a gallant and distinguished officer of the Life Guards; the captain of the vessel, the son of a soldier wounded in the battle of Guilford; and George Washington Park Custis, the son of John Parke Custis, aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief before Cambridge and Yorktown. We gathered the bricks of the ancient chimney which once formed the hearthstone where in infancy Washington had played, and constructed a rude kind of a pedestal, on which we reverently placed the first stone, commending it to the respect and protection of the American people in general, and the citizens of Westmoreland in particular.” 1
1 Lossing’s Field-Book, vol. ii. p. 218, has an engraving of this monumental stone, which still marks Washington’s birthplace (1881). The house was destroyed by fire during the President’s boyhood. Little thought, until recently, has been given to placing a national memorial upon the site. Secretary Evarts took a lively interest in the matter, and Congress appropriated $30,000 for a monument acceptable to the State Department. It is proposed to build over the ruins of the fire-place a house twenty-five feet square and thirty-five feet high. The locality is so lonely, that the architects had to consider the memorial must stand for years without much care, and they select brick and terracotta for the building materials. The roof is to be covered with tiles, and the doors and windows screened by bronze grilles. Over the door will be the inscription: “George Washington. Hie Natus. Ubique Notus,” surmounted by an eagle. On either side of the door will be placed the ancient gravestones now standing on the premises. The building will be plain, the roof timbers showing, the floor is to be laid in mosaic, and it will be in full view of passengers on the Potomac river boats.336
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
Note to page 275. —After the recognition of the stars and stripes in Quiberon Bay, other salutes to them speedily followed. The MS. diary of William Kennison, a lieutenant of marines on board the frigate Boston, Capt. Samuel Tucker, notes the following : —
“May 22, 1778. At 5 a.m. fell down to Larmon. At 4 p.m. came to anchor three miles above Blaye, and discharged thirteen cannon. The fort returned the salute.
“June 20, 1778. Captain Tucker ordered a Continental jack at his main-top-gallant masthead, and fired a gun to windward. This was in answer to a ship showing a white flag at the fore, which fired a gun to leeward, which gun proved her to be (J. P.) Captain Jones.
“August 25, 1778. The French admiral, Count D’Orvilliers, came on board the Providence with his retinue, and on his departure was saluted with the yards manned, huzzas, and thirteen guns.
“ October 16, 1778. Put into Marblehead harbor. In entering the harbor the Providence and Boston saluted the forts with thirteen guns, which was returned.”
Note to pages 280-281.—General Schuyler Hamilton, the pioneer historian of the subject, writing on “ Our National Flag” in the “Magazine of American History” for July, 1877, describes the flag worn by the Serapis and Alliance in the Texel, October, 1779, from the official records of that place, thus, —
*4 Noord Americaansche Vlag, Van d’Serapis en genomme Engels Oor logs Fregatt thaus gecommdeerd door den Noord Americaansche Commandant Paul Jones, sord Texel binnen gekomen den 5th October, 1779.” Blue union, with thirteen stars of eight points each, four stars in the topmost row, five stars in the middle row, and four in the bottom row. The topmost stripe of the field blue, the second red, the third white, the fourth red, the fifth white, the sixth blue, the seventh red, the eighth white, the ninth red, the tenth blue, the eleventh white, the twelfth blue, the thirteenth red.
The “ Noord Americaansche Ylag. Van d’ L’Alliance ge commandeered door Captain Landais in Texel binnen gekomen den 4th October, 1779.” Union blue; thirteen stars of eight points. First row of stars, three stars ; second, two stars ; third, three stars ; fourth, two stars ; fifth, three stars. Field of flag : Topmost row, white ; second, red ; third, white; fourth, red; fifth, white; sixth, red ; seventh, white; eighth, red ; ninth, white ; tenth, red; eleventh, white ; twelfth, red ; thirteenth, white.
The flag of the Alliance is in conformity with the resolution of Congress, June, 1777. Jones’s flag varies from the established flag, and is in accord with the suggestion of Arthur Lee, our commissioner to France, communicated to the President of Congress, Sept. 20, 1778. (See page 273.) Jones not only varied from the established flag, but altered the uniform of his officers and marines to suit his own taste. John Adams, in his Diary, “May 13, 1779,” says: “After dinner walked out with Captains Jones and Landais, to see Jones’s marines dressed in the English uniform, red and white. ... You see the character of the man in his uniform, and that of his officers and marines, variant from the uniform established by Congress, — golden buttons for himself, two epaulets ; marines in red and white, instead of green.”
General Hamilton thinks that Jones adopted his flag of blue, red, and white stripes as an “admiral of the blue,” by virtue of his commission as “Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet,” and that Landais “ modified his flag to be that of an admiral of the white, or else desired to compliment France, the flag of which had a white ground.” As the flag of the Alliance was the established national flag, and Jones, as Commander-in-Chief, would probably claim the highest English rank, viz. that of an admiral of the red, I see no ground for his opinion. The resolution of Congress does not say whether the stars shall be five, six, or eight pointed, nor has any subsequent legislation supplied the omission.
(Drawn from the official description, which, however, does not say on what stripe the lower part of the
union rested.)PART IY.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
a.d. 1818-1861.
THE FLAG OF THIRTEEN STRIPES, AND A STAR FOR EACH
STATE OF THE UNION.
CHRONICLES OF THE FLAG.
1818-1861.THE HERALDRY OF THE AMERICAN FLAG.
By Charles J. Lukens, of Philadelphia.
“ When kingly presumption loosed war’s desolation,
To sweep o’er Columbia and sully her charms,
Our fathers united, to found a new nation,
And symboled it well in our blazon of arms.
Their homes were thirteen, so they followed that number,
Seven red and six white, in a series of bars ;
And — painting love’s vigilance, foreign to slumber —
They chose a blue quarter with thirteen white stars.
<<Thirteen blazed at once in their new constellation,
The Daughters of Freedom, a star for each mate :
A new silver star is the fine augmentation Of honor they granted for every new State.
They named no abatement, in view of secession,
But bound us, their children, to foster the trust.
“ The white of the field proved their hate of oppression,
Their passion for peace and abhorrence of war ;
The red, in excess, warned o’er weening aggression It aye should be met and repulsed from their shore.
Truth shines in the quarter thus tinctured of Heaven ;
Youth and strength light the stars, that have ne’er paled or set:
Year by year they increase —may God grant that their levin,
Extending, shall re-youth the continents yet!
“So fashioned our fathers the Flag of the Union,
Which glads every wave of the world-lashing seas, —
Revered by each man in our patriot communion, —
The handsomest banner that rides on the breeze.
With this sign they conquered. ’Midst cannon and mortar,
Sword, musket, and rifle, still glitters this shield ;
A quarter that stoops to no nation for quarter,
A field present ever where foes are afield.
“As the stars and the stripes are our States interwoven,
Having grown thus iron? weakness to far-spreading might,
Then perish the villain who, wanting them cloven,
Would quench their resplendence in treachery’s night! ”
Newburyport Daily Evening Union, March 11, 1850»PART IY.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
1818-1861.
THE FLAG OF THIRTEEN STRIPES, AND A STAR FOR EACH STATE OF THE UNION.
u Hail to our banner brave,
All o7er the land and wave,
To-day unfurled!
No folds to us so fair,
Thrown on the summer air,
None can with thee compare,
In all the world.77 — W. P. Tilden.
The admission of the States of Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana made some change in the flag desirable. Accordingly, on the admission of Indiana, in 1816, the Hon. Peter Wendover, of New
York, offered a resolution “that a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of altering the flag of the United States.”
Consequently a committee was appointed, and reported a bill on the 2d of January, 1817, which was not acted upon. While this committee had the matter under consideration, Mr. Wendover called upon Captain S. C. Eeid, then in Washington, and famous for his defence of the privateer General Armstrong, in Fayal Eoads, and asked him to make a design for our flag, which would represent the increase of the States, without destroying its distinctive character, the committee being dis-,340
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
posed to increase both stars and stripes to twenty, the whole number of States then existing in the Union.
Captain Reid, thus called upon, recommended reducing the stripes to thirteen, to represent the original States, and the stars to be increased to the number of all the States, formed into one great star, whose brilliancy should represent their union, and thus symbolize in the flag the origin and progress of the country, and its motto, ‘ E Pluribus Unum.’ He also proposed there should be the addition of a star for each new State admitted. The flag thus designed he intended for merchant vessels, and proposed as a distinction that the stars on the ensigns of vessels of war should be placed in parallel lines.
Conformably to Captain Reid's suggestions, the committee reported : —
“ That they have maturely examined the subject submitted to their consideration, and we are well aware that any proposition essentially to alter the flag of the United States, either in the general form or in the distribution of its parts, would be as unacceptable to the legislature and to the people, as it would be uncongenial with the views of the committee.
“ Fully persuaded that the form selected for the American flag was truly emblematical of our origin and existence as an independent nation, and that, as such, it has received the approbation and support of the citizens of the Union, it ought to undergo no change that would decrease its conspicuity or tend to deprive it of its representative character. The committee, however, believe that a change in the number of States in the Union sufficiently indicates the propriety of such a change in the arrangement of the flag as shall best accord wdth the reason that led to its adoption, and sufficiently points to important periods in our history.”
“ The original flag of the United States was composed of thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, and was adopted by a resolution of the Continental Congress on the 14th of June, 1777. On the 13th of January, 1794, after two new States had been admitted into the Union, the national legislature passed an act, that the stripes and stars should, on a day fixed, be increased to fifteen each, to comport with the then independent States. The accession of new States since that alteration, and the certain prospect that at no distant period the number of States will be considerably multiplied, render it, in the opinion of the committee, highly inexpedient to increase the number of stripes, as every flag must, in some measure, be limited in its size, from the cir-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
341
oumstance of convenience to the place on which it is to be displayed, while such an increase would necessarily decrease their magnitude, and render them proportionally less distinct to distant observation. This consideration has induced many to retain only the general form of the flag, while there actually exists a great want of uniformity in its adjustment, particularly when used on small private vessels.
“ The national flag being in general use by vessels of almost 'every description, it appears to the committee of considerable importance to adopt some arrangement calculated to prevent, in future, great or extensive alterations. Under these impressions, they are led to believe no alteration could be made more emblematical of our origin and present existence, as composed of a number of independent and united States, than to reduce the stripes to the original thirteen, representing the number of States then contending for and happily achieving their independence, and to increase the stars to correspond with the number of States now in the Union, and hereafter to add one star to the flag whenever a new State shall be fully admitted.
“ These slight alterations will, in the opinion of the committee, meet the general approbation, as well of those who may have regretted a former departure from the original flag, as of such as are solicitous to see in it a representation of every State in the Union.
“The committee cannot believe that, in retaining only thirteen stripes, it necessarily follows they should be distinctly considered in reference to certain individual States, inasmuch as nearly all the new States were a component part of, and represented in, the original; and inasmuch, also, as the flag is intended to signify numbers, and not local and particular sections of the Union.
“ The committee respectively report a bill accordingly.” 1
The bill, through pressure of other business before Congress, remained unacted upon; but on the reassembling of Congress, on the 16th of December, 1817, Mr. Wendover renewed his resolution, “that a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of altering the flag of the United States, and that they have leave to report, by bill or otherwise.” Mr. Wendover said he would make but few remarks, the subject not being a novel one, a bill relative thereto having been submitted at the last session. Had the flag never undergone alteration, he should not propose to make a further alteration now. Having once been altered, he thought it could be improved. It was his impression, and he thought it was generally believed, that
1 The *British Naval Chronicle’ for 1817 publishes this report in full, and calls it “a curious historical document.”342
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
the flag never would be essentially injured by an alteration on the same principle of increasing both stripes and stars.
Mr. Wendover then stated the incongruity of the flags in general use (except those of the navy) not agreeing with the law, and generally greatly varying from each other. He instanced the flags then flying over the building in which Congress sat, and that at the navy-yard, one of which contained only nine stripes, the other eighteen, and neither conforming to the law.
It was of some importance, he conceived, that the flag of the nation should be designated with precision, and that the practice under the law should be conformed to its requisitions.
On the 6th of January, 1818, the committee of which Mr. Wendover was chairman reported that, having maturely considered the subject referred to them, they have adopted substantially the report of the committee on the same subject at the last session.
The committee are fully persuaded that the form selected for the American flag was truly emblematical of our origin and existence as an independent nation; and that, as such, it having met the approbation and received the support of the citizens of the Union, it ought to undergo no change that would decrease its conspicuity or tend to deprive it of its representative character.
The committee believe, however, that an increase in the number of States in the Union since the flag was altered by law sufficiently indicates the propriety of such a change in the arrangement of the flag as shall best accord with the reasons that led to its original adoption, and sufficiently point to important periods in our history.
The original flag of the United States was composed of thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, and the committee cannot view the proposed inconsiderable addition of a star for each new State, in the light of a departure from the permanency of form which should characterize the flag of the nation.
In connection with this alteration of the flag, Mr. Wendover wrote to Captain Reid : —
“ Washington, Feb. 13, 1817.
“ Dear Sir, —... The flag is yet on the table. I know not when it will get to the anvil. I received the flag from Mr. Jarvis, and would have presented him my thanks for his polite attention to my request, hut I am so oppressed with letter writing that I have no time to take exercise, and but little to sleep. Please present my thanks to Mr. Jarvis for his kindness to me and the standard addressed to you accompanying it.
“ I find the flag proposition is almost universally approved of, hut fear the standard will have to lie over until next session.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
343
His letter refers to a design for a national standard, which, however, was not adopted, composed of the emblematic representations of our
escutcheon quartered upon it: viz., the stars, white on a blue field on the upper left-hand quarter; the Goddess of Liberty on a white field under the stars; the eagle in the upper right-hand quarter or fly of the standard on a white field; and the thirteen alternate stripes of red and white under the eagle.
He proposed this standard should be hoisted over the halls of Congress, at our navy-yards and arsenals, and at other public places visited by the President of the United States, during his presence.
On the 17th of January, 1818, Mr. Wendover wrote Captain Eeid: —
“ As I am not a military man, I leave to others to regulate the cockade. I shall attend to the ‘ star-spangled banner,’ though I wish the other changed from British to American.”
He wrote again, —
“ Washington, March 24, 1818.
. . . “ This day the first call on the docket was the star-spangled banner. I moved to go in committee on the bill. General Smith moved to discharge the committee of the whole, and postpone the bill indefinitely. I appealed to that gentleman and the House, if they were willing thus to neglect the banner of freedom.
“ General Smith’s motion was negatived by almost a unanimous vote, and we hoisted the striped bunting in committee of the whole. After I had made a few observations, and sat down, Mr. Poindexter moved to strike out tiventy stars and insert seven, with a view to have stripes for the old and stars for the new States. Motion rejected nearly unanimously. Mr. Folger then moved to strike out twenty and insert thirteen, to restore the original flag ; his motion was also negatived by a similar vote. Mr. Bobertson then expressed a wish to fix an arbitrary number of stripes, say nine or eleven; but no one seemed to approve of his idea, and the committee rose and reported the bill without amendment, and the House ordered it to be engrossed for a third reading to-morrow by almost a unanimous vote. It was remarked by many that the subject came up in good time, as our flag almost blew away with the severe storm which on Saturday was almost a hurricane. It is now completely ‘ragged hunting,’ and I fear we shall
p
A Design for a National Standard.344
OKIGIN AND PKOGKESS OF THE
*
have to sit a part of the session without the ‘ star-spangled banner9 over our heads.
‘‘ Yours,
“ Pr. H. Wendover.
“P. S. March 25th. Having written the within after the close of the last mail, I kept this open to inform you further as to the ‘ star-spangled banner/ The bill had its third reading this day, a little before twelve o’clock, and passed with perhaps two or three noes; after which Mr. Taylor moved to amend the title of the bill, and instead of alter, it is now * a bill to establish the flag of the United States,’ which goes so much further in approbation of your plan, as the bill is now considered by our House as fixing permanently the flag, except so far as to admit in every new planet that may be seen in our political horizon.
‘‘ I this day had our flag measured up and down the staff. It is fourteen feet and four inches, but it ought to be eighteen feet hoist, and floating in the air in proportion say twenty-seven feet; all this you know better than I do. How, Jack, I ask as a favor that you will be pleased to inform me, as soon as convenient, what a flag of that size will cost in Hew York, made for the purpose, with thirteen stripes, and twenty stars forming one great luminary, as per pasteboard plan you handed me. And if the bill passes the Senate soon, it is probable I shall request the captain of the late General Armstrong to have a flag made for Congress Hall under his direction. Please inquire as to the cost of materials, &c., and write me soon, that Congress, for their firm support of the bill, may, before they adjourn, see the banner raised.”
He wrote again, —
“ Washington, Hall of Representatives, “April 9, 1818, 2 p.m.
. . . “ This morning a message was received from the President that on the 4th inst., among other bills, he approved and signed the ‘ bill to establish the flag of the United States,’ so that, notwithstanding the cant and flings of Coleman, Hanson, &c., in the 1 Evening Post ’ and ‘ Baltimore Telegraph,’ the proposition for the alteration of the flag has met the support of the House of Eepresentatives, and passed as first suggested. In the Senate the bill passed unanimously. . . . On the subject of the standard, and distinctions between public and private vessels, we will have a confabulation when I see you.”
Again he wrote: —
“Washington, April 13, 1818.
“ Dear Sir, — 1 have just time to inform you that the new flag for Congress Hall arrived here per mail this day, and was hoisted to replace the old one at two o’clock, and has given much satisfaction to all who have seen it, as far as I have heard. I am pleased with its form and proportions, and have no doubt it will satisfy the public mind.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
345
“ Mr. Clay (the speaker of the House) says it is wrong that there should he no charge in your bill for making the flag. If pay for that will be aeceptar ble, on being informed I will procure it. Do not understand me as intending to wound the feelings of Mrs. Eeid, nor others who may have given aid in the business, and please present my thanks to her and them, and accept the same for yourself.
“ In haste, yours with esteem,
“Pr. H. Wendover.”
The law which, agreeably to Captain Reid’s suggestion and the reports of the committees, was by Mr. Wendover’s exertions enacted, reads as follows : —
“An Act to establish the Flag of the United States.
“ Sect. 1. Be it enacted, Sc., That from and after the fourth day of July next, the flag of the United States be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; that the union have twenty stars, white in a blue field.
“ Sect. 2. And be it further enacted, That on the admission of every new State into the Union, one star be added to the union of the flag; and that such addition shall take effect on the fourth of July next succeeding such admission.”
Approved April 4, 1818.
A newspaper of the time1 says: “ By this regulation the thirteen stripes will represent the number of States whose valor and resources originally effected American independence; and the additional stars —- the idea of which has been borrowed from the science of astronomy — will mark the increase of the States since the adoption of the present constitution.
“ This is the second alteration which has taken place in the flag of the United States, and we trust it will be the last. There is a manifest inconvenience in altering a national flag; and in the present instance it may, in some degree, prove injurious to our navigation, considering the number of licentious privateers that are abroad. Our merchants and navigators would do well to attend to the alteration in time.
“ The time allowed for the alteration contemplated by the act of the 4th inst. is, we fear, too short. It does not allow three months to persons interested to prepare themselves for the change; and it will take one month at least before the provisions of the act will be known at New Orleans.2
1	Washington Gazette, also the American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, April 10,, 1818.
2	One month, sixty years ago, was required to convey news to New Orleans that is: now flashed over the wires in one second.346
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ In the case of the first alteration, nearly sixteen months were allowed, so that American vessels employed in distant parts of the world had an opportunity of providing themselves with a proper flag.”
Under this law, rather more than half a century ago, our present flag was established, during which cycle its constellation of twenty has increased to a glorious galaxy of thirty-eight stars, and the borders of its dominion have been extended across the continent.
It was certainly an omission that the law did not designate the manner of placing the stars in the union, as, in consequence, its simplicity and uniformity have been frequently destroyed by the conceits of shipowners and others. Captain Eeid suggested that for the halls of Congress and for public buildings and on land the stars should be arranged to form one large star; and on the flag made by Mrs. Reid the stars were so placed, while for the flags of our ships of war he proposed they should be set in parallel lines.
For the sake of uniformity, it will not be disputed the law of 1818 should in this respect be amended. Yet when, in 1859, Congress voted its thanks to Captain Reid, the designer of the flag, although
a friend of his wrote to a prominent member from New York, request-
of
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arranging the stars in their blue firmament, the resolutions were passed without the desired addition. The early custom, as shown by numerous engravings, undoubtedly was to insert the stars in parallel
rows.
In the illustration, — the fac-simile of a copper-plate published inFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
347
1785, — the stars, thirteen in number, are arranged in the ensigns of the ships in parallel lines.
An engraving of New York in the "British Naval Chronicle,’ 1805, has in the foreground a pilot-boat carrying at her main a union jack studded with thirteen stars, arranged in three parallel lines.
I have also seen a water-color painting of the frigate United States, when commanded by Commodore John Barry, which represents the ship dressed in the flags of all nations, duly numbered and indexed in ovals and diamonds on the surrounding border. Many of these flags are obsolete. The ship carries an American ensign of fifteen stars and fifteen stripes on a staff at the stern, and has a blue jack with fifteen
white stars at the bowsprit. A white jack with fifteen red stars at the fore, and a red jack with fifteen blue stars at the mizzen masthead. At the mainmast, under the coach-whip pennant, is displayed a white flag bearing the United States arms,—evidently designed to represent the standard of the United States. The stars in the ensign and jacks are arranged as in the diagram.1
On the 4th of July, 1857, a gentleman2 amused himself by noting the various designs displayed on vessels, hotels, and public buildings in New York. The majority of the ships had the stars arranged in five horizontal rows of six stars each, making thirty stars in all, — thirty-one being the proper number at that date. Most of the foreign vessels, including the Cunard steamers, had them arranged, as herald-ists would say, semee, that is, strewn over the union. Some had one large star formed of thirty-one small stars, and this style prevailed at places of public amusement and over the hotels of New York and Jersey City. Other vessels had them in a lozenge, a diamond, or a circle. One vessel had one large star composed of smaller ones, within a border of the latter; another carried the thirty-one stars in the form of an anchor; and yet another had this anchor embellished with a circle of small stars.
Here were nine specimens of the flag alike in the thirteen stripes, but varying in the design of the union. In addition to these forms, I have seen the stars arranged in the letters " U. S.,’ and in the initials of the owner or company to which the vessel belonged.
1	This interesting drawing was painted by Midshipman Thomas Hayes, a son of Captain Patrick Hayes, who presented it to Commodore George C. Kead, Jnly 4,1852, and in 1876 it was in the possession of William C. Parsons, mail-messenger at the League Island Navy Yard. On the hack is written, in the handwriting of Captain Hayes, “ Six copies for Captain Patrick Hayes.”
2	Mr. S. Alofsen,
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*	*	*	*348
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
It was such a dissimilarity that led the Dutch government, twenty years earlier, to inquire, “ What is the American flag ? ”
The act of 1818 was approved of by the President on the 4th of April, and the new flag hoisted over the House of Representatives on the 13th of the same month, though the law provided the act was not to take effect until the 4th of July.
Yesterday, says the ‘National Intelligencer’ of April 14th, about two o’clock, the new flag of the United States was hoisted on the flagstaff of the House of Representatives. This is the first flag that has been made since the passage of the act for altering the banner of the nation. It was made in Hew York, under the direction of the gallant Captain Reid, late commander of the privateer General Armstrong. The stars are twenty in number, and so disposed as to form one great star in the centre of a blue field. The stripes are thirteen. The law on this subject goes into operation the 4th of July next.1
This, the first flag of the kind put together or hoisted, was made at Hew York by Mrs. S. C. Reid, under the direction of her gallant husband, and the twenty stars in its union, representing as many States (Mississippi having been admitted Dec. 16, 1817), were arranged to form one great star.
The unions of the flags which wave over our fortresses, and in use by the Military Department of the government, are generally, if not always, so arranged. In the navy flags, the stars have always been set in parallel lines.
This had been the custom long before the flag of 1818 was adopted, as has been shown; but after that law they were officially directed to
1 “ On the 21st of February, 1866, the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, introduced to the officers of the Senate Mr. D. W. C. Farrington, agent of the United States Bunting Company at Lowell, Mass., who presented to them, for the use of the Senate, a flag manufactured by that company, twenty-one feet fly by twelve feet hoist. It is believed to be the first real American flag ever raised over the Capitol of the United States. Heretofore all our flags have been manufactured from English bunting, and every effort made to substitute a domestic texture capable of resisting the wind and the air has signally failed. General Butler having ascertained this fact at the Navy Department, and having an interest in the United States Bunting Company in his own town, informed Captain Fox that he believed that company had produced a fabric that would be superior to the foreign article. A test was accordingly ordered by the Navy Department, fully realizing the confident anticipations of General Butler, and proving the American Bunting to be better in color and in quality than the English product. The General wrote to the secretary of the Senate for authority to make a present of one of these flags, to be raised over that body. That officer having consulted Mr. Forster, president pro tempore, the General’s proposition was accepted, and to-day the flag was placed in the hands of the sergeant-at-arms. To-morrow morning it will be hoisted to the senatorial flag-staff, and unfurled to the breeze.” — Philadelphia Press, Feb. 23, 1866.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
349
be so placed by the following order, issued by direction of the President of the United States: —
[Circular.
“Navy Commissioners’ Office, May 18, 1818.
“ Sir, — The Navy Commissioners have to inform you that agreeably to the act of Congress of the 4th of April, 1818, entitled, ‘An Act to establish the Flag of the United States,’ our national flag is, from and after the 4th day of July next, to he : Thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white. The union to be twenty stars, white in a blue field, one star to be added on the
admission into the Union of every new State; such addition to be made from and after the 4th of July next succeeding the date of such admission.
“ The size of the flag must he in the proportion of fourteen feet in width and twenty-four feet in length, the field of the union must be one-third of the length of the flag, and seven-thirteenths of its depth, so that from the top to the bottom of the union there will he seven stripes, and six stripes from the bottom of the union to the bottom of the flag. The manner of arranging the stars you will perceive by the subjoined sketch.
“ The upper and the lower stripes to be red.
“ Bespectfully,
*		*		*		*		*	
	*		*		*		*		*
*		*		*		*		*	
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“ To the officer commanding,
“Navy Yard, Portsmouth, N. H.”
“ Jno. Rodgers, President.
This was amended by the following circular : —
[Circular
“Navy Commissioners’ Office, Sept. 18, 1818.
“ Sir, — Since our circular of the 18th of May last, relatively to the flag to he worn by the vessels of the United States and at our naval stations, it has been determined by the President of the United States that the arrangement of the stars shall correspond with the pattern stated below, and
the relative proportions of the flag to continue as stated in our circular. You will govern yourself accordingly.
“ On the first hoisting the flag, you are to fire a salute of twenty guns.
“ I am, respectfully,
“Your obedient servant,
“Jno. Rodgers, President of the Navy Board.
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“Captain Morris, Portsmouth.”350
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
It will be noticed that although the new flag had a legal existence on the 4th of July preceding, yet up to the date of this circular, Sept. 18, it had not been hoisted at our naval stations, the circular directing “ it shall be saluted when first hoisted.”
-Captain S. C. Reid, who designed “ Our Flag,” was the commander of the privateer General Armstrong, and his gallant defence of her in Fayal Roads, against the attack of a British squadron of boats, in breach of the neutrality of that port, is a matter of history. He died in 1861, a master in the United States navy, aged seventy-seven. In the Rebellion, his son proved recreant to the flag which his father had so gallantly served and defended, and was so successful to establish in a permanent form.
The first State to add a star to the constellation of the new flag was Illinois, admitted Dec. 3, 1818 ; then followed Alabama, admitted Dec. 14, 1819; Maine, March 15, 1820; Missouri, Aug. 10, 1821; Arkansas, June 15, 1836 ; Michigan, Jan. 26,1837; Florida, March 3,1845 ; Texas, Dec. 29, 1845; Iowa, Dec. 28, 1846; Wisconsin, May 29, 1848; California, Sept. 9, 1850; Minnesota, Feb. 12, 1858; Oregon, April, 1859; Kansas, March, 1861; West Virginia, February, 1863; Nevada, Oct. 31, 1864; Nebraska, March 1, 1867; Colorado, July, 1876.1 The last increasing the brilliancy of the original constellation to thirty-eight stars, its present number; and there are ten Territories waiting admission, viz. New Mexico, Washington, Utah, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Indian Territory, Wyoming, and Alaska. When all these and others yet to come are admitted, it will render some change in the union, or disposition of its constellation, necessary, as even now the stars, from their number, are indistinct and confusing. It has been proposed to enlarge the union by extending it to the bottom of the flag; but that would be objectionable, since the flag could not be reversed as a signal of distress.
1 The 4 Colorado Miner,’ of Aug. 21, 1876, with big head letters, “Colorado in the Union,” surmounted by a rooster, thus exulted in doggerel: —
“Colorado, youngest, fairest State In the union cluster, Number 38 !
Step to the front, assume your station,
Equal to that of any in the nation !
Robed in golden vesture grand As any sister in the land ;
Silver chaplets crown her head,
As she walks with stately tread To assume her proper place, —
Peer of any in the race ! ”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
351
CHRONICLES OF THE FLAG.
1818-1861.
“Ne’er waved beneath, the golden sun A lovelier banner for the brave Than that our bleeding fathers won,
And proudly to their children gave.
“Its glorious stars in azure shine,
The radiant heraldry of heaven;
Its stripes in beauteous order twine,
The emblems of our Union given.
“ Around the globe, through every clime
Where commerce wafts or man hath trod,
It floats aloft, unstained with crime,
But hallowed by heroic blood.” — Anonymous.
When the Hon. Joel R. Poinsett, of South Carolina, was the United States Minister to Mexico, 1825-29, the power of our flag to protect its citizens abroad was strikingly illustrated, as related by Mr. Poinsett himself.1
The election of Gomez Pedraza to the presidentship of Mexico was not acquiesced in by the people, and from discontent and murmurs they proceeded to open revolt. At night they took possession of the Artillery Barracks, and established batteries along the streets. One of these was situated about three hundred yards from Mr. Poinsett’s house. After several ineffectual attempts to carry this work by infantry in front, a squadron of cavalry succeeded in turning the flank of the battery, and sabred the men at their guns. The convent of St. Augustine, situated in the rear of Mr. Poinsett’s house, was the last to yield to the besiegers. While the firing was going on at St. Augustine, Madame Yturrigaray, widow of a viceroy of Mexico, who lived in the adjoining house, rushed in frantic with fear, and implored Mr. Poinsett to protect her house. While giving her assurances of protection, a shot was fired at him which passed through his cloak and buried itself in the shutter of the balcony window. He retired into the house, and soon the besiegers were heard approaching. When they reached the house, one wild shout arose, and desperate efforts were made to burst open the door.
1 Mr. Poinsett’s speech at Charleston. The illustration on the next page is a facsimile of one in an old magazine. A fine painting of the scene, by White, was made for the State of South Carolina, it is believed.352
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
The massive gates resisted; a cry arose to fire in the window; to bring cannon; to burst open the gates; and imprecations were uttered against the owner of the house for sheltering their enemies, the European Spaniards, many of whom had sought refuge under Mr. Poinsett’s roof. At this moment Mr. Poinsett directed Mr. Mason, the secretary of the legation, to throw out the flag of the United States and they both stood on the balcony beneath its waving folds. The shouts were hushed, and the soldiers slowly dropped the muzzles of their guns, which were levelled at the balcony and windows. Mr. Poinsett seized this opportunity to tell them who he was, and what flag waved over him,'and to claim protection for those who had sought security under it. Perceiving the crowd was awed and began to consult together, he retired to write and despatch a note to the commander of the besieging force. The servant intrusted with the note returned and reported the crowd was so great that the porter was afraid to open the gate for fear the mob of insurgents would rush in. Mr. Poinsett then resolved to go himself, and was joined by Mr. Mason. They proceeded to the door, which the porter was ordered to open, and as they stepped over the threshold the crowd rolled back like a wave on the ocean. They were accompanied by a native servant, who mingled with the mob, and before it had recovered from its astonishment the two gentlemen had returned to the court-yard, and the door was closed by the porter. Before they reached the front of the house they heard the advance of the cavalry, commanded by a friend of the legation. The gates were thrown open, and the horsemen rode into the court-yard. Their commander stationed sentinels before the door, and Mr. Poinsett had the satisfaction to redeem his promise of protection to Madame Yturrigaray. His house was respected amidst the wildest disorder, and those who
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
353
sought an asylum under the flag of the United States remained in safety until tranquillity was restored.1
In 1820, N. B. Palmer, in a little sloop of forty tons, called the Hero, of Stonington, Conn., discovered the island south of Cape Horn, known as Palmer’s Land. While coasting along its shore in a dense fog, he fell in with a Russian squadron under Admiral Krusenstern, who was felicitating himself on his discovery of the same land. Palmer hailed and told him if he pursued the course he was steering he would be on shore in less than an hour. He was asked who he was. I am the sloop Hero, from the United States of America, was his reply. The admiral at first doubted, but, convinced by Palmer’s papers that he had before him a real live Yankee, suffered himself to be piloted by him into an anchorage in this island which he had discovered. Captain Palmer was then twenty-one years of age. He died a few years since in California.
Aug. 24, 1824, the stars and stripes were raised for the first time over the cupola of the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill, on the occasion of the visit of Lafayette to Boston, and under them he received the citizens, who thronged to do him homage, in the lower hall.2
In 1826, Captain Tyler Parsons arrived at Quebec from Hew York in the auspiciously named ship Washington, and was the first to display our flag in that harbor.
In 1836, previous to what is known as “ the Aroostook War,” a Mr. Baker, who lived on the disputed territory, hoisted the stars and stripes over his house on the 4th of July. The flag was made by his wife. Mr. Baker was indicted for high treason, carried to Fredericton, and tried; after being imprisoned ten months, he was fined two hundred dollars, and allowed to go free on payment of the fine.
Mr. Baker’s neighbors, when ‘he was in prison, concluding his property would be confiscated, put themselves in possession; but Mrs. Baker, with a broomstick, drove them from the premises.
During the Nullification excitement of 1832-33, in South Carolina,
1	A similar incident occurred a few years later in Portugal. Upon the capture of Lisbon by Dom Pedro, his brother, Dom Miguel, encamped with his army before the capital. The residence of Mr. Brent, the American Charge d’Affaires, was situated upon the banks of the river Tagus. During the absence of Mr. Brent, a company of the troops of Dom Miguel having appeared on a height near "by, a battle ensued with some armed boats of Dom Pedro’s, and the shot endangered the safety of the family ; whereupon Mrs. Brent rushed forward, and with her own hands unfurled “ the star-spangled banner,” and waved it from the window. The firing on "both sides instantaneously ceased, and Mrs. Brent retired from the window, satisfied of lijjp security while under the protection of the American flag. — American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, Jan. 12, 1836.
2	Drake’s Landmarks of Boston.
23354
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
happily repressed by the firmness of the President, Andrew Jackson, in January, 1833, the ensign of the steamer William Seabrook, with Governor Hamilton on board, was accidentally hoisted union down on her leaving Augusta for Charleston, S. C. It was seen from shore, and great was the indignation of the people, until her commander, Captain Dubois, explained that “the blunder was committed by one of the men in hoisting the flag, and was immediately corrected on discovery, before the boat was out of sight of the city. Neither myself nor any one connected with that boat are capable of offering an indignity to the American flag.” The ‘ Augusta (Ga.) Courier/ in speaking of the event previous to the captain’s explanation, said: “ The indignation we feel in common with an insulted community does not allow us to speak another word concerning such an outrage.”
Jackson’s opinion of nullification is best shown in the following memorandum furnished Amos Kendall, in his own handwriting: —
_____________ _
-tc. »
1 The autography is one-half the size of the original, the possession of the Ohio Historical Society. It reads :
The original manuscript is in “ Nullification is revolution —FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
355
The following extract from a letter dated Kichmond, Va., Feb. 23, 1833, shows something of the spirit of the time: “ The Governor of Virginia had, at some trouble and expense, caused a superb State flag to be prepared and painted, with the intention of having it hoisted at the quarters of the State Guard on the 22d. Knowledge of its existence and of his intention was obtained on Thursday, the 21st, and a good deal of excitement manifested itself among the representatives and the people. Either dissuaded by his party friends, or prompted by his own fears of the consequences that would issue from displaying the flag, his Excellency determined to let it remain in the painter’s shop; and fortunate it was that he did so, for, had the banner been exposed to public gaze, it would have been torn down and prostrated by the people, and in all probability with some bloodshed. Scarce a voice was heard in favor of raising it; and numbers were heard to express their determination to rally under the star-spangled banner of the Union. It was supposed by some that, had the State flag been hoisted on the day, the flag of the Union would not have been, at least by order of the commanding chief. As it was, the union flag, fixed on a pole, was poked out of a hole in the southern end of the Capitol loft, and in this half-erect and awkward situation, flapping on the end of the ridge of the building, and repeatedly hooked on the point of one of the lightning-rods, it was torn in many places, and pieces were flying in every direction over the heads of the military and citizens assembled on the public square.”1
“ The citizens of Savannah celebrated the inauguration of General Jackson on the 4th of January, 1833, in the most patriotic style. The citizens formed a procession, the military paraded, Judge Charlton delivered an appropriate oration, the flag we all delight to honor streamed from every masthead, and the evening was closed by a splendid ball. The ball-room was tastefully ornamented, and over each window was a silver star, with the name of one of the States in gold letters on a
and if a State attempts to nullify the laws of the United States by force, it is rebellion, and if she possesses the physical power to resist successfully, then she has the right to establish her own government, and if the balance of the States have the physical power, they have a perfect right under this confederation of perpetual & perfect Union, to coerce her to obedience. For a State to go out of the Union peaceably she must obtain the consent of that number of the States which the Constitution gives the power to alter & amend it. The people being the fountain of all sovereign power have a right to alter & change their government; and the confederated and perpetual union formed by themselves, upon which the more perfect union, the Constitution of the United States, is based, provides how it can be altered or desolved — any other mode to alter it, is, revolution & war.”
1 Philadelphia Newspaper.356
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
handsome scroll, and the curtain was the flag of the Union. We counted them, — all the States were there.” 1
On the suppression of the Nullification heresy, and the restoration of the star-spangled banner to its honors in Charleston, S. C., June 28, 1833, a correspondent of the 'Boston Centinel’ (J. E. D.) wrote: —
1L Hail, banner of glory! Hail, banner of light!
Whose fame lives in story, whose folds cheer my sight;
Not a star is supprest, not a stripe has been torn From the flag of the West, which our fathers have borne.
Our Union is fast, and our homes ever sure,
Our freedom shall last while the world shall endure.
Then hail to the banner whose folds wave in glory,
Let the free breezes fan her, and whisper her story.
The tumult has ended, the storm 7s died away,
The fiend has descended that led us astray,
The sons of the West are our brothers again,
And the flag of the blest floats from Texas to Maine.”
In 1839, the pilot-boat Elying Fish, of ninety tons, Lieutenant W. M. Walker, attached to the Wilkes United States Exploring Expedition, carried our flag farther south than any other vessel of the expedition, and penetrated the Antarctic Circle farther than the keel of any other nation had furrowed it, excepting that of Captain Weddell’s vessel, in 1823, which attained the latitude of 73° S.
This little vessel had been a New York pilot-boat, and was sent on the expedition without any addition to the strength of her frame ; so that her security among the ice was dependent on her good qualities as a sea boat. After some necessary repairs at Orange Harbor, Cape Horn, she put to sea, with a complement of thirteen souls, under command of Lieutenant William M. Walker, U. S. N.,2 whose friends took leave of him, with the ominous congratulation that "she would at least make him an honorable coffin.” 3
Encountering a variety of stormy and tempestuous weather, during which “ the very creatures of the brine seemed to know the vessel’s helpless plight; for a large whale came up from the deep and rubbed his vast sides against her, while the albatross flapped his wings in their faces and mocked them with his bright black eyes.” On the 10th of March, which was spent at the pumps, the sea toppled over
1	Georgia Courier.
2	"William M. Walker died at New York, Nov. 19, 1866, a captain in the United States navy. A sister pilot-boat, the Sea Gull, put to sea from Orange Harbor, and was never heard from.
3	I am indebted to a diary appended to ‘ Thulia, a Tale of the Antarctic,’ by J. C. Palmer, Surgeon U. S. N., for the graphic description which follows.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
357
the schooner and threatened to engulf her. Every seam leaked, every stitch of clothes was wet, and every bed inundated. The men had to swathe their feet in blankets lest they should freeze; and as the driving sleet fell on their garments, it congealed there, and incased them in ice. When the gale abated, after a dark and dismal night, they found the foresail split, and the jib wTashed from its gaskets, hanging to the stay by a single hank. They had now made the second rendezvous, in lat. 64° S., Ion. 90° W.; but as there was no sign of the Peacock, advantage was taken of the fair wind to proceed on their course. The condition of the men forbade all delays. Five out of a crew of ten were almost disabled by ulcerated hands and swollen limbs, while the rest suffered cruelly from rheumatics and catarrh.
On the 13th, a mild and sunny day,— the second in that bright succession, — the theatre of their ambition opened to their view. Two icebergs stood like warders at the gate of the Antarctic; and the little
vessel passed between these huge columnar masses, white as the raiment that no fuller bleached, and which shone like palaces,
u With opal towers and battlements adorned. Of living sapphire.77
Soon, however, as if The Warders of the Antarctic	Nature, incensed to be
tracked by man to her last inclement solitude, had let loose all her furies, the tempest drew a veil of snow over the frozen city, and the vessel became the centre of a little area, walled by the piling seas. It is impossible for any one to fancy the awful interest of such a scene, without the pent-up feelings of the spectators, standing where human foot never before intruded, an unwelcome guest in the very den of storms.
They waited some time at the next rendezvous, in hopes of obtaining surgical aid from the Peacock for three men who were quite disabled. This delay lost them a fair wind, but the time was well employed in repairing their boats; after which, though they despaired of rejoining their consort, Mr. Walker proceeded to the fourth and last place assigned in his orders, which were thus fulfilled to the letter. They had attained the longitude of 105° W. Ice *or discovery was358
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
to prescribe the bounds of their latitude; and with feelings in whose enthusiasm past sufferings were forgotten they turned their faces to the south. Icebergs soon accumulated fast, and the sea was studded with fragments detached from the large island. The water was much discolored during the day, and very luminous at night. Penguins, appeared in prodigious numbers, and the air swarmed with birds. Whales were numerous beyond the experience of the oldest sailor on board, lashing the sea into foam with their gigantic flukes, and often in mad career passing so close to the schooner as to excite serious apprehensions for safety. A fin-back once kept them company for several hours, and a monstrous right whale, of greater size than the vessel herself, lay so obstinately in her track that the men stood by with boathooks to bear him off.
Every hour now increased the interest of their situation. A trackless waste lay between them and all human sympathies, and each step removed them further from society. On the 19th of March they passed between two icebergs eight hundred and thirty feet high, and hove to near one of them to fill their water-casks. Encompassed by these icy walls, the schooner looked like a mere skiff in the moat of a giant's castle; and the visions of old romance were recalled by the gorgeous blue and purple lights that streamed through the pearly fabrics. The very grandeur of the scene, however, made it joyless. The voice had no resonance; words fell from the lip, and seemed to freeze before they reached the ear; and as the waves surged with a lazy undulation, the caverns sent back a fitful roar-like moan from some deep dungeon. The atmosphere was always hazy, and the alternation of mist and snow gave the sky a leaden complexion. When the sun appeared at all, it was near his meridian height, and they called it “ pleasant weather5' if the stars peeped out but for a moment. Except when it blew with great violence, the ice broke off the sea; but their nights were so pitchy dark, that the officer of the deck kept his watch in the forecastle, and depended upon his ear to warn him of danger.
On the 20th of March, in lat. 69° 5' 43" S., and Ion. 96° 21/ 30" W., many appearances indicated the vicinity of land. The ice became dense and black, and much of it streaked with dirt; the water, too, was very turbid, and colder than usual, though they got no bottom at a hundred fathoms line. When the mist cleared, they found themselves near a long wall of ice. On the afternoon of the 21st, the sea was clear as far as the eye could reach, and their hopes began to brighten at the thought that they had passed the French and RussianFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
359
limits, and were on the heels of Cook.1 As long as a glimpse of day remained, they pressed toward the goal under every rag of sail. Night set in with mist and rain, and by nine p.m. it grew so pitchy dark that they were obliged to heave to with a fair wind from the north. At midnight it blew a gale. The vessel was beset with ice, and morning found them in an amphitheatre of sublime architecture. As the icebergs changed their places like a shifting scene, the prospect beyond them seemed to reach the pole. Day came upon this boundless plain. The eye ached for some limit to a space which the mind could hardly grasp. Mountain against mountain blended with a sky whose very whiteness was horrible. The vessel looked like a mere snowbank, every rope a long icicle; the masts hung down like stalactites from á dome of mist, and the sail flapped as white a wing as the spotless pigeon above them. The stillness was oppressive; but when they spoke, their voices had a hollow sound, more painful even than silence. The schooner had become thus involved by drifting at an imperceptible rate within the
waves began to be stilled by the large snow-flakes that fell unmelted on their surface, and as the breeze died away into a murmur, a low crepitation, like the clicking of a death-watch, announced that the sea was freezing. Never did fond ear strain for the sigh of love more anxiously than those devoted men listened to each gasp of wind, whose breath was now their life. The looks of the crew reproached their commander with having doomed them to a lingering death, and many an eye wandered over the helpless vessel to estimate how long she might last for fuel. Preparations were hastily made to sheathe the bow with planks torn up from cabin berths, but the congelation was too rapid ’to permit the sacrifice of time to this precaution. All sail
barrier, while the passage behind her was gradually closed by ice returning from the north. There was no alternative but to buffet her through, or be carried to the south; and by nine a.m. (March 22d) they reached a place of comparative safety, in lat. 70° S., Ion. 100° W.
The Flying Fish beset.
On the 24th of March, the schooner was obliged to force a passage out of the ice under circumstances truly appalling. The
1 Captain Weddell, in 1823, attained the latitude of 73° S,360
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
was accordingly crowded on the vessel, and after a hard struggle of four hours’ duration they had occasion to thank Heaven for another signal deliverance.
“With straining oars and bending spars They dash their icy chains asunder;
Force frozen doors, hurst crystal bars,
And drive the sparkling fragments under ! v
They had now attained the latitude of 70° 14' S., and established the impossibility of penetrating further between 90° and 105° W. The season was exhausted; the sun already declined towards the north; day dwindled to a few hours; and nothing was to be expected from moon or stars. Under these circumstances, Mr. Walker, after thanking his crew for their zealous co-operation, announced his resolution to return without delay. On the next afternoon (March 25) they descried and exchanged cheers with the United States ship Peacock. Both vessels stood northward for several days, when the Flying Fish was ordered to return to Orange Harbor, where, on the 11th of April, Lieutenant Walker gave up his command.
The vessels of Wilkes’s expedition consisted of the sloops-of-war Vincennes and Peacock, brig Porpoise, pilot-boat tenders Sea Gull and Flying Fish, and store-ship Relief. On the 26th of December, 1839, the Vincennes, Peacock, Porpoise, and Flying Fish turned toward the extreme south, which forbids man’s approach by the savage frown of nature and the gloomy reign of death, while enticing him by the chances of discovery and renown amid her unknown wonders. Commodore Wilkes directed each vessel to act independently of her consort when arrived in the region of the designed explorations. The Flying Fish consequently parted company on the 2d, and the Peacock on the 3d of January, 1840. The Vincennes and Porpoise remained in company until the 12th. The day previous they came in sight of the solid barrier of ice in lat. 64° IF S., Ion. 164° 13' E. The Peacock came up with the ice on the 15th, and the Flying Fish on the 21st, both mQre to the westward of the former vessels.
No doubt now remains of the existence of land within the Antarctic Circle. The testimony of both French and English exploring expeditions confirms the fact which it is claimed the American expedition first established as a part of geographical knowledge. This fact is determined by repeated and continuous observations made separately on board the Vincennes, Peacock, and Porpoise, and the discovery was made some days before the French expedition claim to haveFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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made the same. The American vessels coasted some sixty-five degrees of longitude along the impenetrable barrier of ice, observing throughout most of this distance highlands evidently reaching thousands of feet in altitude, and covered with perpetual snow. They met, also, other decisive signs of contiguous land. All the evidence sustains the claim that these elevated points of land are not portions of mere detached islands enclosed within a frozen sea, but are the visible parts of a vast Antarctic continent, the main extent undistinguishable from the resplendent snow fringe skirting its ocean boundary. No human beings inhabit these regions, and the representatives of any animal tribes are very few.
On the 30th of January, 1840, the Porpoise discovered two vessels, which proved to be the French discovery ships under Captain D’Urville, and closed with them, passing within a short musket shot, when, says Lieutenant-Commanding Eingold, “ I saw, with surprise, sail made on board the flag-ship, and, without a moment’s delay, I hauled down my colors and bore up on my course.”1
On the morning of the 11th of January, 1841, says Captain Eoss, “when in lat. 70° 41' S., and Ion. 172° 36', land was discovered at the distance, as it was afterwards proved, of nearly a hundred miles, directly in the course we were steering, and therefore directly between us and the pole.” “ This restored to England the honor of the discovery of the southernmost known land, which had been nobly won, and for more than twenty years possessed by Eussia. Continuing our course towards this land, for many hours we seemed scarcely to approach it: it rose in lofty, mountainous peaks, of from nine thousand to twelve thousand feet in height, perpetually covered with eternal snow. The glaciers that descended from the mountain summit projected many miles into the ocean, and presented a perpendicular face of lofty cliffs. . . . Steering towards a promising-looking point to the south, we observed several islands, and on the morning of the 12th, accompanied by Commander Crozier and a number of the officers of each ship, I landed and took possession of the country in the name of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria. The island on which we landed is comprised wholly of igneous rocks, numerous specimens of which, with other embedded minerals, were procured. It is in lat. 71° 56' S., and Ion. 171° T E. Following a course along this magnificent land to the sea, on the 23d of January, 1841, we reached 74° 14' S., the highest southern latitude that had ever been attained by any preceding navigator, and on the 27th again landed on an
1 Cooper’s Naval History, ed. 1856, vol. iii. pp. 48, 44..362
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
island, in lat. 76° 8' S., Ion. 168° 12' E.; and still steering to the southward, early the next morning a mountain of twelve thousand four hundred feet above the level of the sea was seen emitting flame and smoke in splendid confusion. This magnificent volcano received the name of " Mount Erebus/ It is in lat. 77° 33' S., and Ion. 167 ° E. An extinct crater to the eastward of Mount Erebus, of somewhat less elevation, was called ‘ Mount Terror/ Finally, on the 2d of February, the two vessels reached the latitude of 78° 4' S., and on the 9th had traced the continuity of the land to Ion. 191° 23' E., in lat. 78°. This great southern land which Captain Ross traced from 70° S. to 79° S., and between the longitudes of 167° and 179° E., he named "Victoria Land/”1
As it has been sneeringly said that Ross sailed over the continent discovered by Wilkes, it will be observed that Wilkes skirted along the land between the longitudes of 100° and 165° E., on a nearly east and west course, and in about the latitude of 66°, a distance of three thousand eight hundred miles of that latitude; in other words, he discovered the northern coast of the Antarctic continent, while Ross appears to have turned its eastern cape, in 172°, three hundred miles to the eastward, and run down along its eastern coast. It is strange that, while so many Arctic expeditions have been undertaken, no subsequent attempt has been made -to verify or extend these discoveries. England’s flag is still in advance of all others towards both poles.
The little Flying Fish was sold in China, and became an opium trader and smuggler on that coast. She established the impossibility of penetrating farther south than lat. 70° between the Ion. of 90° and 105° E.
The first merchant vessel to carry the stars and stripes through the Straits of Magellan was the Endeavor, of Salem, Captain David Elwell, in 1824. He was living in Salem in 1868, being then eighty years old.
The first vessel of war to carry our flag from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan, though many little sealing schooners under our flag had preceded her, was the United States schooner Shark, Lieutenant-Commanding A. Bigelow. She passed Cape Virgin Nov. 28, 1839, and took her departure from Cape Pillar, on the west coast, Dec. 31, 1839, commencing the new year in the Pacific, having been in the Straits thirty-three days and a half, of which two hundred and forty-eight hours were passed under way, and five hundred and twenty-five at anchor.
1 Extract from a letter from Captain Ross, dated H. M. S. Erebus, Hobart Town, Yan Diemen’s Land, 7tli April, 1841.Reduced from Map in Wilkes’s United States Exploring Expedition
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.	363364
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Beduced from the Map of Wilkes’s Exploring Expedition.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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An account of her passage, officially communicated by Captain Bigelow to the Secretary of the Navy,1 says: “ I have been thus minute in describing the passage of the Shark through the Straits of Magellan, I believe the first public vessel of the United States which has passed through them, thinking that you, Sir, in common with the officers of the navy, might feel some interest in the narration. It has long been a disputed question whether it be advisable for small vessels to pass through the Straits from east to west, in preference to doubling the Cape. My experience would tend to discourage a stranger to the route from attempting it, in the month of December at least, though it is quite probable that the winds may have been as adverse to the southward of the Cape as in the Strait, and that we were peculiarly unfortunate in our weather. Steam has now made the passage through the Straits, either way, easy and common. My conclusion, from the experience of a single passage only, is that, for small vessels, the passage from west to east is preferable to going round, as wood and water can be obtained, and the distance shortened. At any time while we were in the Straits a passage to the eastward could easily have been made in four days, and sooner, were the navigator acquainted with the channel, so as not to fear being under way in the night. No vessel would be likely, however, to pass, without touching to wood and water; and a week might be profitably occupied, even with a fair wind, in getting through. I should doubt the policy of making the passage either way with large vessels, though our whaling-ships frequently pass both ways. No vessel could be better calculated to pass through the Straits than the Shark, with the exception of her being a dull sailer. This, however, is in a measure compensated by her great capacity to bear sail. I doubt if a large, or even moderate-sized, square-rigged vessel could have made the passage, under similar circumstances, in double the time.” 2
1	Army and Navy Chronicle, April 30, 1840.
2	Fernao Magalhaens, as called in Portuguese, hut known to English readers as Ferdinand Magellan, the first to pass through these Straits, which have immortalized his name, entered them on the 21st of October, 1520, and, consulting the calendar for a name, called it, in honor of the day, 4 The Strait of the Eleven Thousand Virgins ; ’ and on the 28th of November his squadron left the Strait and launched into the great south sea, to which, from the gentle winds that propelled them over waters almost unruffled, Magellan gave the name of ‘Pacific.’ On leaving Cabo Deseado (Wished-for Cape) at the western entrance, here-named the strait the ‘Strait of the Patagonians.’ He was thirty-eight days in passing through. Cavendish, in 1587, entered the Straits early in January, and left them late in February, and was, therefore, nearly or quite two months in making their passage. In 1599, on the 6th of April, a fleet of seven ships of Holland, under the command of Admiral Simon de Cordes, after a summer spent on the coast of Africa,366
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
The twin screw steam schooner Midas, Captain William Poor, owned by R. B. Forbes and others, was the first American steamer to carry our flag around the Cape of Good Hope for China, in 1844. She left New York on the 4th of November of that year, and was the first American steamer to ply in Chinese waters. She returned from China, under sail, to Hew York via Bio Janeiro, where she took a China cargo. Her machinery was taken out, and she ran out of Savannah for some time, owned by Messrs. Paddleford & Fay.
The bark Edith, four hundred tons, Forbes rig, and owned by B. B. Forbes and T. H. Perkins, Jr., was the first auxiliary screw steamer under the American flag that went to the British Indies, and she was the first American square-rigged screw steamer to visit China. She was launched in 1844, sailed from Hew York, Jan. 18, 1845, for Bombay, commanded by Captain George W. Lewis, and returned via Bio Janeiro, like the Midas, under sail, with a China cargo. She was next chartered to the War Department; took stores to Brazos Santiago; was employed in the Gulf of Mexico during our war with Mexico; and finally sold to the War Department and sent to California, where she was transferred to the navy, and lost off Santa Barbara.
The first American propeller packet ship to carry our flag to England was the Massachusetts, of seven hundred and thirty-four tons, owned by B. B. Forbes, and having engines designed by Ericsson. She was launched at East Boston, July 22,1845, and sailed from Hew York, commanded by Captain A. H. White, Sept. 17, 1845.
reached the Straits of Magellan. Five months longer the fleet struggled in these Straits, where, as if in the home of Eolus, all the winds of heaven seemed to he holding their revel. An incident which marked their departure from the Straits deserves to he remembered. Admiral De Cordes raised on the shore, at the western mouth of the channel, a rude memorial, with an inscription that the Netherlanders were the first to effect this dangerous passage with a fleet of heavy ships. On the following day, in commemoration of the event, he founded an order of knighthood. The chief officers of the squadron were the knights commanders, and the most deserving of the crews were the knights brethren. The members of the fraternity made solemn oath to De Cordes, as general, and to each other, that “by no danger, no necessity, nor by fear of death, would they ever be moved to undertake any thing prejudicial to their honor, to the welfare of the Fatherland, or to the success of the enterprise in which they were engaged, pledging themselves to stake their lives in order, consistently with honor, to inflict every possible damage on the hereditary enemy, and to plant the banner of Holland in all those territories whence the King of Spain gathered the treasures with which he carried on his perpetual war against the Netherlands.”
Thus was instituted on the desolate shores of Terra del Fuego (the Fireland) the order of the “ Knights of the Unchained Lion,” with such rude ceremonies as were possible in those solitudes. The harbor where the fleet anchored was called ‘ Chevalier’s Bay,’ but it would be vain to look on modern maps for the heroic appellation. Of all the seven ships, only one returned to Holland.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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She made a second voyage to Liverpool, under Captain David Wood, and, after her return, was chartered to the government, and carried General Scott’s flag to Yera Cruz, was transferred to the Navy Department, and went through the Strait of Magellan to California. During the Civil War her engines were taken out, and she was refitted as a store-ship, and renamed the ‘ Farralones.’ She was for some time stationed at Panama, for the protection of the isthmus. After the war, she was sold in San Francisco, and renamed the ‘Alaska/ and was engaged in carrying wheat from that port to Liverpool.1 The Marmora, Captain Page, a propeller, preceded the Massachusetts to England, but she was not a packet. She ended her days in the Mediterranean.
The schooner Evening Edition, of eighty tons, built in Baltimore for a news-boat for the ‘ New York Journal of Commerce/ had an eventful history. She was successively owned by an editor, a king, and emperor, and bore at times our flag and that of Portugal and Morocco. In 1836 she had visited South America, Asia, and Africa; had run an express of four thousand miles in a single voyage; had been run away with by insurgents, their hands yet reeking with human blood; and been engaged in collecting slaves as well as news.
The pilot-boat William J. Eomer, of about one hundred tons burthen, February, 1846, sailed from New York for Liverpool on a special mission, and after a boisterous passage anchored at Cork on the 6th of March. On her arrival she was boarded by an officer of H. M. S. Vanguard, with orders from the admiral to haul down her pennant, which her captain, McGuire, refused to do. Soon the officer returned with an apology from the admiral, stating that from her small size he had taken her for an English pilot-boat. Leaving Cork harbor on the 13th of March, she arrived at New York on the 11th of April, bringing five days later news from Europe, making the round trip in sixty days.
These vessels were the pioneers of several small vessels or boats to carry the stars and stripes across the Atlantic. In 1857, the Charter Oak, a small boat navigated by her builder and a single companion, arrived at Liverpool, and in 1858 the same adventurous navigator, whose name was Charles R Webb, accomplished a second enterprise of the same kind in a cutter of forty-five tons, called Christopher Columbus. In 1864, a yawl called the Vision sailed from Boston, but was never heard from. In 1866, the Red, White, and Blue, a ship-rigged boat
1 Portraits of both the Massachusetts and Edith, presented by K. B. Forbes, Esq., are in the Naval Library and Institute at Charlestown.368
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of two and a half tons, crossed from New York to the Thames. In 1867, the Nonpareil, a life-raft of extraordinary construction, started from New York and arrived safely at Liverpool. In 1870, the City of Ragusa, a life-boat 21 feet long and 3 feet 6 inches wide, crossed from Liverpool to Boston, and was eighty days making the passage. In 1876, the Centennial, a dory 16 feet long, 5J feet wide, and 2\ feet deep, made the voyage from Gloucester to Liverpool in sixty-six days. In 1877, the schooner-rigged whale-boat New Bedford, 20 feet long, Captain Crapo, accompanied by his wife, made the voyage from New Bedford to Penzance, and thence to London. In 1878, the Nautilus, a small boat, sailed from Beverly, Mass., and arrived at Mount’s Bay, Land’s End, coast of Cornwall, England, in forty-five days. She was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition.
On the 31st of May, 1770, the packet San Antonio, commanded by Don Juan Perez, arrived from San Diego and anchored in the port of Monterey, after a painful voyage of a month and a half. A land expedition had arrived eight days before. “On the 3d of June, being the holy day of Pentecost, the whole of the officers of sea and land and all the people assembled on a bank at the foot of an oak,” where, writes Tr. Junepera Serra, “we caused an altar to be raised, and the bells rung; we then chanted the Veni Creator, blessed the water, erected and blessed a grand cross, hoisted the royal standard, and chanted the first mass that was ever performed in this place; we afterwards sung the salve to Our Lady before an image of the most illustrious Virgin, which occupied the altar; and at the same time preached a sermon, concluding the whole with a Te Beam. After this, the officers took possession of the country in the name of the king our Lord (whom God preserve). We then all dined together in a shady place on the beach; the whole ceremony being accompanied by many volleys and salutes by the troops and vessels.”
In 1775, when Father Garges was travelling on a crusading and proselyting expedition from Sonora to California, he carried a painted banner, on one side of which was represented the blessed Virgin Mary, and on the other the devil in the flames of hell. “ This banner with the strange devices ” was the earliest we have notice of as carried through California. Others, doubtless, had been raised by the Spaniards on its coast. On his arrival at an Indian settlement, the holy father took his first step in conversion. As the travelling mountebank blows his horn and flutters his flag on approaching a village of likely gulls, so did our good father hoist his standard and cry aloud; when, as he naively observes, the fascinated Indians, on seeing theFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Virgin, usually exclaimed, “ Good ! ” but when they observed the devil, they often said, “ Bad ! ”
The stars and stripes were first raised in California by Captain James P. Arther, a native of Holland, but a resident of Plymouth, Mass. He was assisted by Mr. George W. Greene,1 a young man of Milton, Mass., and afterwards a member of the Massachusetts legislature.
Captain Arther was up and down the coast of California as early as 1825, in the brig Harbinger, Captain Steel; but he did not raise the stars and stripes until 1829, wThen a mate of the ship Brookline, Captain Locke, in the employ of Messrs. Bryant & Sturgis. Mr. Arther and his little party were sent ashore at San Diego to cure hides. They had a barn-like structure of wood, which answered the purposes of storehouse, curing-shop, and residence. The life was lonesome. Upon the wide expanse of the Pacific they occasionally discerned a distant ship. Sometimes a vessel sailed near the lower offing. Thus the idea of preparing and raising a flag, for the purpose of attracting attention, occurred. The flag was manufactured from shirts, and Captain Arther writes, with the accuracy of a historian, that “ Mr. Greene’s calico shirt furnished the blue, while he furnished the red and white.” “ It was completed and first raised on the arrival of the schooner Washington, Captain Thompson, of the Sandwich Islands,” but sailing under the American flag. “ It was in the latter part of 1829, in San Diego,” writes honest Captain Arther, who further states that the same flag was afterwards frequently raised at Santa Barbara, whenever, in fact, there was a vessel coming into port. These men raised our national ensign, not in bravado, or for war and conquest, but as honest men, to show they were American citizens, and wanted company. While the act cannot be regarded as a claim to sovereignty, it is interesting as an unconscious indication of manifest destiny.2
In 1842, Commodore Jones, of the United States navy, impressed that the United States were at war with Mexico, took possession of Monterey, hoisted ‘ the stars and stripes ’ there, and proclaimed California a Territory of the United States. Discovering his mistake the next day, he hauled down our flag, and made such apology as the circumstances would admit.3
1	Mr. Greene died Sept. 10, 1877, aged 77. He was the son of Benjamin Greene, of Boston, Mass.
2	Boston Daily Advertiser.
3	The Discovery of Gold in California, by Ed. E. Dunbar.
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The bear flag which was raised at Sonoma, California, June 14, 1846, is now in the possession of the Pioneer Society at San Francisco. It was made of white cotton and red flannel, the skirts of an old lady, and had painted on it the semblance of a grizzly bear. The artist was so unfortunate in his effort that the Spaniards called it the 'Bandera Colchis,’ or 'hog flag.’ The army which raised this flag and undertook to revolutionize a State consisted of fourteen Americans.
At this time, General John C. Fremont was encamped at Sonoma with an exploring party with which he had just crossed the plains, the Rocky Mountains, the desert, and Sierra Uevadas. Over his head-quarters at Sutter’s Fort there floated a flag with one star! On the 4th of July, 1846, he called a meeting of the Americans at Sonoma, and under his advice they proclaimed the independence of California and declared war against Mexico. General Fremont did not know at the time that the United States was actually at war with Mexico, or that, on the 8th and 9th of May preceding, General Taylor had gained his victories at Palo Alto and.Resaca de la Palma, on the banks of the Rio Bravo. He was therefore unprepared to hear of the raising of the stars and stripes on the 7th of July, three days later, at Monterey, by Commodore Sloat, commanding a United States squadron, consisting of his flag-ship, the frigate Savannah, and sloops-of-war Cyane and Levant. During the drawing up of the proclamation by the commodore and consul, an armed launch arrived in Monterey from San Francisco with news of the taking of Sonoma by the 'bear flag’ party of fifty to sixty men, under Commandant Ide.1
Captain Montgomery,2 of the United States sloop-of-war Portsmouth, then lying in San Francisco Bay, raised the United States flag on the Plaza of Yerba Buena, now Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, under a salute of twenty-one guns from the Portsmouth, on the next day, or 8th of July.3
Two days previous, Commodore Sloat sent a message to Captain Montgomery, informing him he was about to raise the stars and stripes over Monterey, and commanding him to do the same to the northward and around the bay of San Francisco. The flag was hoisted by Captain Montgomery on the Plaza, henceforth named 'Portsmouth Square,’
1	Annals of San Francisco.
2	Afterward Rear-Admiral John B. Montgomery, U. S. N. Montgomery Street, San Francisco, is named for him, and Portsmouth Square for his ship.
3	Log of the Savannah.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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and the principal street lying along the beach received at the same time the name of ' Montgomery Street/
Since that date, the flag of our nation has constantly waved over California. On the 14th of July, the British man-of-war Collingwood, Sir George Seymour commanding, arrived at Monterey for the purpose of doing what Commodore Sloat had already accomplished. The British were too late: the Yankees, already in possession, were not to be displaced, save at the cost of a war between the two nations. The name of ' San Francisco ’ was given to the new American town rising at Yerba Buena, Jan. 4, 1847, by Lieutenant Washington A. Bartlett, U. S. K, a native of Portland, Maine, who was the first alcalde.
The honor of having been the first to raise our flag in California has been claimed for Commodore Bobert F. Stockton; but he did not arrive from Honolulu at Monterey, in the frigate Congress, until the 15th of July, the day after the English admiral, when, to his surprise, he heard of these occurrences, and found ' our flag ’ waving over the custom-house, and in the Plaza, where the Savannah men were quartered. On the 28th of August, 1846, Commodore Stockton wrote the Navy Department: " I have now the honor to inform you that the flag of the United States is flying from every commanding position in the Territory of California, and that this rich and beautiful country belongs to the United States, and is for ever free from Mexican dominion.”
Lieutenant Lynch, in 1848, made an exploration of the river Jordan and the Dead Sea. In his narrative he describes the first unfurling of our flag over the solitary waters of the Lake of Galilee and the Dead Sea, upon which, according to the popular belief, it was certain death to be borne.1
After describing his voyage from the United States in the store-ship Supply and the two metallic boats designed for the expedition, named by him 'Fanny Skinner’ and 'Fanny Mason,’ after two blooming children, Lieutenant Lynch says : —
"Friday, March 31, 1848. Sent to Acre for horses and hoisted out the two Fannies, and landed with our effects. Pitched our tents for the first time upon the beach wuthout the walls of Haifa; a graveyard behind, an old grotto looking well on one side, and a carob tree on the other. For the first time, perhaps, without the consular precincts the American flag has been raised in Palestine: may it be the harbinger of a regeneration to a new and hapless people! ”
1 The English flag was first unfurled oyer these waters in 1873, when Lieutenant Molineaux, E. N., launched upon the Dead Sea the dingey of H. M. S. Spartan.372
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The boats were re-embarked, taken to another point of the coast, and again landed on the 5th of April, 1848. From this new point the start of the caravan for the interior is thus described: —
“ The metal boats with the flags flying, mounted on carriages drawn by huge camels, ourselves, the mounted sailors in single file, the loaded camels, the sheriff and the sheikh with their tufted spears and followers, presented a glorious sight. It looked like a triumphal march.” Thus organized, the party arrived at Tiberias, upon the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and the boats were launched upon its sacred waters on Saturday, the 8th of April, 1848. Under that date Lieutenant Lynch says: “ Took all hands up the mountain to bring the boats down. Many times we thought that, like the herd of swine, they would rush precipitately into the sea. Every one did his best, and at length success crowned our efforts. With their flags flying, we carried them triumphantly beyond the walls uninjured, and, amid a crowd of spectators, launched them upon the blue waters of the Sea of Galilee, the Arabs singing, clapping their hands to the time, and crying for bakshish;1 but we neither shouted nor cheered: from Christian lips it would have sounded like profanation. A look upon that lake ever brought to remembrance the words, ‘ Peace! be still/ ”
<£ Buoyantly it floated, the two Fannies bearing the stars and stripes, the noblest flag of freedom now waving. Since the times of Josephus and the Romans no vessel of any size has sailed upon this sea, and for many, many years but a solitary keel has furrowed its surface.”
On the 18th of April, in passing down the river Jordan, at the Fountain of Pilgrims, where more than eight thousand pilgrims arrived to behold them as they bathed, Lynch was gladdened by meeting two of his countrymen, who were gratified at seeing the stars and stripes floating above the consecrated river, and the boats which bore them ready, if necessary, to rescue a drowning pilgrim.
On the 19th of April, the Dead Sea was entered and our flag displayed for the first time upon its waters. Nine days later (the 28th), news having been received from Beyrout of the death of John Quincy Adams, the flags were displayed at half-mast, and at noon the next day twenty-one minute guns "from the heavy blunderbuss on the bow of the Fanny Mason were fired in honor of the illustrious ex-President.
On the 9 th of May, having employed the previous day in its construction, he pulled out in the Fanny Skinner and moored a large float, with the American ensign flying, in eighty fathoms of water,
1 Presents.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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abreast of Ain G’huivier, at too long a distance from the shore to be disturbed by the Arabs.
As the party approached Damascus on its return, they were advised to furl our flag before entering the city, assured that no foreign flag had ever been tolerated within its walls. The British consul’s was torn down on the first attempt to raise it, and the appearance of ours, it was thought, would excite commotion, and lead, perhaps, to serious consequences. As they had carried it to every place visited, they determined to take their chance and keep it flying. Angry comments were made by the populace at this presumption; but as they did not choose to understand what their toorgeman was too wary to interpret, they were unmolested. Once more unfurling the stars and stripes at their camp over against Jerusalem, they finally re-embarked our flag at Jaffa, the ancient Joppa.
After all this display of devotion “to the stars and stripes, the noblest flag of freedom now waving,” which Captain Lynch has so carefully recorded, it is a matter of regret that, from a false sense of a paramount duty to his State, he deserted its folds a dozen years later, in the hour of its trial and danger, and identified himself with the Rebellion.
There has been controversy as to who first raised an American flag on the heights of Chapultepec. Some one having incautiously said that General Read performed the gallant act, several claimants for the honor came forward.
The fact that the lion-hearted Read did not first plant the colors of his regiment on Chapultepec robs him of none of the laurels he won in Mexico. It was Captain Barnard, of Philadelphia, who seized the flag of the Yoltigeurs, and placed it triumphantly on the captured works of the enemy. Read, while gallantly bearing the colors unfurled in the charge, was dangerously wounded, and his name appeared on the first list of the killed. No man who knew him doubts but for this Read would have done all that Barnard acccomplished.
The flag of the Yoltigeurs, first planted at Chapultepec, is now in Louisville, in the possession of Isaac, a brother of Colonel George Alfred Caldwell, who, with Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph E. Johnston,1 led the assault. It is shattered and battle-torn, and the staff shows marks of the fierce storm through which it was carried.
The reports of Generals Scott and Pillow, and Colonel Andrews, the commander of the Yoltigeurs, and Ripley’s History, all give to Captain
1 Afterward a rebel general, and now a member of the United States House of Representatives, 46th Congress, from the third district of Virginia.374
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Barnard the honor of first planting the regimental colors on Chapulte-pec. General Pillow, in his report, says : —
“ Colonel Andrews, whose regiment so distinguished itself and commander by this brilliant charge, as also Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston and Major Caldwell, whose activity enabled them to lead the assault, have greatly distinguished themselves by their gallantry and daring. Captain Barnard, with distinguished gallantry, seized the colors of his regiment upon the fall of the color-bearer, scaled the wall with them unfurled, and has the honor of planting the first American standard in the works/’
When the Yoltigeurs were disbanded at Baltimore, a number of the interesting properties of the regiment were forwarded by Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston to Colonel Caldwell. Among these was the regimental flag.1
Colonel Caldwell was drafted in 1863. The law required he should personally appear before the board of enrolment for release. Knowing his physical disability, from age and chronic rheumatism, the board wrote him, if he had reason to fear he could not get exempted, he might bring his Chapultepec flag with him, and carry it out to the Taylor barracks.
A party of twenty-five American officers, four or five civilians, thirty-five dragoons, and forty infantry of the United States army in Mexico, April, 1848, attempted the ascent of Popocatepetl, which, after Mount St. Elias, is the highest eminence of North America, having an estimated altitude of from 17,720 to 18,362 feet.2
Only six of the one hundred and fourteen of the ascending party succeeded in reaching its summit, and raising the stars and stripes.
A Spanish officer in 1519 was the first human being to reach its summit, and in commemoration of his success was permitted to assume for his coat of arms the figure of a burning mountain. Several eminent travellers have since succeeded in reaching the summit; viz., Glennie in 1827, Von Gerolt, Baron Gross, and Sonntag and others.
On reaching the final slope, our adventurers directed their steps toward a black rock near the edge of the crater, about the middle of the south side, and at ten minutes past ten a.m., April 11, 1848, Lieu-
1	Louisville Courier.
2	Humboldt, measuring from the valley of Tetimba in 1804, estimated it at 17,728 feet. Glennie found it 17,884 ; but his calculations, corrected by Burckhardt, made it 18,014. Within a few years, French savans had taken careful observations from the level counfry at its base, which yield a height of 18,362 feet, and two sets of measurements are said to have produced several hundred feet more.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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tenant Stone, standing on the edge of the crater, and before the other five had arrived, fastened the stars and stripes to his staff, and planted them on the very loftiest peak of the mountain, raising loud huzzas at his complete success.
Mr. Baggely, an Englishman and ^a professor in a Mexican college, arrived soon after, and placed close beside it the Cross of St. George.
The effect of the gases did not permit the little party to remain on the edge of the crater. The fumes of the sulphur caused headache and nausea; their throats became dry and swollen, and compelled them to hasten their return. The strange sensations passed off as they descended, and when at two p.m. they reached the camp only a headache remained.
The Indians would not believe they had reached the top, and examined their heads, saying, “ It was impossible for any one to go there without having horns grow from the head.” Others asked “ what the mountain said to them.”
No money or entreaty could persuade the guides to go further than the region of perpetual snowrwhich in that latitude is at about 14,000 feet.
In 1865, another party of two Americans and one Frenchman, viz. E. J. McCane, of Pennsylvania, and William Y. Wells, and Antoine Kieffer, of Strasburg, ascended Popocatepetl, and peered into its crater.1 October, 1874, Popocatepetl was again ascended by three American gentlemen and three American ladies; viz., Messrs. George Skilton, John Blackmore, and John Willson, of New York, Miss Sawyer, of Massachusetts, Miss Terry, of New York, and Mrs. Bichardson. They descended into its crater, but failed to plant the stars and stripes on its summit. They slid down over 4,000 feet returning, and the ladies had a ball given to them in honor of their bravery.
Mount Orizaba, whose snow-clad summit is seen every clear day from Vera Cruz, though seventy miles distant, and the sight of whose symmetrical cone often cheers the mariner when more than a hundred miles distant at sea, was ascended in May, 1848, by a party of United States army and navy officers, who planted our banner upon the highest peak of its frozen summits. Humboldt tried to ascend this mountain, but, with all his enthusiasm, failed, and pronounced the feat impracticable.
The party who were successful in raising our flag where foot of man had never before trod consisted of nine officers, thirty soldiers,
1 An illustrated narrative of this ascent hy Mr. Wells is given in ‘Harper’s Magazine ’ for November, 1865. '376
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and two sailors, who all encamped on the second day 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, with the thermometer considerably below the freezing-point.
At early daylight the morning of the third day the party again set out, and were soon among the snow and ice; the air became rarefied at every step, rendering it necessary for them to stop and pant for breath. When they had attained the elevation of 15,000 feet, with a few exceptions, all were seized with nausea and vomiting, and the ascending party was gradually diminished, until, when the summit was reached, only three army and two navy officers could congratulate themselves on having reached the goal of their endeavor. Arrived at the summit, the little party shook hands and sat down to rest and enjoy the glorious prospect before them, — Puebla, Jalapa, Cordova, the sea ninety miles away, and a host of villages on the plain. They descended a short distance into the crater, and brought up some beautiful specimens of crystal and lava, and large quantities of the most beautiful specimens of sulphur. After this the navy officers set up the American flag on the summit, an honor to which they were fairly entitled, as it was made overnight of the red and blue shirts of the sailors, Passed-Midshipman Robert Clay Rogers furnishing his white one to complete it. This flag had but thirteen stars. It was left flying, with a bottle beside it, in which was a paper containing the names of the successful few. The barometer ceased to indicate after they had reached an altitude of 17,300 feet, when they were at least 1,000 feet from the summit, according to their estimate. This would make the height of Orizaba over 18,300 feet, instead of 17,500, as had been estimated. When the party returned, they slid down on the snow and ice.1
A correspondent of the ‘ New Orleans Delta ’ wrote to that journal concerning this feat: —
“ On the highest pinnacle of the frozen summit of Orizaba waves the star-spangled banner! So you may tell Mr. Polk, his Cabinet, and all Congress assembled, that they may pass what laws they please, make treaties, and the Mexican issue pronunciamentos, but still will the American flag wave over their country ; for who will go up to pull it down ? ”
In February, 1877, Mr. D. S. Richardson, then Secretary of the
1 The party was composed of Major Manigault and Lieutenant Reynolds, U. S. Army, Lieutenant R. C. Rogers, U. S. Navy, Captains Lomax and Higgins, of the Alabama Volunteers, Captain White, Dr. Banks, Adjutant Hardway, thirty soldiers, and two sailors, of the naval battery.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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United States Legation at Mexico, accompanied by Mr. Eustace Mer-phy, succeeded in making the ascent, and planted our flag on its topmost pinnacle.
After the war with Mexico (1848), it was unanimously resolved by the Senate of the United States “ That the Vice-President be requested to have the flag of the United States first erected by the American army upon the palace in the capital of Mexico deposited for safekeeping in the Department of State of the United States.”
In answer to my inquiries, the Department of State wrote me, Sept. 23, 1871, “ This Department is unable to give you the information which you desire, as it does not have the flag referred to in its
keeping. It is most likely in the charge of the War Department.” Eeferring them, in another letter, to the law concerning it, it was found to be deposited in the State Department, and described as “an ordinary United States flag of small size, tattered and moth-eaten, containing in its union twenty-eight stars, arranged in four rows, each row containing seven ; the rows of seven stars parallel with the white stripes.”
The city of Charleston, S. C., presented a palmetto regimental flag to the South Carolina Volunteers, on their departure for Mexico, on the 24th of December, 1846. Colonel Pierce Butler received the colors, and a son of General Cantey, the State adjutant-general, was the color-sergeant. The flag was of thick blue silk, with the coat of arms of the State on one side, and the United States arms and a palmetto-tree on the other, with the inscription, “ Presented by the City of Charleston,” &c. The mayor, in his presentation address, said,, “ The motto that glitters in the sunlight from this banner — ‘ Not for ourselves we conquer, but our country ’ — covers every heart here present, and the palmetto device of our State, now quivering its mimic leaves above us, finds in this serried array men like itself,—rigid, firm, enduring.”
This flag, riddled with shot and shell, was carried at Contreras and Churubusco, when Colonel Butler was killed while carrying it, and Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson wounded. It was the first flag hoisted inside the city of Mexico, as fully shown in a report of a committee of the Senate of the United States, detailing the circumstances of the hoisting of the United States flag over the palace. On the return of the regiment, the flag was preserved under a glass case, in the State
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House at Columbia, until Feb. 17,1865, when it was destroyed in the fire that burned that building.1
A fragment of this flag, — two small pieces of silk and gold fringe, — presented to Lieutenant Eobertson, of Company F, is preserved in the armory of the Washington Light Infantry Company, in Charleston.
In May, 1848, when the Italian tricolored banner, —
u Red, for the patriot’s blood}
Green, for the martyr’s crown}
White, for the dew and the rime,
When the morning of God comes down,” 2
was consecrated by the Patriarch of Venice, in that city, the American consul was the only foreign diplomat invited to be present. In the course of the ceremonies, the commander of the troops called, “ Attention ! Honor to the flag of the United States of America! ” at which the multitude shouted their applause with cries of “ Long live our sister republic! ” The people of all classes and conditions, soldiers and civilians, nearest, embraced the consul, and, kissing the star-spangled banner, pressed it to their hearts; while the many, with moistened eyes, reached their hats through the crowd merely to touch it, exclaiming, “Viva il Console!” <c Vivano gli Stati Uniti!” “ Viva la gran Republica ! ” In the evening, at the theatre, there was a repetition of the enthusiasm, when the consul entered his box with his wife.3
The uncertainty attending the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions elicited the interest and warmest sympathy of the American people, and was the moving cause of an expedition organized under authority of a joint resolution of Congress, May 2, 1850, which authorized the President to accept “ and attach to the navy two vessels offered by Henry Grinnell, of Hew York, to be sent to the
1	In consequence of its heroic history and dilapidated condition, General Butler, of Kentucky, presented the regiment in Mexico with another flag, which is thus described:—
The flag is of one thickness of blue silk, embroidered with yellow and red silk floss, and bordered with a yellow fringe about two inches wide. The embroidery consists of the coat of arms of the United States, with the motto, “ E Pluribus Unum,” and underneath the eagle is worked, “Palmetto Regt. S. G. Volunteers ; ” two rows of stars, fifteen in each row, extend across the top of the flag above the eagle. The embroidery being the same on both sides. The staff is ornamented with a silver-plated spear-head. Dimensions of the flag, five feet three inches next the staff, and six feet long.
It was carried by the regiment at the centennial of the battle of Fort Moultrie, June 28, 1876.
2	Mrs. Browning.
3 Newspaper account.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Arctic Seas in search of the British commander, Sir John Franklin, and his companions.”
The vessels furnished by Mr. Grinnell were the brigantines Advance and Bescue, and the command of the expedition was intrusted to Lieutenant Edwin J. De Haven, who commanded the Advance in person. The command of the Bescue was assigned to Passed-Mid-shipman S. P. Griffin, the second officer of the expedition. The instructions, full and complete, were issued by William B. Preston, Secretary of the Navy.
The expedition sailed from New York, May 26, 1850, and returned to that port about Oct. 1, 1851. Only supposed traces of the objects •of search were discovered, and the real fate of Sir John and his companions was still left in doubt. The vessels were caught in the ice, and frozen up for nine months. They drifted to and fro more than a thousand miles. Not a man was lost on the expedition. These vessels went up Wellington Channel, searching its shores, and discovered 'Grinnell Land.
• The railroad across the Isthmus of Panama, from Aspinwall, or Colon, as the authorities of the United States of Columbia call it, to the city of Panama, begun May, 1850, and completed in 1859, is a triumph of American skill, perseverance, and engineering. The first great obstacle, the bridging, so to speak, of bottomless swamps, was •overcome, and a train of cars passed from Aspinwall to Barbacoas on the 4th of July, 1852. The second great obstacle, the crossing of the Chagres Biver, which during the wet season is liable to rise fifty feet in from six to ten hours, was accomplished in 1853.
November 24 of that year was a day of more than ordinary interest to American residents on the Isthmus, when the bridge across the Chagres at Barbacoas was tested by the passage over it of the first train of cars and locomotive. Notice was given that all who wished would be passed free, and six passenger-cars were early filled with foreign and native residents. The bridge on the Barbacoas side was tastefully decorated, and on its corners waved the flag of New Grenada side by side with the stars and stripes. About eleven a.m., Messrs. Ball and Baldwin, on the top of the first car, supported by the officers and attaches of the company, bearing the flag of our country above their heads, gave the signal, and, with a warning cry, the iron steed, built in Portland, Maine, started with the train across the arches of the noble structure, gnd five hundred voices, collected on the banks of the river, sent up a shout, which was echoed back from as many on the cars, as the train moved smoothly across. After running a mile or380
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
so beyond, the train returned and recrossed the bridge, when a few hours were spent in the festivities of a dinner, and there was a ball at old Joe Prince’s in the evening. A large amount of gunpowder was burnt in the course of the day. Among the toasts given at the dinner was, “The Panama Railroad, the index-finger of ‘Young America’s’ right hand.” In December, 1853, passengers were conveyed by the railroad to Gorgona, and on the opening of the dry season the road was in running order to Matashin, seventeen miles from Panama.
The near completion of the Panama railroad, and the discovery of gold in and the settlement of California, were two great inducements to our successful treaty with Japan in 1854.1
The American ensign first displayed in Japan on the landing of Commodore M. C. Perry at Uraga, on the bay of Jeddo, in July, 1853,
and which was unfolded at the treaty of Yoka-hama, March, 1854, opening Japan to the world after two hundred years of seclusion, counted on its cluster twenty-nine stars, and is now preserved at the Naval Academy, Annapolis.
In 1855, during the cruise of the American whaler George and Henry, of New London, Captain Buddington, a vessel was discovered in a vast field of ice, and drifting oceanward. Lowering a whale-boat, Captain Buddington, with a picked crew, pulled to the floe, and leaving their boat, after a perilous journey of a mile over immense hummocks of ice, reached the vessel. Clambering up her sides, to their astonishment they discovered her to be H. B. M. ship Resolute, which had sailed from England the year before, under command of Captain Keppel, in search of Sir John Franklin and party.
It appeared that, being ice-bound in Baffin’s Bay, running short of provisions, and without hope of relief or of releasing the vessel, the officers and crew, consisting of one hundred and sixty men, with supplies and instruments, abandoned her, and after a dangerous sledge-journey joined another ship of the expedition. When the Resolute was boarded by Captain Buddington, she had drifted into the Atlantic Ocean nine hundred miles from the point at which she had been abandoned.
Captain Buddington took possession of the vessel, and at once began operations to release her. After many days of arduous labor of his men, they had the vessel afloat in open waters, and, placing a crew on board, safely brought her into New London.
1 This I learned in Japan, at the time of the treaty.
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381
The facts of the rescue being brought to the attention of our government, Congress appropriated $30,000 for her purchase from the salvors. She was then taken to the New York Navy Yard and refitted, every thing on board being restored as nearly as possible to its condition when she was manned by British tars. By direction of the President of the United States, under the authority of Congress, a crew was placed on board of her, with sailing orders for Portsmouth, England, and directions to her commanding officer, in the name of the United States, to restore the ship to her Majesty’s government.
She was commanded by Commander Henry J. Hartstene, of South Carolina.1 The ship sailed from New York, and twenty-five days after reached Portsmouth, early in December, 1855.
The British government, officially advised of this act of friendship on the part of the United States, prepared for the consummation of this purpose with becoming formality. The day set apart for the ceremony at Portsmouth was Dec. 10, 1855. The harbor was in full array. Her Majesty’s ships in port floated the royal standard of England from their mastheads, and the flag of the United States, and were gayly dressed with flags and streamers. For the better accommodation of the royal personages who were to participate in the ceremony, the Resolute was hauled alongside the dock.
At noon, amid the booming of guns ashore and afloat, her Majesty, accompanied by the Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, and Princess Alice, Lady Cathcart, and the Duchess of Athol (the most beautiful woman in England), attending maids of honor, and accompanied by Sir Francis Seymour, commandant of the Portsmouth Navy Yard, went aboard the Resolute.
Captain Hartstene, surrounded by his officers in full dress, welcomed the Queen, and addressing her, said: “ Your Majesty, it affords me pleasure, in behalf of the President of the United States, to present to you the ship Resolute, not only as the evidence of good-will of the people of the United States, but out of the great respect which they feel toward you personally.”
The Queen, in person, thanked the government of the United States through Captain Hartstene for the consideration thus shown herself and her government. Having evinced a deep interest in viewing the ship, she visited every part of her, and asked numerous questions.
A fine large painting was executed, by order of the Queen, repre-
1 Captain Hartstene united his fortunes with, the Southern Rebellion, and died shortly after its commencement.382
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
senting the scene on the deck of the Resolute. This painting, which has been engraved, now hangs in the royal gallery at Windsor.1
In 1856, after the cloud of war had rolled away from the Crimea, and Sebastopol was opened to all nations, the first vessel to enter its closed port was an American ship, the Troy, with the stars and stripes at her peak.
The iron yacht Edith, owned by R. B. Forbes, sailed from Boston in 1858, for the Rio de la Platte. She was the first, and it is believed is the only, vessel of the New York yacht squadron that has carried the United States flag into south latitude.
The yacht Edith was only forty-seven days in making the passage from Provincetown, though delayed by the loss of her main-mast close to the deck, in lat. 26° S.
A letter from her in the ‘ Boston Courier/ dated “ Rio Uruguay, lat. 32° 7 S., Ion. 58° IP W., March 8, 1859," says: “At Concepcion we found the Fulton and Water Witch, vessels celebrated in history, — the last as the origin of the Paraguay expedition, and the leader of that memorable squadron which went to Cuba to protect the United States flag from British aggression. ... We get on admirably with our f squadron,’ consisting of the yacht Edith and steamer Alpha; sometimes she tows us and sometimes we tow her, and always excite the curiosity of the natives. No other yacht of the New York squadron has been so far from home, and no other steamer of any nation has been so far up the Rio Negro ; at this point she deserves to be called the Alpha, and for a long time to come will be the Omega."
The Alpha was a small iron steamer, which was taken out to South America on the deck of the brig Nankin. Some asked, on seeing her on deck, whether she was built on the way out, or whether the brig was built around her. On arriving at Montevideo, the Nankin was hauled alongside the United States store-ship Supply, and with the tackles used to hoist out 10-inch guns the little steamer was suspended in air, the brig was hauled from under her, and just when all was ready to launch her, the main-yard tackles pennant parted, and down she went ten or twelve feet into the water, the fore-sling slipping off at the same time, but no harm was done, and not a rivet was started.
1 Lately, orders have been issued from the admiralty to break up this historic ship, and in these orders it is stated she was built of teak from the East Indies, is bárk-rigged, and about five hundred tons burthen ; and it is stated semi-officially that her Majesty’s government has directed that a dining set shall be made from her teak timbers for presentation to the government of the United States, as a souvenir of an interesting event which occurred just one-quarter of a century ago. The vessel was never employed in active service after her rendition.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
383
The captain of the little steamer went to the custom-house, and entered her as a new arrival, she having been regularly cleared at the Boston custom-house. The collector opened his eyes very wide, seeing that she was only twenty tons, and asked if she came by sea, how many days she had been on the voyage, and how many ports had been touched at for fuel, and whether she had shipped any water or incurred any danger from gales of wind on the way. Captain Bessie honestly replied that he came by sea in fifty-five days; had put in nowhere for fuel, having been mostly propelled by sails; that he had shipped many small sprays, but no large seas, and that she was as dry and safe as a brig of three hundred tons all the way out; that he had encountered one severe gale and several smaller ones, but that she ‘lay to’ like a duck. The collector made note of these facts, and said it was ‘ muy curioso,’ and opened his eyes again. •
The Alpha may be considered the pioneer and parent of our naval steam launches, those efficient tenders to our ships of war and surveying vessels.
Throughout the trials, sufferings, and famine of Lieutenant Isaac H. Strain s unfortunate Darien exploring expedition in 1854, so graphically described in Mr. Headley’s narrative, “ our flag was sacredly preserved.”1
After their rescue, and while pursuing their course down river, as they approached the Virago’s paddle-box boat, Strain desired to hoist an American ensign, and asked if the one they started with had been preserved. Yes, answered McGinness, who was intrusted with it, and who had carried it to the last. The only emblem of their nationality that remained to them, he had wrapped it around his breast; and though weapons, haversacks, and blankets had been thrown away, he would not part with it. Wounded feet that needed bandaging, and ulcerated limbs and tattered garments, could not induce him to devote that cherished symbol to his own use. Without reflection, Strain ordered McGinness to place it in his boat. The poor fellow hung back for a moment, and cast such an appealing look on Strain that the latter asked what was the matter. His eyes filled with tears, and he replied, “ Captain Strain, I have never parted with that ensign a single instant since you intrusted it to my care on the Atlantic coast, and don’t take it from me now.”
Touched by the devotion of the man, Strain said, “ By no means shall it be taken from you, my brave fellow; display it yourself.” His face beamed with a smile of thankfulness, and unbinding it with his skeleton hand from the rags that hardly covered him, he gave it, tat-
1 See Harper’s Magazine.384
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
tered and torn, to the wind, and three cheers went up from the little fleet. There is a whole poem, says Headley, in this little incident. That flag, first displayed when they marched from the beach of Caledonia Bay, was unrolled, to announce their deliverance, and then once more only, — to shroud the coffin of one of the expedition.
The generosity of Mr. G-rinnell did not cease with the unsuccessful termination of the first humane expedition to the Arctic, which had failed to accomplish its purposes, so far as the finding of the missing explorers, and promptly offered the vessels for a second cruise, should the necessary authority be obtained from Congress; and in the fall of 1852, in compliance with the wishes of Lady Franklin, Passed-Assist-ant-Surgeon E. K. Kane, who had accompanied the previous expedition, was given permission to engage in special service, and go in search of Sir John Franklin. Under instructions from Secretary J. P. Kennedy, he sailed from New York in the brigantine Advance, May 31, 1853. Dr. I. I. Hayes was an officer of this expedition, comprising in all seventeen persons; and the next year, 1854, Dr. Kane carried our flag to the land nearest the pole yet discovered, and his companion Morton hoisted the first flag that ever waved over that solitude.1
Dr. Kane, narrating the event, says, “ As he [Morton] neared the northern land at the east shore, which led to Cape Constitution, the termination of his labors, he found only a very small ice-float under the lee of the head-land, and crushed up against the side of the rock. He went on, but the strip of ice-land broke more and more, until about a mile off the Cape it terminated altogether, the waves breaking into a cross-sea directly against the Cape. The wind had
1 In the 4 Boston Gazette ’ or * "Weekly Advertiser,’ May 22, 1753, there is the following notice of an “ Early American Expedition for the discovery of the Northwest Passage : ” —
“ Philadelphia, May 10.
“We hear that the schooner Argo, Captain Swaine, who was fitted out from this port by a number of merchants of this and the neighboring provinces, and sailed hence on the 4th of March last for Hudson’s Bay, on the discovery of the Northwest Passage, having touched at the Hiannas near Cape Cod, and at Portsmouth in New England, to take in her complement of hands and some particular necessaries, took her departure from the latter place on the 15th of April, all well on board, and in high spirits.”
This vessel was fitted out at an expense of ¿£1,500, by subscription, a chief mover in the enterprise being Benjamin Franklin. On her return she was refitted, and sailed the following spring on another expedition, and returned in October, as appears by the Pennsylvania ‘Journal and Advertiser’ of Oct. 24, 1754: “On Sunday last, arrived here the schooner Argo, Captain Swaine, who was fitted out in the spring on the discovery of the Northwest Passage, but having three of his men killed on the Labrador coast, returned without success.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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moderated, but was still from the north, and the current ran very fast, — four or five knots, perhaps.
“ The cliffs were here very high, — at a short distance they seemed about two thousand feet; but the crags were so overhanging that Morton could not see the tops as he drew closer. The echoes were confusing, and the clamor of half a dozen ivory gulls, who were frightened from their sheltered nooks, were multiplied a hundred-fold. The mollemoks were still numerous, but he saw no ducks.
“ He tried to pass around the Cape. It was in vain. There was no ice-foot, and, trying his best to ascend the cliffs, he could get up but a few hundred feet. Here he fastened to his walking-pole the Grinnell flag of the Antarctic, a well cherished little relic, which had now followed me on two polar voyages. This flag had been saved from the United States sloop-of-war Peacock, when she was stranded off Columbia River. It had accompanied Commodore Wilkes in his far southern discovery of the Antarctic continent. It was now its strange destiny to float over the highest northern land, not only of America, but of our globe. Side by side with this were our masonic emblems of the compass and square. He let them fly for an hour and a half from the black cliffs over the dark rock-shadowed waters, which rolled up and broke in white caps at its base.”
This flag was again used by Dr. Hayes in his North Pole expedition, and again unfurled by Captain Hall, of the Polaris, when he took possession of the land, 82° 26' north latitude, “in the name of God and the United States,” and was brought back by Captain Buddington. It may be said of this historic flag, which was the property of Henry Grinnell, that it has been farther north and farther south than any flag in the world. It is of ordinary bunting, about eight by three feet, and has twenty-four stars of white muslin sewed in the union. The words “ Peacock flag ” are stamped on the left-hand corner, in black ink. Although much soiled from long use, the flag was free from rents in 1874. It was again carried to the Arctic in the schooner Florence by Captain Howgate, and returned in her in a good state of preservation in 1878.
The long absence of the second Grinnell expedition, of nearly three years, without information of its movements or fate, filled the hearts of the people with solicitude, and the subject received the attention and action of Congress. On the 3d of February, 1855, a joint resolution was adopted authorizing the Secretary of the Navy to provide and despatch a suitable naval or other steamer, and if necessary a tender, to the Arctic seas for the purpose of rescuing or affording relief to
25386
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Passed-Assistant-Surgeon E. K. Kane, and the officers and men under his command, provided that such steamer and tender should he officered and manned by volunteers from the navy, and others who' declared their willingness to be so engaged.
The vessels selected and fitted for this service were the bark Release and steamer Arctic, and the command of the expedition was committed by Secretary Dobbin to Commander H. J. Hartstene, who commanded the Release in person. The second officer of the expedition was Lieutenant Charles S. Simms, who commanded the Arctic.
The vessels sailed from New York June 4, 1855, and returned to that port Oct. 11, 1855. In four months which intervened they sailed four thousand miles, circumnavigated Baffin’s Bay, passed farther into Smith’s Sound than any one save Kane’himself, found that missing explorer and his party at Disco Island, and returned them safely to their country and friends.
In 1859, during the war between Austria and Sardinia, the imperial government ordered Trieste placed under martial law, the French being daily expected to make an attack upon that city. Under this, circumstance the United States consul suspended a large United States flag from his balcony, which remained there night and day while the war lasted. From the moment of its display, the common people congregated opposite at the Palace Demetrio Careiotte, gazing at it with delight. This concourse gathered every day for about a week, when the President of the imperial maritime government called on the consul and asked, “ What does all this mean ? ”	“ What about
this crowd in a state of siege ? ” The consul replied, that he claimed the protection of his flag, and that the local authorities were bound to furnish sufficient force to preserve the peace and sustain his privileges. The official retired, the flag was undisturbed, and people who had never seen it came from the neighboring villages to see “ la handier a americctna.”
Theodore de Sabla, who had been the United States vice-consul at Panama, being a native of Louisiana, sympathized with the Rebellion. Writing from Panama to a former navy friend on the 18th of July, 1861, he related the following curious incident, the augury of which was happily unfulfilled, unless on the principle of dreams, by contraries. After alluding to matters of a business nature, he says: “We had a glorious fourth here at my house, rather on the secess side, though, as you may easily believe. Captain Mitchell, Shryock,1 and
1 These were officers of the United States steamship Wyoming, attached to the-Pacific squadron, who had resigned.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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other Southern friends, late of and now off, the navy, were there, and we had a grand time of it. Sorry to say that on that day, when they were drinking the ‘Union’ at the United States consulate, about two p.m., the flag-staff of old Corwine (the United States consul) was struck by lightning and shivered from top to bottom, and the flag torn to pieces. Bad omen that! for you S ”
The fourth expedition from the United States to the polar seas was organized and despatched under private auspices, and had no connection with the government. Dr. I. I. Hayes, who had been attached to Dr. Kane’s expedition, conducted it. The name of his vessel, the Spring Hill, was changed to United States, and she sailed from Boston July 7, 1860. Her departure was preceded by an interesting demonstration on the 4th of July, in which many distinguished persons participated. The schooner was of one hundred and thirty-three tons burthen. Her officers and crew, including Dr. Hayes, numbered fifteen persons. It was designed the vessel should sail on the 4th of July, but the weather proved unpropitious, and her departure was delayed.
On the fourth day of March, 1861, Dr. Hayes hoisted a flag in honor of Abraham Lincoln, who was supposed to be the President of'
the United States, though the fact was not known until August 14, when the expedition arrived at Upperna-vick on its return. The flag was made by F. L. Harris, and a curious circumstance connected with it is, that it. was made with only eighteen stars, from lack of material. When the news of the election of Lincoln was received, five months afterwards, it was found that a rebellion had broken out in the Southern States, leaving only about eighteen States true to the* Union.
Dr. Hayes had accompanied Kane on the expedition of 1854, when Morton caught sight of what was thought to be the open polar sea.
Expedition Flag of the Schooner United States, 1861.388
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
During the winter of 1860-61 he took up his quarters at Port Foulke.1 In April, 1861, he left his ship and proceeded up Smith’s Strait in sleighs, but, having traversed about half the channel, was obliged to send back to the« ship most of his exhausted crew. Keeping with himself only three hardy companions, he left the strait and proceeded along the coast on the ice.
On the 18th of May, 1861, in lat. 81° 30', and at a distance of 825 kilometers from the pole, Hayes saw before him a vast sheet of water. Every thing, says he, “ was to me evident proof that I had reached the shores of the polar basin, and that the large ocean was rolling at my feet. At some distance from where he stood, the waves sweeping along the coast were breaking to pieces the ice, which finally disappeared.” There Dr. Hayes built a cairn, and planted the American flag upon the most northern point ever reached by man. Having named the headland where the flags were raised ‘ Cape Lieber,’ and the extreme point of the world in sight to the northward ‘ Cape Union,’ he retraced his steps to Port Foulke. (See map.)
We will let him describe this interesting incident: —
“ The Open Polar Sea. — Standing against the dark sky at the north, there was seen in dim outline the white sloping summit of a noble headland, the most northern known land upon the globe. I judged it to be in latitude 82° 30', or four hundred and fifty miles from the north pole.”
“ Hearer, another bold cape stood forth; and nearer still the headland, for which I had been steering my course the day before, rose majestically from the sea, as if pushing up into the very skies a lofty mountain peak, upon which the winter had dropped its diadem of snows. There was no land visible except the coast upon which I stood.
“ The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these latter being either soft decaying ice, or places where the ice had wholly disappeared. These spots were heightened in intensity of shade and multiplied in size as they receded, until the belt of the water-sky blended them all together into one uniform color of dark blue. The old and solid floes (some a quarter of a mile and others a mile across), and the massive ridges and wastes of hummocked ice, which lay piled between them and around their margins, were the only parts of the sea which retained the whiteness and solidity of winter.
1 So named by Dr. Hayes for William Parker Foulke, of Philadelphia, who aided in fitting out the expedition, and died before its return. Dr. Hayes dedicates his narrative to his memory.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
389
“ All the evidences showed that I stood upon the shores of the polar "basin, and that the broad ocean lay at my feet; that the land upon which I stood, culminating in the distant cape before me, was but a point of land projecting far into it, like the Ceverro Yostochnoi Noss of the opposite coast of Siberia; and that the little margin of ice which
SHOWING PROGRESS
lined the shore was being steadily worn away, and within a month the whole sea would be as free from ice as I had seen the north water of Baffin’s Bay, interrupted only by a moving pack, drifting to and fro at the will of the winds and currents.390
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
f
“ It now only remained for us to plant our flag in token of our discovery, and to deposit a record in proof of our presence. The flags were tied to the whip-lash, and suspended between two tall rocks, and while we were building a cairn they were allowed to flutter in the breeze; then, tearing a leaf from my note-book, I wrote on it as follows : —
“ ‘ This point (the most northern land that has ever been reached) was visited by the undersigned, May 18, 19, 1861, accompanied by George F. Knorr, travelling with a dog-sledge. We arrived here after a toilsome march of forty-six days from my winter harbor near Cape Alexander, at the mouth of Smith Sound. My observations place us in lat. 81° 25', Ion. 70° 30' W. Our further progress was stopped by rotten ice and cracks. Kennedy Channel appears to expand into the polar basin, and, satisfied that it is navigable, at least during the months of July, August, and September, I go hence to my winter harbor, to make another trial to get through Smith Sound with my vessel after ice breaks up this summer.
‘I. I. Hayes.
“ ‘May 19, 1861.’
“ This record, carefully secured in a small glass vial, was deposited beneath the cairn; then our faces were turned homewards. But I quitted the place with reluctance/’
The flags planted upon the crag were a small United States boat-ensign, which had been carried in the South Sea exploring expedition of Captain Wilkes, and afterwards in the arctic expeditions of Lieutenant-Commanding De Haven and Dr. Kane, a little United States flag, which had been committed to Dr. Sontag by the ladies of the Albany Academy, two diminutive masonic flags, intrusted to Dr. Hayes, — one by the Kane Lodge of New York, the other by the Columbia Lodge of Boston, — and the expedition signal-flag, bearing a crimson star on a white field. Dr. Hayes says, “ Being under the obligation of a sacred promise to unfurl all these flags at the most northern point attained, it was my pleasing duty to carry them with me,— a duty rehdered none the less pleasing by the circumstance that together they did not weigh three pounds.”
The highest point attained by him he called ‘ Cape Lieber,’ a remarkable peak rising above Church’s monument, and the bay below it he named for Lady Franklin. The conspicuous headland, which he vainly attempted to reach on the last day of his northward journey, was named ‘ Cape Eugenie,’ for the Empress of the French, in appreciation of the kindness of French citizens to the expedition; another promi-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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nent headland he named ‘ Cape Frederick VII./ in honor of the king of Denmark, to whose Greenland subjects he was indebted for many serviceable attentions. The noble headland which, in faint outline, stood against the dark sky of the open sea, “ the most northern known land upon the globe,” he named ‘ Cape Union/ “ in remembrance of a compact which has given prosperity to a people and founded a nation/’ unknowing that at that very time fratricidal hands were endeavoring to rend that glorious union, and dissolve the compact which had resulted in such national prosperity. The bay lying between Cape Union and Cape Frederick VII. he named for Admiral Wrangel, whose fame in connection with arctic discovery is second only to that of Sir Edward Parry, and the lofty peak behind Cape Eugenie, overlooking the polar sea, he named ‘ Parry Mountain.’ With that eminent explorer he must divide the honors of extreme northern travel; for, if Parry carried the British flag upon the sea nearer to the north pole than any flag had been carried hitherto, Hayes planted the American flag farther north upon the land than any flag had been or has since been planted.1 Among the Arctic curiosities deposited by Lieutenant Frederick Schwtka, U. S. A., in the Military Service Institution Museum, is the only American (United States) flag ever unfurled at the north magnetic pole. It was spread there on July 4, 1879.2 This is the first and only flag that has been raised there since the British flag was hoisted over it by Commander Boss, R JST., in May, 1831.
1 Commander James Clarke Loss, L. N., had thirty years before, viz. May, 1831, fixed the British flag on the north magnetic pole, more than eleven degrees to the southward, and took possession of it and the adjoining territory in the name of Great Britain and King William IV. He erected a cairn, under which he buried a canister containing a record of the fact, regretting he had not the means of constructing a pyramid of size and strength sufficient to withstand the assaults of time and the Esquimaux. The latitude of the spot was 70° 5^ 15/7 N., longitude 96° 46/ in S., west of Greenwich. The latitude of the magnetic pole is unchangeable, but the longitude varies with every succeeding year. It is sufficient honor for Ross that he actually stood upon the magnetic pole of 1831, and in 1841 approached the south pole nearer than any other preceding navigator.
On May 12, 1876, Commander Markham, R. N., planted the British flag in latitude 83° 207 2Qff N., a point nearer the north pole than was ever reached by a European. He reported that the site of the supposed “ open polar sea” was found occupied by a sea of ice from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet in thickness, which he named the ‘ Palceocrystic, ’ or ‘ Sea of Ancient Ice. ’ On the grave of Captain C. T. Hall he fixed a brass tablet, inscribed, “ Sacred to the memory of Captain C. T. Hall, of the U. S. S. Polaris, wdio sacrificed his life to the advancement of science on November 8, 1871. This tablet has been erected by the British Polar Expedition of 1875, who, following in liis footsteps, have profited by his experience.”
2 Army and Navy Journal, Nov. 6, 1880.392
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
On the 4th of July, 1879, Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, U. S. Army, on his remarkable sledge expedition of 3,251 statute miles, unfurled for the first time at Cape Felix, King Williams Land, a United States flag, which is now deposited in the museum of the United States Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island, N. Y. In a letter to me, dated Jan. 18, 1881, he says: “ The magnetic jiole determined by Loss in 1831 is placed on Cape Adelaide Boothia, which is plainly visible from Cape Felix. Boss reported that he believed he had determined this pole to within an error of less than a mile; hut Captain Beaufort says, ‘ There can be no specific or precise point to fix the magnetic pole within a degree or half a degree; ’ and this is the accepted theory. Certain it is that the needle of the most delicate compass will, upon Cape Felix, point in any direction wherever placed. A strict mathematical determination of this interesting point has never been claimed, and is probably an impossible problem. If any one has been within that area where the locally undisturbed compass fails to act, and the dip needle indicates a true vertical within its known diurnal or annual variations, such a one has been upon the magnetic pole ; and this is all I claim for the American flag deposited at Governor’s Island.”Page 393
PL .'VI.
SOUTHERN FLAGS 1861 -64*.PART V.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
a.d. 1861-1865.
OUR FLAG IN THE GREAT REBELLION.
THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR AGAINST OUR FLAG AND UNION. OUR FLAG AT FORT SUMTER. LOYAL FLAG-RAISINGS.
OUR FLAG IN SECESSIA. SOUTHERN FLAGS.
1861-1865.“In the language of our great leader, General Grant, we will never apologize for the deeds done in 1861-65, but will treasure up their memory, and on every suitable occasion, as long as life lasts, will present them anew to the youth of this country, as noble examples of heroism and patriotism; for they saved this nation from absolute annihilation, or at least from a long period of intestine war and anarchy.” — General William T. Sherman, Decoration Day, New York, 1878.
“ I am, totis viribus, against any division of the Union by the North River, or by the Delaware River, or by the Potomac, or by any other river, or by any chain of mountains. I am for maintaining the independence of the nation at all events.”—John Adams's Letter, March 13, 1789.
“ If Kentucky, to-morrow, unfurls the banner of resistance, I never will fight under that banner; I owe a paramount allegiance to the whole Union, a subordinate one to my own State.” — Henry Clay.
“ When my eyes shall turn to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as What is all this worth f nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards; but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, ‘ Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable.’ ” — Daniel Webster.
“Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, — only patriots or traitors. I express it as my conviction before God, that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally round the flag of his country.” — Stephen A. Douglass.
“ I have served my country under the flag of the Union for more than fifty years; and as long as God permits me to live I will defend that flag with my sword, even if my own State assails it.” — Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott.
“It is a matter of great anxiety and concern to me that the slave trade is sometimes perpetrated under the flag of liberty, our dear, noble stars and stripes, to which virtue and glo^ have been constant standard-bearers.” — Lafayette to John Adams, 1786. “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, could I have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.” — Lafayette.
“ The national ensign, pure and simple, dearer to all our hearts at this moment as we lift it to the gale and see no other sign of hope upon the storm-cloud which rolls and settles above it save that which is reflected from its own radiant hues, —dearer, a thousand-fold dearer to us all than ever it was before while gilded by the sunshine of prosperity, and playing with the zepl^rs of peace. It speaks for itself far more eloquently than I can speak for it. Behold it! listen to it! Every star has a tongue. Every stripe is articulate. There is no language or speech where their voices are not heard. There’s magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question. It has a solution for every doubt and every perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency. Behold it! listen to it! It speaks of earlier and later struggles. It speaks of heroes and patriots among the living and among the dead. But before all and above all other associations and memories, whether of glorious men or glorious deeds or glorious places, its voice is ever of union and liberty, of the constitution and the tews. Behold it! listen to it! Let it tell the story of its birth to these gallant volunteers as they march beneath its folds by day, or repose beneath its sentinel stars by night. Let it recall to them the strange, eventful history of its rise and progress. Let it rehearse to them the wondrous tale of its trials and its triumphs in peace as well as in war.” —Robert C. Winthrop, Oct. 3, 1861.
“Death never comes too soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of our country.” — Judge Story.PAKT Y.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
a.d. 1861-1865.
♦
THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR AGAINST THE FLAG AND
UNION.
u We seek not strife, "but when our outraged laws Cry for protection in so just a cause.
1 Home and our country, — Liberty and Law/ —
These are our war-cry; and the swords we draw,
Tempered by Mercy, spare, hut never yield.
1 Union 7 our watchword, God Himself our shield, —
Heroes at heart, hut children in His sight, —
Truth will prevail, and Heaven defend the right!77
When the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, pledged to resist the extension of slavery into the Territories, and to confine it to constitutional limits, was ascertained, the existence of a well-organized conspiracy against the unity of our republic was revealed. The leaders of this attempt to blot from our banner and escutcheon the stars of their States had chosen their time well; but in the providence of God, Old Grlory, as our flag was baptized by our soldiers, emerged from the smoke and fire of four years of civil conflict with the lustre of its constellation increased,1 and its galaxy brightened and strengthened from the experiences of the war.
The choice of the presidential electors took place Nov. 6, 1860, when Mr. Lincoln received 180 of the 303 votes of the electoral college, or 123 over all opponents. But of the national popular vote he was in a minority 979,163. This fact, and that in the nine slave States no Republican electoral ticket wras elected, gave a degree of plausibility to the unfounded assertion that he would be a sectional ruler, and was pledged to wage a relentless war upon slavery and
1 West Virginia was admitted as the thirty-fifth State of the Union on the 3d of June,
1863,	by an act of Congress approved Dec. 31, 1862. Nevada was admitted October,
1864.	Nebraska and Colorado have been admitted since the close of the war.396
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
the rights of the slave States. That his election had been fairly and legally conducted was undenied, or that he was pledged to non-interference with the rights and domestic policy of the States; hut these facts were studiously concealed from the Southern people by their political leaders.
Robert Barnwell Rhett, one of the Hotspurs of South Carolina, declared that “ all true statesmanship in the South consisted in forming combinations and shaping events, to as speedily as possible bring about a dissolution of the Union, and a Southern confederacy.” Lawrence M. Keith, a representative from South Carolina to the United States Congress, about the same time publicly declared that “ South Carolina would shatter the accursed Union.” Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, wrote a Northern friend : “The South will not wait for the 4th of March. We will be well tinder arms before then.” Howell Cobb, of Georgia, the Secretary of the Treasury, while on a visit to New York, pending the canvass, said, at a public meeting, “ he did not believe another Congress of the United States would meet; ” and in an address to the people of Georgia, “ on the 4th of March, 1861, the federal government will pass into the hands of the Abolitionists, it will then cease to have the slightest claims either upon your confidence or your loyalty, and, in my honest judgment, each hour that Georgia remains thereafter a member of the Union will be an hour of degradation, to be followed by speedy and certain ruin. I entertain no doubt either of your right or duty to secede from the Union.” Two days after this treasonable address he resigned his place as a cabinet officer of the United States.
On November 20, 1860, Jacob Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, wrote: “ My allegiance is due to Mississippi. A confederacy of the Southern States will be strong enough to command the respect of the world, and the love and confidence of the people at home.”
Mr. Johnson, of Georgia, in the United States Senate, Dec. 5,1860, announced that the slave States intended to revolt. “We intend to go out of the Union.” “I speak what I believe, — before the 4th of March five of the Southern States at least will have declared their independence. We intend to go out peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. If five or eight States go out of this Union, I would dike to see the man who would propose a declaration of war against them; but I do not believe with the senator from New Hampshire, Mr. Hale, that there is going to be any war.”
These — and there were many more like them — were treasonable utterances, but were considered by the people of the Northern and Western States as the intemperate outpourings of disappointed poli-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
397
ticians. They could not realize that there was any fixed design to break the bands of our glorious Union.
The governors and legislatures of the slaveholding States took early action against the national government. South Carolina led in the movement. In 1852, that State in convention had declared, “ that a State had a right to secede from the confederacy whenever the occasion should arise justifying her, in her judgment, in taking the step; ” and now her legislature in extraordinary session, the day before the election of Mr. Lincoln, recommended preparations for revolt. On the 7th of November, 1860, when Lincoln’s election was telegraphed over the length and breadth of the land, palmetto flags were everywhere unfurled in South Carolina. Speeches, harangues, and salutes of cannon followed, and in the evening the city of Charleston was illuminated by bonfires. The bark James Gray, lying at one of the Charleston wharves, hoisted the palmetto flag and fired a salute of fifteen guns. Palmetto cockades were generally worn in the streets. On the 9th of November, a bill passed the South Carolina Senate calling a convention, for the purpose of secession, which was concurred in by the House on the 12th.
Georgia was next to follow South Carolina, her legislature by a heavy majority voting that a sovereign State had a right to secede from the Union. On the 13th of November, the military convention by a large majority voted in favor of secession, and its action had great weight with the legislature and people. The following day, the legislature voted a million dollars for arming and equipping the militia of the State. On the 7th of December, the legislature passed an act providing for the election of «delegates, who were to assemble on the 16th of January following. The preamble asserted the “ present crisis in national affairs demands resistance, and that it was the privilege of the people to determine the mode, measure, and time of such resistance.”
The legislature of Mississippi assembled early in November, and adjourned on the 30th, its special object being to make preparations for the secession of the State.
The southern portion of Alabama was strongly in favor of secession, while the northern portion was as strongly in favor of union.
At the opening of the Florida legislature, the governor, in his message, declared the peace and future prosperity of the State depended upon secession. Governor Moore called an extra session of the legislature of Louisiana on the 10th of December, assigning the election of Mr. Lincoln by a party hostile to the people and institutions of the398
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
South as a reason. In his message he said he did not think it comported with the honor and self-respect of Louisiana, as a slaveholding State, to live under the government of a black Republican President, although he did not dispute the fact that Mr. Lincoln had been legally elected.
South Carolina seceded in convention, Dec. 10, 1860, and declared, “ The union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of ‘ The United States of America,’ is hereby dissolved.” A placard, printed half an hour after the vote was taken, being a copy of the secession ordinance-, and headed in large letters ‘ THE UNION IS DISSOLVED,’ was scattered broadcast through the town, and hailed with joy.
Florida, which had been bought and paid for with the money of the United States, followed on the 7th of January, 1861, and ungratefully declared, “ The State of Florida hereby withdraws herself from the confederation of States existing under the name of the ‘ United States of America,’ and the State of Florida is hereby declared a sovereign and independent nation.”
Mississippi, next in order, on the 9th of January, 1861, declared all the laws and ordinances, by which the State became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America, repealed.
Alabama, on the 11th of January, declared that the State of Alabama withdraws from the Union known as “ The United States of America,” and henceforth ceases to be one of the said United States, and is, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and independent State.
Georgia, on the 19th of January, declared and ordered that her union with the United States of America was dissolved, and “ that the State of Georgia is in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.”
On the same day that Georgia seceded from thé Union, General John A. Dix took charge of the United States Treasury Department, and sent William Hemphill Jones, the chief clerk in the first comptroller’s office, to New Orleans and Mobile, to save, if possible, the two revenue cutters on service at those ports. Captain Morrison, a Georgian, had surrendered the Lewis Cass at Mobile before Jones’s arrival. On his reaching New Orleans, he telegraphed to General Dix that Captain Breshwood, of the Robert McClelland, positively refused, in writing, to obey any instructions of the department, and that this refusal was by the advice of the collector of the port, and asked, “ What he should do.” On the receipt of this message, General Dix left the WhiteFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
399
House, where he was staying temporarily, went to his room in the treasury building, and, obeying the impulse of the moment, wrote the following famous despatch, addressed to William Hemphill Jones, New Orleans: —
The letter was copied by a clerk, and the copy sent to the telegraph office; the original was thrown into a drawer reserved for the purpose. The original draft, which, General Dix says, “ was written in haste and with a bad pen,” is now, together with the flag that was hauled down and the State flag which replaced it, in the possession of his son, the Hector of Trinity Church, New York. This despatch was intercepted and withheld from Mr. Jones, and thus the treason of Captain Breshwood was consummated, and the flag of Louisiana — a400
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
French tri-colored ensign, bearing in its blue a circle composed of seven white stars — was hoisted by him in place of the stars and stripes. The McClelland, under the name of the McBae, assisted in the defence of New Orleans against Farragut’s fleet, came up the river after the capture of the city jas a' cartel, and was treacherously sunk by her own officers to avoid her surrender to our forces opposite New Orleans. An ordinary seaman on board the cutter saw where the American flag was secreted after it was taken down, and when the cutter reached New Orleans he hastened to her, secured the flag, and gave it to General Butler, who in turn sent it to General Dix, and, upon his recommendation, the patriotic sailor was appointed a lieutenant in the revenue marine, and did gallant service during the war.1
Louisiana, on the 26th of January, declared her union with the United States dissolved, and “ that she resumed all rights and powers heretofore delegated to the government of the United States,” and was in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which appertain to a free and independent State. Each member of the Louisiana convention signed the ordinance of secession with a gold pen, which was presented to him for the purpose.
Texas, on the 7th of February, repealed and annulled the act which had been ratified by her, under which the republic of Texas was admitted into the Union, and resumed all the powers which, by that compact, were delegated to the federal government, and declared herself “ a sovereign and independent State.” 2
Jefferson Davis was elected February 8, and solemnly inaugurated President of the Southern Confederacy at Montgomery on the 22d of February, 1861.
Thus, nearly a month before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln as President of the United States, seven States had formally separated from the Union and elected a president; yet no effective efforts were made by Buchanan’s outgoing administration to draw them back to their allegiance, or prevent their departure. The Union seemed, indeed, to be only held together by that rope of sand to which it had been likened. The people of the loyal States looked on in
1	Letter, Rev. Morgan Dix, S. T. D.
2	These were all the States that formally seceded before the fall of Sumter, though North Carolina was represented in the Montgomery convention. The fall of Sumter hastened Virginia out, on the 17th of April, 1861. Arkansas and Tennessee pronounced themselves free and independent States, May 6 ; and North Carolina, waiting for the anniversary of the declaration of Mechlenburg in 1775, dissolved her connection with the Union, and ratified the Montgomery constitution on the 20th of May, 1861,—making eleven States that formally dissolved all connection with the United States, represented by as many stars on the Confederate banners.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
401
dazed wonder and amazement. They could or would not realize the situation, that under the fallacious idea of State sovereignty it was held to be in the power of one of the States, even of the smallest, ignoring the rule of the majority, to break the bond of union in which alone was strength, and scatter into as many petty States or principalities the glory and power of the United States of America, and destroy its cherished emblem, ‘ the stars and stripes/
The power and policy of coercing the seceding States back to their allegiance was freely discussed, and was held by a large party at the North, and an undoubted majority at the South, impracticable and impossible.
Even the ‘ New York Tribune ’ said, “ Whenever a considerable section of the Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.”1
Ex-President Franklin Pierce wrote a friend on the 28th of November, 1860 : “ One decisive step in the way of coercion will drive out all the slave-labor States. Of that I entertain no doubt.”
The President of the United States, Mr. Buchanan,2 after putting the question, “ Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce into submission a State which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the confederacy ? ” answered by saying, “ After much serious reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the federal government. The fact is,” he added, “that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force.” 3 Mr. Buchanan, no doubt, acted honestly up to this belief to the last hour of his official life, and witnessing State after State dissolving, by ordinance, their connection with
1	New York Tribune, Nov. 7, 1860.
2	Buchanan’s Annual Message, Dec. 4, 1860.
3	On the 22d of January, in an address in Boston ‘On the Political Lessons of the Hour,’ “ All hail disunion ! ” said Wendell Phillips, the anti-slavery orator. “Sacrifice every thing for the Union ? God forbid ! Sacrifice every thing to keep South Carolina in it ? Rather build a bridge of gold, and pay her toll over it! Let her march off with banners and trumpets, and we will speed the parting guest. Let her not stand upon the order of her going, but go at once. Give her forts and arsenals and sub-treasuries, and lend her jewels of silver and gold, and Egypt will rejoice that she has departed.” See Clemens’s speech, Congressional Globe, 1860-61, Appendix, pages 103, 104, and Spring-field Republican, Jan. 23, 1861.
26402
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE
the Union without attempting to restrain them, turned over a divided and distracted country to his successor. It required the attack upon Sumter to arouse the people, and cut the Gordian knot of political policy and opinions.
Professor S. F. B. Morse, the originator of the electro-magnetic telegraph, was an earnest pleader against coercion, and a conspicuous opponent of the war measures of the government during the entire conflict. After the adjournment of the peace convention, he was elected president of The American Society for the Promotion of National Union, and worked zealously for the promotion of measures that might satisfy the demands of the slaveholders, before “ that most lamentable and pregnant error of the attack on Fort Sumter” had been committed. While war was confined to threatening and irritating words between the two sections of the country, he suggested two methods by which our sectional difficulties might be adjusted without bloodshed, and stated them in a paper drawn up when the project of a flag for the southern section was under discussion in the journals of the South: —
“The first and most proper mode of adjusting those difficulties is to call a national convention of the States, to which should be referred the whole subject of our differences; and then, if a moiety of the lofty, unselfish, enlarged, and kind disposition manifested in the noble convention of 1787, which framed our Constitution, be the controlling disposition of the new convention, we may hope for some amicable adjustment. If, for any reason, this mode cannot be carried out, then the second method is one which circumstances may unhapily force upon us; but even this mode, so lamentable in itself considered, and so extreme, so repulsive to an American heart, if judiciously used, may eventuate in a modified and even stronger union. This is the temporary yielding to the desire of the South for a separate confederacy; in other words, an assent to negotiations for a temporary dissolution of the present Union. My object in this mode is to secure, in the end, a more permanent, perpetual union.”
This apostle of peace then proceeds to notice some of the formidable difficulties in the way, such as fixing the boundary between the two confederacies, and the weighty necessity of maintaining in peaceful relations a standing military army and an army of custom-house officials. These considerations, he believed, would* cause a perception of the necessity for compromise, “ which embodies a sentiment vital to the existence of any society.” There then would be the difficulty of an equitable distribution of the public property, as well as an agree-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
403
ment upon the terms of a treaty “ offensive and defensive between the confederacies.” “ Coercion/’ he said, “ of one State by another, or of one federated union by another federated union,” was not to be thought of. “ The idea is so fruitful of crime and disaster, that no man in his right mind can entertain it for a moment.”
Supposing these matters settled to the perfect satisfaction of all parties, the question naturally arose in the mind of the writer, “ What is to become of the flag of the Union ? ” He answered: “ The Southern section is now agitating the question of a device for their distinctive flag. Cannot this question of flags be so settled as to aid in a future union ? I think it can. If the country can be divided, why not the flag ? The stars and stripes is the flag in which we all have a deep and the self-same interest. It is hallowed by the common victories of our several wars. We all have sacred associations clustering around it in common, and, therefore, if we must be two nations, neither nation can lay exclusive claim to it without manifest injustice and offence to the other. Neither will consent to throw it aside altogether for a new and strange device, with no associations of the past to hallow it. The most obvious solution of the difficulties which spring up in this respect is to divide the old flag, giving half to each. It may be done, and in a manner to have a salutary moral effect upon both parties.
“Let the blue union be diagonally divided, from left to right or right to left, and the thirteen stripes longitudinally, so as to make six and a half stripes in the upper, and six and a half stripes in the lower portion. Referring to it, as on a map, — the upper portion being north, and the lower portion being south, — we have the upper diagonal division of the blue field and the upper six and a half stripes for the Northern Flag, and the lower six and a half stripes for the Southern Flag,— the portion of the blue field in each flag to contain the stars to the number of States embraced in each confederacy. The reasons for such divisions are obvious. It prevents all dispute on a claim for the old flag by either confederacy. It is dis-
mrrmnmiimiiiimiraotiimimmiimiMiiiiiiiiiijiiiinimmiuiiimiiimmn
mil
SOUTHERN FLAG.
REUNITED FLAG.
PROF. P. B. MORSE’S SUGGESTION.404
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
tindive; for the two cannot be mistaken for each other, either at sea or at a distance on land. Each being a moiety of the old flag, will retain something, at least, of the s'acred memories of the past for the sober reflection of each confederacy. And then, if a war with some foreign nation, or combination of nations, should unhappily occur (all wars being unhappy), under our treaty of offence and defence the two separate flags, by natural affinity, would clasp fittingly together, and the glorious old flag of the Union, in its entirety, would again be hoisted, once more embracing all the sister States. Would not this division of the old flag thus have a salutary moral effect inclining to union ? Will there not also be felt a sense of shame when either flag is seen by citizens of either confederacy ? Will it not speak to them of the divisions which have separated members of the same household, and will not the why be forced from their lips ? Why is the old flag divided ? And when once the old time-honored banner, bequeathed to us by our honored ancestors of every State, shall be flung to the breeze in its original integrity, as the rallying-point for a common defence, will not a shout of welcome, going up from the Rio Grande to Maine, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, rekindle in patriotic hearts in both confederacies a fraternal yearning for the old Union ? ” 1
The ordinances of secession were soon followed by hostile acts.
On the 10th of January, 1861, a ball was fired athwart the bows of the steamer Star of the West as she was entering Charleston harbor, and on her displaying the stars and stripes the rebel fortification fired a succession of shots.2
1	The Civil War, by B. J. Lossing, vol. i. pp. 245-247.
Secession and peace flags continued for some time to he raised by non-coercionists, and were as quickly pulled down by the citizens of the community whose feelings of loyalty they insulted. A man named Steele hoisted a secession flag at East Fairhaven, Mass. He was warned day after day, hut refused to take it down, and threatened to shoot whoever attempted to take it down. After parleying awhile, he was taken and marched three miles to Mattapoisett, where a coat of tar and feathers was applied to a part of his body, giving him a handsome set of tail feathers, and then he was compelled to give three cheers for the stars and stripes, and take an oath to support the Constitution, and never again raise other than the American *flag. — Boston Transcript, April 29.
Aug. 24, 1861. Two attempts were made in Connecticut to raise peace flags, one of which failed, the other was successful. The first was at Stepney. According to previous announcement, a meeting was to have been organized after the flag-raising. No sooner was the flag hoisted, however, than the Union men made a rush at it, and tore it into shreds. A Union meeting was organized, which passed a series of Union resolutions.
The other flag wTas raised at New Fairfield ; about four hundred persons were engaged in the enterprise. Seventy Union men attempted to pull it down, and a desperate fight ensued, in which two of the peace men were seriously injured. — Rebellion Record, vol. iii.
2	Charleston Courier, Jan. 10, 1861.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
405
The next case of artillery practice against the flag was at Vicksburg, on Sunday night, Jan. 13, 1861. The night was dark and rainy, and as the steamer A. 0. Tylor, Captain Colliers, unsuspecting of evil, approached the wharf-boat at that place, the Quitman battery of Jack-son, Miss., which was planted about three hundred yards above the wharf-boat, threw a shot across her bows. The captain of the Tylor not knowing what it meant, and supposing it a political celebration, continued his course to the landing. The artillerists had a 24-pounder ready, and, on her not heaving to, an order was given to fire into her, and the match applied; fortunately the priming was wet and would not go off, and the boat escaped injury. Among her passengers were seven ladies. The gun was reprimed, but before it could be brought to bear, the Tylor had passed beyond its range and was landing at the wharf-boat, unconscious of the peril she had escaped.1
The Southern members did not commence withdrawing from Congress until Jan. 12, 1861. The Mississippi delegation was the first to withdraw, though Jefferson Davis did not leave until the 21st, when he made a farewell speech. The same day the representatives of Alabama and Florida, a week later the senators from Georgia, and on the 4th of February the senators from Louisiana, withdrew.
The day on which the senators from Louisiana withdrew, a peace convention or congress assembled at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, in which fourteen of the free and seven of the slave States were represented. John Tyler, ex-President of the United States, was appointed to preside. Nothing resulted from its conferences, and the failure occasioned much disappointment. On the 22d of February, 1861, James Buchanan, President of the United States, wrote ex-President Tyler, apologetically: “ I found it impossible to prevent two or three companies of Federal troops from joining the procession to-day, with the volunteers of the district, without giving serious offence to the tens of thousands of people who have assembled to witness the parade. The troops everywhere else join such processions in honor of the birthday of the father of our country, and it would be hard to assign a good reason why they should be excluded from the privilege in the capital founded by himself. They are here simply as a posse comi-tatus, to aid the civil authorities in case of need. Besides, the programme was published in the 'National Intelligencer’ without my personal knowledge, the War Department having considered the cele-
1 Loyal (Patriotic) Society Tract. The Ordnance Bureau of the War Department have sent the gun to West Point to he preserved as a trophy. —Boston Transcript, July 1, 1873.406
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
bration of the national anniversary by tbe military arm of the government as a matter of course.’’
The day that the peace convention assembled at Washington, witnessed a very different assembling of the Southern leaders.
to take seats in the convention, and a provisional government was formed. On the 22d of February, when Mr. Lincoln, journeying to Washington to be inaugurated President of the United States, raised the stars and stripes over Independence Hall at Philadelphia, Jefferson Davis, late senator from Mississippi, was inaugurated President of the new Southern Confederacy. In the evening he held a levee in Estelle Hall, and Montgomery was ablaze with bonfires and illuminations.
On the 11th of February, 1861, Mr. Lincoln, the President elect of the United States, left his home in Springfield, 111., for the seat of government, accompanied by a few friends. His fellow-citizens and neighbors gathered at the railway station to wish him God-speed. He was visibly affected by this kind attention, and addressed the assembly of his friends in a few words, requesting they would all pray that he might receive the Divine assistance in the responsibilities he was about to encounter, without which he could not succeed, but with which success was certain. Before leaving Springfield, he received from Abra. Kohn, the city clerk of Chicago, a fine picture of the flag of the Union, bearing an inscription in Hebrew upon its folds. The verses being the 4th to 9th verses of the 1st chapter of Joshua, in which Joshua was commanded to reign over the whole land, the last verse being : “ Have not I commanded thee ? Be strong and of a good courage ; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed : for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
We will not attempt to detail all the incidents of the President
State House at Montgomery.
Forty-two delegates, chosen by the secession convention of six of the Southern States, met at the State House, Montgomery, to perfect a scheme for the destruction of the Union. Howell Cobb, of Georgia (fresh from the cabinet of the President of the United States), was appointed its presiding officer. The next day, delegates from North Carolina ajDpeared and were invitedFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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elect’s journey, which occupied several days. Everywhere he was greeted with demonstrations of profound respect. Occasionally he briefly addressed the crowds who came to see him. His journey resembled a triumphal progress. Party spirit for the time was forgotten, and cheers were always given for “ Lincoln and the Constitution.”1 At Indianapolis he was welcomed with a salute of thirty-four guns, — one for each State of the Union. The governor of the State received him and escorted him to a carriage, which, followed by the members of the legislature and the municipal authorities, and escorted by the firemen and military, conveyed him to the Bates House, where, from the balcony, he addressed the enthusiastic multitude assembled. He closed his remarks by saying: “ While I do not expect on this occasion or until I reach Washington to attempt any long speech, I will only say, to the salvation of the Union there needs but one single thing, — the hearts of a people like yours.” “ In all trying positions in which I may be placed, my reliance will be upon you and the people of the United States. It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty for yourselves.” In the evening he addressed the members of the legislature who waited upon him to pay their respects. On the 12th, at noon, he reached Cincinnati, and on the 13th, at two p.m., Columbus, where he was formally welcomed by Lieutenant-Governor Kirk on behalf of the legislature of Ohio, assembled in joint session to receive him. In the evening he held a levee, which was largely attended. On the morning of the 14th he left Columbus, and after a brief and formal reception at Steubenville reached Pittsburg the same evening. The next morning the mayor and common council of Pittsburg waited upon him and gave him a formal welcome, to which he briefly responded. He was accompanied to the depot by a long procession of the people, and left for Cleveland, where he arrived about half-past four in the afternoon. His arrival was announced by a salute of artillery, and he was escorted by another long procession through the principal streets to the hotel, where he addressed the assembled multitude, and concluded by saying: “If all do not join now to save the good old ship Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another.” The next morning he left for Buffalo, where he was welcomed by a dense crowd, and responded briefly to the mayor’s welcoming speech. Bemaining at Buffalo over Sunday, he left on Monday morning, and after brief receptions at Koch-ester, Syracuse, and Utica, at all of which were assembled enthusiastic crowds of people, he reached Albany at half-past two in the afternoon,
1 Raymond’s History of tlie Administration of Lincoln.408
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where he was formally received by the mayor, and escorted by a procession to the steps of the Capitol, where he was welcomed by the Governor of New York in the presence of an immense mass of the people, whom he briefly addressed. He was then escorted to the hall of the assembly, and received by the legislature of the State. On the 19th, passing through Troy, Poughkeepsie, and Peekskill, everywhere enthusiastically received, he reached New York City about three p.m. Arrived at the Astor House, he was compelled by the importunity of the assembled crowd to appear on the balcony and briefly address it. In the evening he addressed a large deputation from the Republican association of the city. The next morning he was officially received by the mayor at the City Hall, and in responding to the mayor’s address said: “ In my devotion to the Union I hope I am behind no man in the nation. I am sure I bring a heart devoted to the work. There is nothing that could bring me to willingly consent to the destruction of this Union, unless it would be that thing for which the Union itself was made. I understand that the ship is made for carrying and preservation of the cargo; and so long as the ship is safe with the cargo it shall not be abandoned. This Union shall never be abandoned, unless the possibility of its existence shall cease to exist, without the necessity of throwing passengers and cargo overboard. So long, then, as it is possible that the prosperity and liberties of this people can be preserved within this Union, it shall be my purpose at all times to preserve it.” These were brave words for that time of doubt and peril, which he amply redeemed.
On the 21st of February, Mr. Lincoln left New York. On reaching Jersey City he was welcomed, in behalf of the State of New Jersey, by the Hon. William L. Dayton. At Newark he was welcomed by the mayor, and at Trenton received by a committee of the legislature of New Jersey, and escorted to both branches in session. In answer to their welcoming speeches he briefly addressed them.
To the Senate he said : “ I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which our struggle for national independence was made; and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this his most chosen people as the chosen instrument, also in the hands of the Almighty, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle. I learn that this body is composed of a majority of gentlemen who, in the exercise of their best judgment in the choice of a chief magistrate, did not. think I was the man. I understand, nevertheless, thatFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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they come forward here to greet me as the constitutional President of the United States; as citizens of the United States to meet the man who, for the time being, is the representative of the nation, united by a purpose to perpetuate the Union and the liberties of the people.” To the Assembly he said: “ I appropriate to myself very little of the demonstrations of respect with which I have been greeted. I understand a majority of you differ in opinion from those with whom I have acted. This manifestation is therefore to be regarded by me as expressing devotion to the Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people. Eeceived as I am by the members of the legislature, the majority of whom do not agree with me in political sentiments, I trust I may have their assistance in piloting the ship of State through this voyage, surrounded by perils as it is ; for, if it should suffer wreck now, there will be no pilot needed for another voyage.”
The presidential party arrived at Philadelphia, at four o’clock, and on reaching the Continental Hotel Mr. Lincoln was welcomed by Mayor Henry. In his reply he said: “ You have expressed the wish* in which I join, that it were convenient for me to remain long enough to consult, or rather to listen to, those breathings arising within the consecrated walls in which the Constitution of the United States, and, I will add, the Declaration of Independence, were originally framed and adopted. All my political warfare has been in favor of those teachings. May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if ever Iyprove false to those teachings.”
The next (22d) day, he was escorted to Independence Hall. It was an early winter morning, and as the President had to visit the legislature at Harrisburg, in the afternoon, in a special train that was to leave at 8.30, what was to be done had to be done quickly. In front of the ancient temple of liberty a platform was erected, from which Mr. Lincoln was to raise the national flag, with its thirty-four stars. As he approached the sacred spot, in a carriage drawn by four white horses, escorted by the Scott Legion, with the flag they had carried to victory in Mexico twelve years before, the scene was highly dramatic. The whole populace was in the streets, and their excitement and enthusiasm baffled description. It recalled Shakspeare's picture of Bolingbroke’s entrance into London: —
“You would have thought the very windows spake,
So many greedy looks of young and old Through casements darted their desiring eyes Upon his visage ; and that all the walls,
With painted imagery, had said at once :410
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1 Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!7 Whilst he, from one side to the other turning,
Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed7s neck,
Bespake them thus : i I thank you, countrymen ;7 And this still doing, thus he passed along.77
Leaving the carriage at the door, he entered uncovered the sacred Hall of Independence, and there used this language, which sounds like a solemn prophecy of what happened four years later: “ The Declaration of Independence gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope for the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in our time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. How, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis ? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can save it. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot them surrender it.” And then he added solemnly, as he drew his tall form to its fullest height, “ I have said nothing but ivhat I am willing to live by, and, in the pleasure of Almighty Gocl, to die by. . . . There need be no bloodshed or war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance that there shall be no bloodshed, unless it shall be forced upon the government, and then it will be compelled to act in self-defence.” 1
When he walked forth to face the mighty concourse outside, and mounted the platform, “ his tall form rose, Saul-like, above the mass.” He stood elevated and alone before the people, and, with his overcoat off, grasped the halyards to draw up the flag. Then arose a shout like the roar of many waters. Mr. Lincoln’s expression was serene and confident. Extending his long arms, he slowly drew up the standard, which had never before kissed the light of heaven, till it floated over the Hall of Independence.2 Tears, prayers, shouts, music, and cannon
1	These expressions were in marked contrast in spirit with the utterances of Jefferson Davis, at Montgomery, a week previous, February 15, when on his way to be inaugurated c President of the Confederate States. ’ When addressing an enthusiastic crowd assembled at the railroad station to greet his arrival, he said : “ We have now determined to maintain our position, and make all who oppose us smell Southern powder and feel Southern steely
2	Dec. 9, 1861. There was another flag-raising at Independence Hall, when the sailors and marines of the Hartford, now inseparably connected with memories of Admiral Farragut, then just arrived at Philadelphia from the East Indies, marched to Independence Hall and presented to the city a splendid silk flag made by them during the voyage home. The flag was raised at noon upon the flag-staff amid greatFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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followed, and sealed an aet which few knew was only the beginning of ■unspeakable sufferings and sacrifices, ending in his own martyrdom.1
On the afternoon of the 22d, Lincoln left Philadelphia, and reaching Harrisburg was escorted to the legislature, where he was welcomed by the presiding officers of the two Houses. He spoke of his part in the morning’s drama as follows : —*
“ This morning I was, for the first time, allowed the privilege of standing in old Independence Hall. Onr friends had provided a magnificent flag of onr country, and they had arranged it so that I was given the honor of raising it to the head of its staff; and when it went up, I was pleased that it went to its place by the strength of my own feeble arm.2 When, according to the arrangement, the cord was pulled, and it flaunted gloriously to the wind without an accident, in the bright, glowing sunshine of the morning, I could not help hoping that there was, in the entire success of that beautiful ceremony, at least something of an omen of what is to come. Nor could I help feeling then, as I have often felt, that in the whole of that proceeding I was a very humble instrument. I had not provided the flag; I had not made the arrangement for elevating it to its place; I had applied a very small portion even of my feeble strength in raising it. In the whole transaction I was in the hands of the people who had arranged it. And if I can have the same generous co-operation of the people of this nation, I think the flag of our country may yet be kept flaunting gloriously.”
After the delivery of this address, Mr. Lincoln devoted some hours to the reception of visitors, and at six o’clock retired to his room. The next morning, the whole country was surprised to learn that he had arrived at Washington, twelve hours sooner than he had originally intended. His sudden departure was a measure of precaution. An attempt was made on the Toledo and Western Railroad, on the 11th of February, to throw from the track the train on which he was jour-
enthusiasm, and salutes were fired at the Navy Yard and from the Hartford. —Philadelphia Inquirer.
1	Anecdotes of Public Men, by Colonel Forney, published in the Philadelphia Press.
2	William C. Parsons, an old man-of-war’s man, took the flag from the Navy Yard, it haying been loaned by Commodore S. F. Dupont, the commandant, and he rolled it up and bent it on to the halyards for Lincoln to hoist. After Mr. Lincoln had run it to the head of the flag-staff, he broke the stops, which allowed it to float out free. Parsons was in 1876, and still is, the mail-messenger to the League Island Navy Yard. The committee presented him with ten dollars. He was Flag-Officer Charles Stewart’s favorite coxswain, and presented me with a snuff-box which Stewart gave him, and told him he bought in Leghorn in 1806, and had carried for forty-five years, and that while engaged in capturing H. B. M. ships Cyane and Levant, seated on the quarter-deck hammock clothes, he emptied it twice, “to keep his eyes clear.”412
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neying; and as he was leaving Cincinnati, a hand-grenade was found to have been secreted on hoard the cars. At Baltimore, an organized and thorough investigation, under the directions of a police detective, resulted in disclosing that a small gang of assassins, under the leadership of an Italian, had arranged to take his life during his passage through Baltimore. In consequence of reliable information of this intention, Mr. Lincoln so far deviated from the programme he had marked out for himself as to anticipate by one train the time of his arrival in Washington,1 and reached that city on the morning of the 23d of February. On the 4th of March, 1861, he took the oath, and assumed the duties of the presidential office.
At his inauguration, nearly all the forts, arsenals, dock-yards, custom-houses, and property belonging to the United States, within the seceded States, had been seized, and were held by representatives of the rebel government. The only forts in the South remaining in the possession of the Union were Forts Pickens, Taylor, and Jefferson on the Florida coast, and Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, and preparations were far advanced by the rebels for the reduction and capture of them. Officers of the army and navy from the South had resigned their commissions and entered the rebel service. Civil officers, representing the United States in the Southern States, could no longer discharge their functions, and all the powers of that government were practically paralyzed.2 To restore order out of this chaos, and to uphold and preserve the union of the States, and the supremacy of the flag of the United States, was the task before him. It was under these circumstances that Lincoln entered upon the duties of his high office, and addressed himself to the task of withholding the border States from joining the confederacy, as an indispensable preliminary to the great work of quelling the rebellion and restoring the authority of the Constitution.3
1	Mr. Lincoln’s narrative of his clandestine journey from Philadelphia to Washington, and his reason therefor, in his own words, can he found in Lossing’s ‘Civil War,’ voL i. pp. 279, 280.
2	Hon. Henry Wilson, from his seat in the Senate on the 21st of February, said: “ Conspiracies are everywhere to break the unity of the republic ; to destroy the grandest fabric of free government the human understanding ever conceived, or the hand of man ever reared. States are rushing madly from their spheres in the constellation of the Union, raising the banner of revolt, defying the Federal authority, arming men, planting frowning batteries, arming fortresses, dishonoring the national flag, clutching the public property, arms, and moneys, and inaugurating the reign of disloyal factions. This conspiracy against the unity of the republic, which in its development startles and amazes the world by its extent and power, is not the work of a day, — it is the labor of a generation.”
3	Raymond’s History of the Administration of President Lincoln.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The inauguration took place, as usual, in front of the Capitol, and in the presence of an immense multitude of spectators. A large military force, under the immediate command of Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, was in attendance, but nothing occurred to interrupt the harmony of the occasion. Before taking the office, Lincoln delivered his inaugural address.
The day of the inauguration was ushered in by an exciting session of the United States Senate, that body sitting for twelve hours, until seven o’clock in the morning. As the hands of the clock pointed to midnight, and Sunday gave way to Monday, the 4th of March, the Senate chamber presented a curious and animated appearance. The galleries were crowded to repletion; the ladies’ gallery, from the gay dresses of the fair ones congregated there, resembled a gorgeous parterre of flowers, and the gentlemen’s gallery seemed one dense black mass of surging humanity, clambering over each other’s backs to get a good look at the proceedings. As the morning advanced, the galleries and floor became gradually cleared.
The morning broke clear and beautiful; and though at one time a few raindrops fell, the day proved just calm and cloudy enough to prevent the unusual heat of the past few days, and the whirlwind of dust that would otherwise have been unpleasant.
The public buildings, schools, places of business, &c., were closed. The stars and stripes floated from the City Hall, Capitol, and all the public buildings, while many of the citizens flung out flags from their houses, or across the principal avenues.
Previous to the arrival of the procession, the Senate chamber did not present a very animated appearance. The many ladies waiting to see the display did not arrive until late, and the officers, whose gay uniforms and flashing epaulettes relieve so well the sombreness of the national black, were with the presidential cortege. At five minutes to twelve, Yice-President Breckenridge, who was soon after commissioned a major-general in the rebel army, and Senator Foote, entered the Senate chamber, escorting the Vice-President elect, Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, whom they conducted to a seat immediately to the left of the chair of the president of the Senate.
As the hands of the clock pointed to the hour of twelve, the hammer fell, and the second session of the 36th Congress came to an end.
Vice-President Breckenridge bade the Senate farewell, and then administered the oath of office to Vice-President Hamlin, and, announcing the Senate adjourned without day, left the chair, to which he414
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immediately conducted Vice-President Hamlin. At this juncture, the members and members elect of the House of Representatives entered the Senate chamber, filling every available place to the left of the Vice-President. The foreign diplomatic corps, in full-dress, also, at the same moment, occupied seats to the right of the chair. It was subject of general remark that the foreign corps were never so fully represented as on this occasion. The scene in the Senate, while waiting the arrival of the presidential party, seemed to realize the “ lying down of the lamb and the lion together.” The attendance of senators was unusually full. At fifteen minutes to one, the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States of America were announced by the doorkeeper of the Senate. On their entrance, all on the floor arose, and the venerable judges, headed by Chief Justice Taney, moved slowly to the seats assigned them, immediately to the right of the Vice-President, each exchanging salutes with that officer in passing the chair. At ten minutes past one, there was an unusual stir, and the rumor spread like wildfire that the President elect was in the building. At fifteen minutes past one, the marshal in chief, Major B. B. French, entered the chamber, ushering in the President and the President elect. They had entered together from the street, through a private covered passage-way on the north side of the Capitol. The line of procession was then formed of the persons in the Senate chamber, and proceeded to the platform ; wThen, every thing being in readiness, Senator Baker, of Oregon, came forward and said, —
“Fellovi-Citizens, I introduce to you Abraham Lincoln, the President elect of the United States of America.”
Whereupon Mr. Lincoln arose, walked deliberately and composedly to the table, and bent low in honor of the repeated and enthusiastic cheering of the multitude before him. Having put on his spectacles, he arranged his manuscript on a small table, keeping the paper thereon by the aid of his cane, and commenced in a clear, ringing voice, that was easily heard by those on the outer limits of the crowd, to read his first address to the people as President of the United States.
The opening sentence, “ Fellow-citizens of the United States,” was the signal for a prolonged applause, its good Union sentiment striking a tender chord in the popular breast. Again, after defining certain actions to be his duty, when he said, “ and I shall perform it,” there was a spontaneous and uproarious manifestation of approval, which continued some moments. Every sentence which indicated firmness in the presidential chair, and every statement of a conciliatoryFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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nature, was cheered to the echo; while his appeal to his “ dissatisfied fellow-countrymen/’ desiring them to reflect calmly, and not hurry into false steps, was welcomed by one and all most heartily and cordially. “We are not enemies,” he said, “but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. “The mystic chord of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
These closing words dissolved many of the audience in tears, and at this point, alone, did the melodious voice of the President elect falter.
After the delivery of the address, Judge Taney stood up, and all removed their hats while he administered the oath to Mr. Lincoln. Speaking in a low tone the form of the oath, he signified to Mr. Lincoln that he should repeat the words, and in a firm but modest voice the President took the oath as prescribed by the law, while the people who waited until they saw the final bow tossed their hats, wiped their eyes, cheered at the top of their voices, and hurrahed themselves hoarse.
Judge Taney was the first person who shook hands with Mr. Lincoln, and was followed by Mr. Buchanan, and Messrs. Chase, Douglass, and others. A Southern gentleman seized him by the hand and said, “ God bless you, my dear sir; you will save us.” Mr. Lincoln replied, “ I am glad that what I have said causes pleasure to Southerners, because I then know they are pleased with what is right.”
After delaying a little upon the platform, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Buchanan, arm in arm, and followed by a few privileged persons, proceeded at a measured pace to the Senate chamber, and thence to the President’s room, while the band played "Hail Columbia,’ ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner.’ In a short time the procession was re-formed, and the President and ex-President were conducted in state to the White House, where the President gave audience to the diplomatic corps, who, with great pomp and ceremony, were the first to pay their respects and congratulate him. Then the doors were opened, and the people, like a flood-tide, rushed in upon him. The marshals, forming a double line of guards, kept all rudeness at a distance, and every thing went off with great success, and to the satisfaction of all concerned.
The thirty-four little girls who personated the several States of the416
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Union, and rode in a gayly decorated car in the procession, halted at the door, while they sang ‘ Hail Columbia/ after which they were received by the President, who gave to each and all of them a hearty and good-natured salute.
After Mr. Lincoln had been well shaken, the doors were closed, and the marshals of the day were personally introduced to him. He thanked them for their admirable arrangements, and congratulated them upon the successful termination of their duties. They then retired, and the President repaired to his private apartment, somewhat overcome by the fatigue and excitement he had undergone.
In the evening there was an inauguration ball, which was a decided success. Dancing commenced at ten o’clock, and at a quarter before eleven the presidential party came in. The band struck up ‘ Hail Columbia/ and the party marched from one end of the hall to the other. After a brief promenade, the President, with Mrs. Hamlin, took stations at the upper end of the room, when a large number of persons availed themselves of the opportunity to be presented. At half-past eleven the President and suite went into the supper-room, and so ended the first day of President Lincoln’s administration.1
OUR FLAG AT SUMTER.
1861-1865.
il ’Mid fiery storms of shot and shell,
’Mid smoke and roaring flame,
See how Kentucky’s gallant son Does honor to her name !
u See how he answers gun for gun !
Hurrah ! his flag is down.
The white! the white! oh, see it wave,
Is echoed all around.
u God save the gallant Anderson, —
All honor to his name,
A soldier’s duty nobly done,
He’s earned a hero’s fame.”
E. 0. M.j Columbia (S. C.) Banner, 1861.
When the secession excitement in South Carolina, and particularly in Charleston, had reached its height, Major Anderson, a native of
1 This account of the inauguration of President Lincoln is condensed from the report of a newspaper correspondent, who was an eye-witness of the scenes described.Fort Suinter before the First Bombardment.
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.418
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Kentucky, was found in command of the United States forces and defences of Charleston harbor, stationed at Fort Moultrie, with a force
of nine officers,1 fifty artillerymen, fifteen musicians, and thirty laborers, — in all, one hundred and four men, of whom only sixty-three were combatants. A native of one slave State, and connected by marriage with another (Georgia), it was hoped on the one side he would betray his trust, and feared on the other that he would resign it. Thoughtless of the world, and regardless of the ties of family and friendship, he kept a single eye upon his present duty, and won the undying honor which ever falls to faith and firmness shown on great occasions.2 With his little band, all of whom proved true, he determined to defend his flag and maintain his post. He commenced at once his precautions against surprise or treachery, and after Dec. 11, 1860, no one was admitted to his works unless he was known to some officer of the garrison. Events soon justified his precautions. On the 19th of December, Mr. Porcher Miles stated, in the South Carolina State convention, that but sixty or eighty men garrisoned Fort Moultrie, and Sumter was an empty fortress, that could be seized at any time. The same day, Major Anderson wrote his friend, the Rev. Dr. Duane : —
“ Fort Motjltrie, S. C., Dec. 19, 1860.
“ Dear Friend, — God grant that you may never be placed in a position so full of responsibility and apparently so entirely cut off from all prospect
1	These officers were, Captain Abner Doubleday, Captain J. G. Foster, Captain T. Seymour, First Lieutenant G. W. Snyder, First Lieutenant Jeff. C. Davis, First Lieutenant T. Talbot, Second Lieutenant R. K. Meade, and Assistant Surgeon S. W. Crawford. Soon after the fall of Sumter, Lieutenant Meade joined the insurgents. Most of the other officers attained high rank in our service. Lieutenants Snyder and Talbot died early in the war. Only Doubleday and Seymour remain upon the army list of 1880, both retired.
2	Harper’s History of the Great Rebellion, vol. i.
aim or cii vr.LnsTox iiap.uoj: tk janu\k\ 1SCIFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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of human relief as the one I am now in. . . . Were it not for my firm reliance upon and trust in our heavenly Father, I could not hut he disheartened ; hut I feel that I am here in the performance of a solemn duty, and am assured that He who has shielded me when death claimed his victims all around me will not desert me now. ... A word or two about my position, &c. As soon as I had time to inspect my position, and ascertain the feeling and temper of the people here, I found that, to enable me to comply with my orders to defend this fort, it was absolutely necessary that more troops and ordnance stores must be sent, and I recommended that they should be sent at once. The government has, as you see it stated, declined, for prudential reasons, to send them, and I must now do the best I can.
“ This fort is a very weak one in its capability of being defended. It is surrounded by houses which I cannot burn or destroy until I am certain that I am to be attacked, and I shall not be certain of it until the Carolinians are in position; but I have so little ammunition, that I cannot waste it in destroying houses. And, again, within one hundred and sixty yards of the walls are piles of sand-hills, some of them higher than our fort, which will give the best and safest shelter for sharpshooters, who may pick off, in a short time, our band of sixty men — all we have. . . .”
The next day (the 20th), the ordinance of secession passed, and Major Anderson saw from his ramparts the equipping and drilling of troops threatening him, and felt the danger and delicacy of his position. On the 24th of December, he wrote a private letter, in which he again set forth the precarious situation in which he was placed; and confessed, “ if attacked by any one but a simpleton, there was scarce a possibility of his being able to hold out long enough for friends to come to his succor.” General Scott thought the fort could be taken by five hundred men in twenty-four hours.
Major Anderson’s orders directed him to carefully avoid any act which would needlessly provoke aggression, and without necessity not to take up any position which could be construed into a hostile attitude ; but he was also directed to hold possession of the forts, and, if attacked, to defend them to the last extremity. If the smallness of his force did not permit his occupying more than one of the three forts, he was authorized, in case of an attack, to put his command into either which he deemed most proper to increase his power of resistance, and also to take similar measures, whenever he had tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.
Christmas day dawned upon Major Anderson under these circumstances, and bound by these instructions. He accepted an invitation to dinner in Charleston. Returning to his post, under cover of the420
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
night and the prevailing hilarity, he removed his force from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, and placed his little hand where he could assert and maintain for a time the authority of the government, and uphold its flag. Major Anderson had kept his secret well, and did his work thoroughly. During the day the wives and children of the troops were sent away, on the plea that an attack might he made on Fort Moultrie. Three small schooners were hired, and the few inhabitants of Sullivan’s Island saw them loaded, as they thought, with heds, furniture, and baggage. About nine in the evening the men were, ordered to hold themselves in marching order, with knapsacks packed. No one seemed to know the reason of the movement, and their destination was only confided by Major Anderson to his second in command. The little garrison was paraded, inspected, and then embarked in boats and taken to Fort Sumter, the schooners carrying the provisions, garrison furniture, and munitions of war. What could not be removed was destroyed. Not a pound of powder or a cartridge was left in the magazine. The small-arms and military supplies of every kind were removed, guns spiked, and their carriages burned. The unfinished additions and alterations of the work were destroyed. The flag-staff was cut down, that no banner with strange device should occupy the place of the stars and stripes; in fact, nothing was left unharmed except the heavy round shot, which were temporarily rendered useless by the dismounting and spiking of all the guns.
The flag brought away from Moultrie was raised again over Sumter at noon, December 26, with impressive ceremony.
The following letter from Major Anderson to his friend Duane describes the scene: —
“Fort Sumter, S. C., Dec. 30, 1860. “My dear Sir, — Your most welcome letter of the 26th of December, received to-day, finds me, as you see, at Fort Sumter. God has been pleased to hear our prayers, and has removed me>? to this stronghold. Perhaps at the very moment you were writing to me I was, by his guidance, leading my little band across to this place. I left Fort Moultrie between five and six p.m., and had my command here by eight o’clock the same evening. You say that you had marvelled that I had not been ordered to hold Fort Sumter instead of Fort Moultrie. Much has been said about my having come here on my own re-
The raising of the Flag at Fort Sumter, Dec. 26, 1860.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
421
sponsibility. Unwilling to see my little band sacrificed, I determined, after calmly awaiting instructions as long as I could, to avail myself of the earliest opportunity of extricating myself from my dangerous position. God be praised ! He gave me the will, and led me in the way. How I do wish that you could have looked down upon us when we threw the ‘stars and stripes’ to the breeze at twelve o’clock on the 26th! Our chaplain thanked God for having brought us from our place of danger, and prayed for our country, that that flag might long continue to wave over a united and happy people. The flag was then raised, the command presenting arms, and the band playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ after which three cheers were given for the flag and three for the Union. It was to me a solemn, and to all a most interesting, ceremony. ... I am now, thank God ! in a place which will, by his helping, soon be made so strong that the South Carolinians will be madmen if they attack me. There are some alterations and some additions which I wish to have made. The governor of this State has interdicted all intercourse with the city, except that of sending and receiving letters, so that, you see, we are quasi enemies. Were I disposed to declare myself independent of, to secede from, the general government, and retaliate, I could cut Charleston off from her supplies; but I will show him that I am more of a Christian than to make the innocent suffer for the petty conduct of their governor.
“Yours affectionately,
“Kobert Anderson.
“ You see it stated that I came here without orders. Fear not; I am sure I can satisfy any tribunal I may be brought before that I was fully justified in moving my command.”
One who was present says, “The chaplain made such an appeal for support, encouragement, and mercy, as one would make who felt that man s extremity is God’s opportunity.” As the earnest, solemn words of the speaker ceased, the men answered Amen, and Major Anderson run the star-spangled banner up to the head of the staff, the band saluting it with ‘ Hail Columbia/ while loud cheers of exultation and defiance were given again and again by the officers, soldiers, and workmen. As these cheers went up, a boat, which was sent down from the city to carry back an exact report of the condition of the fortress, saw the national standard rise, heard the loyal shouts, and knew that the hopes of the secessionists of a quiet possession of Fort Sumter were baffled.
A ballad of the times1 graphically describes these events. An old man is supposed to be the narrator of them to his grandchildren, Dec. 26, 1910, half a century after their occurrence. He says : —
1 By Mrs. Dorr. Published in the * New York Evening Post.’422
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“We were stationed at Fort Moultrie, but, about a mile away,
The battlements of Sumter stood proudly in the bay;
’Twas by far the best position, as he could not help but know,
Our gallant Major Anderson, just fifty years ago.
“Yes, ’twas just after Christmas, fifty years ago to-night,
The sky was calm and cloudless, the moon was large and bright;
At six o’clock the drums beat to call us to parade,
And not a man suspected the plan that had been laid.
“ But the first thing a soldier learns is that he must obey,
And that wThen an order’s given, he has not a wTord to say}
So, when told to man the boats, not a question did we ask,
But silently, yet eagerly, began our hurried task.
“We did a deal of work that night, though our numbers were but few, We had all our stores to carry, and our ammunition too;
And the guard-ship — ’twas the Nina1 2 * * — set to watch us in the bay Never dreamed what we were doing, though ’twas almost light as day.8
“We spiked the guns we left behind, and cut the flag-staff down, — From its top should float no color, if it might not hold our own7 —
Then we sailed away for Sumter, as fast as we could go,
With our good Major Anderson, just fifty years ago.
“ I never can forget, boys, how the next day, at noon,
The drums beat, and the band played a stirring martial tune)
And silently we gathered round the flag-staff strong and high,
For ever pointing upward to God’s temple in the sky.
“ Our noble Major Anderson was good as he was brave,
And he knew without His blessing no banner long could wave,
So he knelt, with head uncovered, while the chaplain read the prayer, And as the last amen was said, the flag rose high in air.
“ Then our loud huzzas rung out, far and widely o’er the sea!
We shouted for the stars and stripes, the standard of the free!
Every eye was fixed upon it, every heart beat warm and fast,
As with eager lips we promised to defend it to the last!
“ ’Twas a sight to be remembered, boys, —the chaplain witb his book, Our leader humbly kneeling, with his calm, undaunted look;
And the officers and men crushing tears they would not shed,
And the blue sea all around us, and the blue sky overhead! ”
1 A small rebel steamer.
2‘ “Just at the close of the evening twilight, when the almost full-orbed moon was
shining brightly in the southern sky, the greater portion of the little garrison at Fort
Moultrie embarked for Fort Sumter.” — Passing's History Civil War, vol. i.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
423
The occupation of Fort Sumter caused great excitement in Charleston. The rebels saw themselves baffled and defied. The effect was even greater throughout the country at large. Men suddenly saw what they had previously only imagined. Major Anderson’s movement placed the Charlestonians in the attitude of open enemies, with whom intercourse was thenceforth to be upon a war footing. So the cry of wrath which went up from the rebel city was answered by a voice of admiration, encouragement, and, above all, of confidence, from almost the entire country outside of South Carolina.1 Among the very people at the North, and even in some of the very States of the South, the occupation of Fort Sumter was regarded as the most prudent and dignified course which could have been taken. Major Anderson’s name and his praises were upon all lips which did not mutter treason. Five days after the old flag was raised at Sumter, the Nebraska legislature, two thousand miles away to the west, telegraphed to Anderson, “ A happy New Year.”
The pace of treason, rapid before, was quickened by this movement. On the 27th, troops were ordered out in Charleston, and the afternoon of the same day, Captain Napoleon Coste, of the revenue cutter William Aiken, hauled down with his own hands the stars and stripes he had sworn to defend, and substituted for them the palmetto standard, thus giving the rebels the first vessel of a navy. While he thus forfeited his oath of allegiance to the general government, his officers, true to their oaths, reported themselves at Washington. The palmetto State flag within the next three days was hoisted over all the national buildings in Charleston, and upon the United States arsenal, Fort Moultrie, and Castle Pinckney, all of which were occupied by the troops of the “ sovereign ” State of South Carolina.
When, Dec. 30, 1860, the United States arsenal at Charleston, containing many thousand stands of arms and valuable military stores, passed from the government into the hands of the secessionists, the United States troops fired a salute of thirty-two guns, and then lowered the colors. On the United States flag being detached from the halyards, the commanding rebel officer turned with a smile to the United States officer and asked if he would be allowed to fire a gun as the State flag was hoisted in place of the one taken down. The officer declined, and left the ground. The adjutant of the Seventeenth South Carolina Regiment then swabbed out the gun, ere it was yet cold from the salute to the United States flag. The State palmetto flag was attached to the halyards, and the company presenting arms,
1 Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion.424
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
one gun was fired for South. Carolina, and the flag was run up. A few days later, the Palmetto Guard raised a new flag.
Jan. 2, 1861, Governor Ellis, of North Carolina, seized upon Fort Macon, the forts at Wilmington, N. C., and the United States arsenal at Fayetteville. January 3, Fort Pulaski, at Savannah, was taken possession of by Georgia troops, by order of the governor, and January 4, the United States arsenal at Mobile was seized by the secessionists.
President Buchanan, replying'to the South Carolina commissioner’s complaint of Major Anderson’s action, said: “ Major Anderson had acted on his own responsibility, and without authority,” and that his “ first promptings were to command him to return to his former position ; ” but before any step could possibly be taken in that direction, he received information that the palmetto flag floated out to the breeze at Castle Pinckney, and that a large military force garrisoned Fort Moultrie. Under these circumstances, it was urged upon him to withdraw the United States troops from Charleston harbor. This, he said, he could not and would not do, and such an idea had never been thought of by him in any possible contingency. He then added : “ I have, while writing, been informed by telegraph that the arsenal has been taken by force of arms, with property in it belonging to the United States, worth half a million of dollars. After this information, it is my duty to defend Fort Sumter, as a portion of the public property of the United States, from whatever cpiarter the attack should come.”
On the 8th of January, 1861, on motion of Mr. Adrian, of New Jersey, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution “ fully approving of the bold and patriotic act of Major Anderson in withdrawing from Fort Moultrie to Sumter, and the determination of the President to maintain that fearless officer in his present position.” The resolution further “ pledged the support of the House to the President in all constitutional measures to enforce the laws and preserve the Union.”
The c Charleston Mercury,’ of the same date, in an article headed “ Fort Sumter the Bastion of the Federal Union,” concluded with these words: “ Border Southern States will never join us until we have indicated our power to free ourselves; until we have proven that a garrison of seventy men cannot hold the portal of our commerce. The fate of the confederacy hangs by the ensign halyards of Fort Sumter.”
If the garrison of Fort Sumter was to be retained and sustained, itFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
425
must needs be reinforced and provisioned. A large steamship, the
Star of the West, was therefore chartered, and sailed from JSTew York on the 5th of January, with a supply of commissary stores and ammunition, and two hundred and fifty artillerymen and marines, to reinforce the garrison. She was
Steamer Star of the West.	°	-itt
cleared for New Orleans and Havana, but did not take the troops on board until down the bay. The Charleston people, however, were fully aware of the project, and prepared to receive her. She arrived off Charleston bar on the night of the 9th of January, and lay to until morning, the guiding marks to the bar having been removed and the light extinguished. We will let Captain McGowan tell the story of his reception, as he reported it to the owner of his vessel.
“ Steamship Star of the West,
“New York, Saturday, Jan. 12, 1861.
“ M. 0. Roberts, Esq. : Sir, — After leaving the wharf on the 5th inst., at five o’clock p.m., we proceeded down the hay, where we hove to, and took on board four officers and two hundred soldiers, with their arms, ammunition, &c., and then proceeded to sea, crossing the bar at Sandy Hook at nine p.m. Nothing unusual took place during the passage, which was a pleasant one for this season of the year.
“We arrived at Charleston bar at 1.30 a.m., on the 9th inst., but could find no guiding marks for the bar, as the lights were all out. We proceeded with caution, running very slow and sounding, until about four a.m., being then in four and a half fathoms water, when we discovered a light through the haze which at that time covered the horizon. Concluding that the lights were on Fort Sumter, after getting the hearings of it, we steered to the S. W. for the main ship channel, where we hove to, to await daylight, our lights having all been put out since twelve o’clock, to avoid being seen.
“ As the day began to break, we discovered a steamer just inshore of us, which, as soon as she saw us, burned one blue light and two red lights as signals, and shortly after steamed over the bar and into the ship channel. The soldiers were now all put below, and no one allowed on deck except our own crew. As soon as there was light enough to see, we crossed the bar and proceeded on up the channel (the outer-hay buoy having been taken away), the steamer ahead of us sending off rockets, and burning lights until after broad daylight, continuing on her course up nearly two miles ahead of us. When we arrived about two miles from Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter being about the same distance, a masked battery on Morris’s Island, where there426
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
was a red palmetto flag flying, opened fire irpon us, — distance about five-eighths of a mile. We had the American flag flying at our Jiag-staff at the time, and soon after the first shot, hoisted a large American ensign at the fore.1 We continued on under the fire of the battery for over ten minutes, several of the shots going clear over us. One shot just passed clear of the pilothouse, another passed between the smoke-stack and walking-beams of the engine, another struck the ship just abaft the fore-rigging, and stove in the planking, while another came within an ace of carrying away the rudder. At the same time, there was a movement of two steamers from near Fort Moultrie, one of them towing a schooner (I presume an armed schooner), with the intention of cutting us off. Our position now became rather critical, as we had to approach Fort Moultrie to within three-quarters of a mile before we could keep away for Fort Sumter. A steamer approaching us with an armed schooner in tow, and the battery on the island firing at us all the time, and having no cannon to defend ourselves from the attack of the vessels, we concluded that, to avoid certain capture or destruction, we would endeavor to get to sea. Consequently, we wore round and steered down the channel, the battery firing upon us until the shot fell short. As it was now strong ebb tide, and the water having fallen some three feet, we proceeded with caution, and crossed the bar safely at 8.50 a.m., and continued on our course for this port, where we arrived this morning, after a boisterous passage. A steamer from Charleston followed us for about three hours, watching our movements.
“ In justice to the officers and crew of each department of the ship, I must add that their behavior while under the fire of the battery reflected great credit on them.
“ Mr. Brewer, the New York pilot, was of very great assistance to me in helping to pilot the ship over Charleston bar, and up and down the channel.2
“Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
“John M’Gowan, Captain.”
Such is the official narrative of the first attempt to relieve Fort Sumter, and of the first hostile shot directed by fratricidal hands against the majesty of the Union, represented by our flag. The ‘ Charleston Courier’ stated that seventeen shots were fired at the steamer,
1	This flag, on the occasion of some popular demonstration, was displayed, in 1866, from the residence of Marshall 0. Roberts, the owner of the Star of the West, at the corner of Eighteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, New York.
2	The Star of the West was captured off Galveston, April 20, 1861, by Colonel Van Dorn, and taken into that port. She was, at the time, engaged in the debarkation of United States troops from Texas, and was seized by a stratagem. No effort was made at resistance. She was subsequently used as the receiving ship of the Confederate States navy at New Orleans, and stationed at the navy-yard at Algiers.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
427
two of which took effect. Major Anderson ordered the ports fronting Fort Moultrie and Morris Island to be opened, and the guns unlim-bered; and one of his lieutenants asked him “ to give ’em just one shot.” “ Be patient,” replied the Major, as he stood, glass in hand, intently watching the approaching steamer. But at the critical moment the Star of the West put her helm to port, turned her head seaward, and proceeded out over the bar.
Communication with Charleston having been cut off, Anderson knew nothing of the intention of sending him supplies and reinforcements, and the special claims the steamer had for his protection. Her putting back relieved him from anxiety for her safety, but he immediately addressed the following note to the Governor of South Carolina: —
“ To His Excellency the Governor of South Carolina :
“ Sir, — Two of your batteries fired this morning on an unarmed vessel bearing the flag of my government. As I have not been notified that war has been declared by South Carolina against the United States, I cannot but think this a hostile act, committed without your sanction or authority. Under that hope, I refrain from opening a fire on your batteries. I have the honor, therefore, respectfully to ask whether the above-mentioned act — one which I believe is without parallel in the history of our country, or any other civilized government — was committed in obedience to your instructions, and I notify you, if it is not disclaimed, that I regard it as an act of war, and shall not, after reasonable time for the return of my messenger, permit any vessel to pass within the range of the guns of my fort. In order to save, as far as it is in my power, the shedding of blood, I beg you will take due notification of my decision for the good of all concerned, hoping, however, your answer may justify a further continuance of forbearance on my part.
“ I remain, respectfully,
“ Robert Anderson.”
Governor Pickens, after stating the position of South Carolina toward the United States, replied, “Any attempt to send United States troops into Charleston harbor, to reinforce the forts, would be regarded as an act of hostility; ” and said, in conclusion, —
“ That any attempt to reinforce the troops at Fort Sumter, or to retake and resume possession of the forts within the waters of South Carolina, which Major Anderson abandoned, after spiking the cannon and doing other damage, cannot but be regarded by the authorities of the State as indicative of any other purpose than the coercion of the State by the armed force of the government. Special agents, therefore, have been off the bar, to warn approaching vessels,428
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
armed and unarmed, having troops to reinforce Fort Sumter aboard, not to enter the harbor. Special orders have been given the commanders at the forts not to fire on such vessels until a shot across their bows should warn them of the prohibition of the State. Under these circumstances, the Star of the West, it is understood, this morning attempted to enter the harbor with troops, after having been notified she could not enter, and consequently she was fired into. This act is 'perfectly justified by me.
“ In regard to your threat about vessels in the harbor, it is only necessary for me to say, you must be the judge of your responsibility. Your position in the harbor has been tolerated by the authorities of the State; and while the act of which you complain is in perfect consistency with the rights and duties of the State, it is not perceived how far the conduct you propose to adopt can find a parallel in the history of any country, or be reconciled with any other purpose than that of your government imposing on the State the condition of a conquered province.
“F. W. Pickens.”
The situation was grave and important, and Major Anderson replied as follows: —
“ To His Excellency Governor Pickens :
“Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication, and say that, under the circumstances, I have deemed it proper to refer the whole matter to my government, and intend deferring the course I indicated in my note this morning until the arrival from Washington of such instructions as I may receive.
“ I have the honor, also, to express the hope that no obstructions will be placed in the way, and that you will do me the favor of giving every facility for the departure and return of the bearer, Lieutenant T. Talbot, who is directed to make the journey.
“Robert Anderson.”
By the consent of the governor, Lieutenant Talbot was sent with despatches, and the whole matter laid before the government at Washington.
After the return of the Star of the West to New York from her fruitless effort to relieve Sumter, another expedition was planned by Mr. G. Y. Fox, afterwards Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which he explained as follows:1 —
“ After the Star of the West had returned from her voyage, I called upon George W. Blunt, Esq., of New York, and expressed to him my views as to the possibility of relieving the garrison, and the dishonor
1 This statement can be found in full in the ‘ Rebellion Record,’ and in ‘Boynton’s History(?) of the Navy in the War.’FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
429
which, would be justly merited by the government unless immediate measures were taken to fulfil this sacred duty, as follows: —
“ From the outer edge of the Charleston bar, in a straight line to Sumter, through the Swash Channel, the distance is four miles, with no shoal spots having less than nine feet at high water. The batteries on Morris and Sullivan’s Islands are about two thousand six hundred yards apart, and between these troops and supplies must pass. I proposed to anchor three small men-of-war off the entrance to the Swash Channel, as a safe base of operations against any naval attack from the enemy.
“ The soldiers and provisions to be carried to the Charleston bar in the Collins steamer Baltic; all the provisions and munitions to be put up in portable packages, easily handled by one man,—the Baltic to carry three hundred extra sailors, and a number of armed launches sufficient to land all the troops at Fort Sumter in one night.
“ Three steam-tugs, of not more than six feet draft of water, such as are employed for towing purposes, were to form part of the expedition, to be used for carrying in the troops and provisions, in case the weather should be too rough for boats.
“ With the exception of the men-of-war and tugs, the whole expedition was to be complete on board the steamer Baltic, and its success depended upon the possibility of running past batteries at night, which were distant from the centre of the channel one thousand three hundred yards. I depended upon the barbette guns of Sumter to keep the channel between Morris and Sullivan’s Islands clear of rebel vessels at the time of entering.
“ We then discussed the plan over a chart, and Mr. Blunt communicated it to' Charles H. Marshall and Russell Sturges; they approved it, and Mr. Marshall agreed to furnish and provision the vessels without exciting suspicion.
“ On the 4th of February, I received a telegram from Lieutenant-General Scott, requesting my attendance at Washington ; and on the 6th, at eleven A.M., met at the General’s office, by arrangement, Lieutenant Talbot, who had been sent from Sumter by Major Anderson. In the General’s presence we discussed the question of relieving Fort Sumter. Lieutenant Talbot’s plan was to go in with a steamer, protected by a vessel on each side loaded with hay. I objected to it, as, first, a steamer could not carry vessels lashed alongside in rough water; and, second, in running up the channel she would be bows on to Fort Moultrie, and, presenting a large fixed mark, without protection ahead, would certainly be disabled.430
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ Lieutenant-General Scott approved my plan, and introduced me to Mr. Holt, the Secretary of War, to whom I explained the project, and offered my services to conduct the party to the fort. Mr. Holt agreed to present the matter to President Buchanan that evening.
“The next day, the 8th of February, news was received of the election of Jefferson Davis by the Montgomery convention. I called upon General Scott, and he intimated to me that probably no effort would be made to relieve Fort Sumter. He seemed much disappointed and astonished ; I therefore returned to Hew York on the 9th of February/’
Thus this attempted relief of the beleaguered fortress was abandoned, and the devoted garrison, for the present, left to its own resources.
Two days after the attack upon the Star of the West, Governor Pickens sent the Secretary of State and Secretary of War of the f sovereign ’ State of South Carolina to Sumter, to make a formal demand on Major Anderson for the immediate surrender of that fort to the authorities of South Carolina. They tried every art to persuade or alarm him ; but he assured them, sooner than suffer such humiliation, he would fire the magazine and blow fort and garrison into the air. From that time the insurgents worked diligently in preparations to attack the fort, and the garrison worked as diligently in preparations for its defence. Four old hulks filled with stones were towed into the ship channel, and sunk there by the South Carolinians, to prevent supplies and reinforcements from coming into the harbor; but the only effect was to change and deepen the channel, as the same expedient did later, when a number of old whalers, nicknamed ‘ rat ships,’ were added by the United States authorities to those which had been previously sunk by the rebels, for the purpose of blockading and filling the channel. This expedient has been often tried in barred harbors or entrances swept by strong tides, but always with like result. The same effect is shown by the obstruction of piers, wrecks, &c., in the detention of organic substances, in tide-swept harbors and rivers. The mouths of the Mississippi are constantly exhibiting the fact; a vessel, raft, or tree, stopped upon its sand-bars, gathers the sand around it frequently so that the object is thrown or borne up and can be walked around, but the running water always cuts a channel elsewhere, until some other obstruction, or the force of inblowing winds, pile the sand in another place, fed from the sand about the first obstruction, whether vessel or tree, until it is cut away and the object floats on. Captain Eads has improved upon the idea since the war, by means of jetties, to deepen the channel of the Mississippi at one of its mouths.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
431
For three months after the affair of the Star of the West Major Anderson and his little hand suffered and toiled, until their provisions were exhausted, and a formidable army, with forts and batteries prepared expressly for the reduction of his fortress, had grown up around him. The policy of the government compelled him to act as a looker-on, and not interfere to obstruct these preparations. On the 3d of February, one source of anxiety for the garrison was removed, the wives and children of the officers and soldiers in Sumter being then borne away in the steamer Marion, for New York. They had left the fort on the 25th of January, and embarked at the city. When the Marion neared Sumter, the whole garrison was seen on the top of the ramparts. While the ship was passing, a gun was fired, and they gave three cheers, as a parting farewell to the loved ones on board.
On the 11th of March, Major Anderson wrote his friend Duane : —
“ It seems that this is still to be a point of interest. I thought that the policy of the new administration would have been developed by this time. The occupancy of this work, and the fact that a demand would be made by the Southern confederacy for my withdrawal, were facts well known to all. I presume, however, that persons who are not in power make up their minds as to what oioght to be done much more readily and upon slighter data than the same persons newly placed in office. The question of reinforcing is one that is very easily determined upon ; but when the how it is to be done, and how many lives it will cost, are examined, the matter is of much greater difficulty than it was thought to be. You have had very many rumors about us which were wholly untrue. With the exception of my having added considerably to our defensive means, no change of any consequence has been made in the command. I am still doing something every day, and shall, probably, should we be unattacked a month longer, make some changes every week.
“The South Carolinians continue working very energetically, building new batteries or strengthening those already built. They will certainly be ready to pour a heavy storm of shot and of shells upon us ; but, trusting in God, I have no fear of the result. He has been pleased to scatter a much larger force than these people can muster, and His arm has lost nothing of its strength.
“ My own impression is, that when Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet examine into the question of my position they will decide that it is useless to keep me here. My position is an interior one ; and the entrance of the harbor is not at all guarded by my guns, but is by heavy batteries which are not under the fire of my guns.432
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ I do not worry myself about these questions. They are not for me to discuss or decide, and I know that God will order all things aright, and I am content with that knowledge.”
On the 18th of March, while the secesh gunners were firing blank cartridges from the guns of the iron battery at Cummings’ Point, they discharged a gun that was accidentally loaded with ball. The ball struck the wharf of Fort Sumter close to the gate. Three or four of the ports of Sumter fronting the battery were at once opened, but no return shot was given, and two hours after a boat was sent to Major Anderson to explain the matter, who received the messenger in good part. This affair caused no little talk and excitement in Charleston.1
Major Anderson received no instructions from his government, and was sore perplexed. On the 1st of April, he wrote to Lieutenant-General Scott, saying : “ I think the government has left me too much to myself. It has given me no instructions, even when I have asked for them, and I think responsibilities of a higher and more important character have devolved upon me than are proper.” To the adjutant-general of the army he wrote:	Unless we receive supplies, I shall be
compelled to stay here without food, or to abandon this fort very early next week.” The next day he wrote : “ Our flag runs an hourly risk of being insulted, and my hands are tied by my orders ; and even if that were not the case, I have not the power to protect it. God grant that neither I nor any other officer of our army may be again placed in a position of such humiliation and mortification.”
Meanwhile, a measure for the relief of the beleaguered garrison had been planned. On the 12th of March, Mr. Fox, a relative of the Postmaster-General, who had proposed a plan of relief earlier, was sent to visit Charleston harbor, and, in company with Captain Hartstene, of the navy, who had joined the insurgents, was permitted by Governor Pickens to visit Fort Sumter on the 21st. They found that the garrison had provisions to last them until the 15th of April, and it was understood by them the fort must be surrendered or evacuated on that day. On his return to Washington, Mr. Fox reported to the President the fact.2
1	Charleston Mercury, March 19, 1861.
2	“ Major Anderson seemed to think it was too late to relieve the fort by any other means than by landing an army on Morris Island. He agreed with General Scott, that an entrance from the sea was impossible ; but, as we looked out upon the water from the parapet, it seemed very feasible, more especially as we heard the oars of a boat near the fort, which the sentry hailed, but we could not see her through the darkness until she almost touched the landing.
“ I found the garrison getting short of supplies, and it was agreed that I might reportFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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On the 3d of April, the mortar batteries on Morris Island fired into the schooner R H. Shannon, Captain Monts, of Boston, bound to Savannah with a cargo of ice. She had drifted, in a dense fog, through mistake, over Charleston bar. When the fog lifted, the captain, not knowing his whereabouts, found himself abreast of the fort on Morris Island, and, while cogitating over his latitude and longitude, was greeted by a gun from the fort. He immediately run up the stars and stripes, and in answer to that demonstration several 32-pound shots were fired, one of which passed through his main-sail, and another through his top-sail. In the midst of his dilemma, not understanding the object of this hostile demonstration, a boat from Fort Sumter made him acquainted with the facts, and he lost no time in putting to sea.1
Mr. Lincoln was now satisfied that a temporizing policy would not do, and, overruling the objections of the general-in-chief and military authorities, he sent for Mr. Fox, and verbally authorized him to fit out, according to his proposed plan, an expedition for the relief of Sumter. The written order was not given until the afternoon of the 4th of April, when the President informed Mr. Fox that, in order that “ faith as to Sumter ” might be kept, he should send a messenger at once to Governor Pickens that he was about to forward provisions only to the garrison ; and, if these supplies should be allowed to enter, no more troops would be sent there. These orders, issued by the Secretary of War to Mr. Fox, and by the Secretary of the Navy to Captain Mercer, the senior naval officer of the expedition, were as follows: —
“ War Department, April 4, 1861.
“Sir, — It having been decided to succor Fort Sumter, you have been selected for this important duty. Accordingly, you will take charge of the transports in New York having the troops and supplies on board to the entrance of Charleston harbor, and endeavor, in the first instance, to deliver the subsistence. If you are opposed in this, you are directed to report the fact to the senior naval officer off the harbor, who will be instructed by the Secretary of the Navy to use his entire force to open a passage, when you will, if possible, effect an entrance, and place both the troops and supplies in Fort Sumter. I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
“Simon Cameron,
“ Captain G. Y. Fox,	“ Secretary of War.
“Washington, D. C.”
that the 15th of April, at noon, would he the period beyond which he could not hold the fort, unless supplies were furnished.
“ I made no arrangements with Major Anderson for reinforcing or supplying the fort, nor did I inform him of my plan.” — Extracts from Mr. Fox’s letter.
1 Savannah Republican, April 5, 1861.
28434
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“Navy Department, April 5, 1861.
“Captain Samuel Mercer,
“Commanding United States Steamer Poivhatan, New York: ,
“ The United States steamers Powhatan, Pawnee, Pocahontas, and Harriet Lane will compose a naval force under your command, to he sent to the vicinity of Charleston, S. C., for the purpose of aiding in carrying out the objects of an expedition of which the War Department has charge.
“ The primary object of the expedition is to provision Fort Sumter, for which purpose the War Department will furnish the necessary transports. Should the authorities of Charleston permit the fort to be supplied, no further particular service will be required of the force under your command; and, after being satisfied that supplies have been received at the fort, the Powhatan, Pocahontas, and Harriet Lane will return to Hew York, and the Pawnee to Washington.
“ Should the authorities at Charleston, however, refuse to permit, or attempt to prevent, the vessel or vessels having supplies on board from entering the harbor, or from peaceably proceeding to Fort Sumter, you will protect the transports or boats of the expedition in the object of their mission, disposing of your force in such a manner as to open the way for their ingress, and afford, so far as practicable, security to the men and boats, and repelling by force, if necessary, all obstructions toward provisioning the fort and reinforcing it; for, in case of a resistance to the peaceable primary object of the expedition, a reinforcement of the garrison will also be attempted.. These purposes will be under the supervision of the War Department, which has charge of the expedition. The expedition has been intrusted to Captain G. Y. Fox, with whom you will put yourself in communication, and co-operate with him to accomplish and carry into effect its object.
“ You will leave Hew York with the Powhatan in time to be off Charleston bar, ten miles distant from and due east of the lighthouse, on the morning of the 11th instant, there to await the arrival of the'transport or transports with troops and stores. The Pawnee and Pocahontas will be ordered to join you there at the time mentioned, and also the Harriet Lane.
“ Gideon Welles,
“ Secretary of the Navy.”
Mr. Fox proceeded to Hew York on the 5th of April, and, by untiring industry and indomitable energy, was able to sail from thence on the morning of the 9th, with two hundred recruits, in the steamer Baltic, Captain Fletcher. The relief squadron consisted of the United States ships Powhatan, Captain Mercer, Pawnee, Commander Rowan, Pocahontas, Commander Gillis, revenue steamer Harriet Lane, Captain Faunce, and the steam-tugs Yankee, Uncle Ben, and Freeborn.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The Powhatan left New York on the 6th, hut when passing down New York Bay was, by a special order of the President, taken from the expedition by Lieutenant, now Admiral, David D. Porter, w7ho sailed in her to the relief of Fort Pickens, at the mouth of Pensacola Bay. The Pawnee left Norfolk on the 9th, and the Pocahontas the same place on the 10th. The tugs Freeborn and Uncle Ben left New York on the 7th, the Harriet Lane and tug Yankee on the 8th; and all were ordered to rendezvous off Charleston.
Soon after leaving New York, the expedition encountered a heavy storm, by which the Freeborn was driven back, the Uncle Ben obliged to put into Wilmington, N. C., where she was captured by the insurgents, and the Yankee, losing her smoke-stack, was not able to reach Charleston bar until too late to be of service.
The Baltic reached the bar on the morning of the 12th, just as the insurgents opened fire on Fort Sumter. The Pawnee and Harriet Lane were already there, with orders to report to the Powhatan, the Secretary of the Navy not having been advised of her change of orders. Mr. Fox boarded the Pawnee, informed Captain, now Vice-Admiral, Eowan of his orders, offered to send in provisions, and asked him to convoy the Baltic over the bar. Captain Eowan replied that “ his orders required him to remain ten miles east of the light, and await the Powhatan, and that he was not going in there to inaugurate civil war.” 1 Mr. Fox, in the Baltic, then stood toward the bar, followed by the Harriet Lane, Captain Faunce. “ As we neared the land,” says Mr. Fox in his narrative, “ heavy guns were heard, and the smoke and shells from the batteries which had just opened fire upon Sumter were distinctly visible.”
“ I immediately stood out to inform Captain Eowan, of the Pawnee, but met him coming in. He hailed me, and asked for a pilot, declaring his intention of standing into the harbor, and sharing the fate of his brethren of the army. I went on board, and informed him that I would answer for it; that the government did not expect any such
gallant sacrifice, having settled maturely upon the policy indicated in
*
the instructions to Captain Mercer and myself. No other naval vessels arrived during this day; but the steamer Nashville, from New York, and a number of merchant vessels, reached the bar, and awaited the result of the bombardment, giving indications to those inside of a large naval fleet off the harbor. The weather continued very bad, with a heavy sea; neither the Pawnee nor the Harriet Lane had boats or men to carry in supplies. Feeling sure that the Powhatan would
1 Mr. Fox’s statement.436
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
arrive during the night, as she had sailed from New York two days before us, I stood out to the appointed rendezvous, and made signals all night. The morning of the 13th was thick and foggy, with a very heavy ground-swell. The Baltic, feeling her way in, ran ashore on Rattlesnake shoal, but soon got off without damage. On account of the very heavy swell, she was obliged to anchor in deep water, several miles outside of the Pawnee and Harriet Lane.
“ Lieutenant Robert 0. Tyler, though suffering from sea-sickness, as were most of the recruits, organized a boat’s crew and exercised them notwithstanding the heavy sea, for the purpose of having at least one boat, in the absence of the Powhatan’s, to reach Fort Sumter. At eight A.M., I took this boat, and in company with Lieutenant Hudson pulled in to the Pawnee. As we approached that vessel, a great volume of black smoke issued from Fort Sumter, through which the flash of Major Anderson’s guns still replied to the rebel fire. The quarters of the fort were on fire, and most of our military and navy officers believed the smoke to proceed from an attempt to smoke out the garrison with fire-rafts.
“ As it was the opinion of the officers that no boats with any load in them could have reached Sumter in this heavy sea, and no tugboats had arrived, it was proposed to capture a schooner near us, loaded with ice, which was done, and preparations at once commenced to fit her out, and load her for entering the harbor the following night. I now learned, for the first time, that Captain Rowan had received a note from Captain Mercer, of the Powhatan, dated at New York, the 6th, the day he sailed, stating that the Powhatan was detached, by order of superior authority, from the duty to which she was assigned off Charleston, and had sailed for another destination.”
Before the schooner could be prepared, Fort Sumter had surrendered.
The Pocahontas arrived at two p.m., and half an hour after, the flag of Sumter was shot away and not raised again; but we are anticipating that event. The plan for supplying Fort Sumter required three hundred sailors, a full supply of armed launches, and three tugs. The Powhatan, secretly detached from the expedition, carried the sailors and launches, and the tugs had been disabled and put back, which, with the unfavorable state of the sea and weather, are reasons enough for the non-success of the attempt.
The President, in a letter to Mr. Fox, dated May 1, 1861, said: “I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practi-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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oability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test, by reason of a gale well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable; the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground; while, by an accident for which you were in no wise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent was, you were deprived of a war vessel with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprise.”
The message of President Lincoln to Governor Pickens, concerning sending supplies to Sumter, was made known at Charleston on the morning of the 8th of April, and produced intense excitement. General Beauregard sent a telegram to Montgomery, which was replied to on the 10th, conditionally authorizing him to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter, and, if that was refused, to reduce it.
At two p.m., Thursday, the 11th, Beauregard sent a letter to Major Anderson, in which he conveyed a demand to evacuate Sumter. Anderson at once replied, by letter, that his sense of honor and obligations to his government would not allow him to comply, but remarked to one of the Confederate officers : “ I will await the first shot, and if you do not batter us to pieces we will be starved out in a few days.” This remark was telegraphed to Montgomery. The rebel Secretary of War, L. P. Walker, telegraphed back that if Major Anderson would state the time when he would evacuate, and agree that, meanwhile, he would not use his guns against them, unless theirs should be employed against Fort Sumter, Beauregard was authorized to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or its equivalent was refused, he was to reduce the fort in any way his j udgment deemed practicable. This message was delivered to Major Anderson at one a.m., the 12th, when the latter, in ignorance of what government had been doing for his relief, replied, that, should he not receive controlling instructions from his government, or additional supplies, he would leave the fort by noon on the 15th. By request of Colonel Chesnut, one of the messengers, Anderson’s reply was handed to them unsealed. Scouts had discovered the Harriet Lane and Pawnee off the bar, and reported the fact to Beauregard, who directed his messenger to receive an open reply from Anderson, and if it should not be satisfactory, they were to exercise the discretionary powers given them. They accordingly .consulted a few minutes in the room of the officer of the guard, and deciding it was not satisfactory, at 3.20 A.M., April 12, addressed a note to Anderson, saying: “By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.” They immediately left the fort,438
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
when the flag was raised, the postern closed, the sentinels withdrawn from the parapet, and orders given that the men should not leave the bomb-proofs without special orders. Patiently, firmly, almost silently, the little hand in Fort Sumter waited the passage of that pregnant hour. Suddenly the dull booming of a gun, fired by Lieutenant Farley, from a signal battery on James Island, near Fort Johnston, was heard, and a fiery shell flying through the black night exploded immediately over Fort Sumter. The sound of that mortar was the signal for battle. After a brief pause, the cannon on Cummings’ Point opened fire. To Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia, a gray-haired old man who committed suicide at the close of the war, unable to survive the defeat of his cause, belongs the infamous honor of firing the first shot against our flag. He hastened to Morris Island when hostilities were near, was assigned to duty in the Palmetto Guard, and asked the privilege of firing the first gun on Sumter. It was granted, and he has acquired an unenviable fame.1
This aged enthusiast committed suicide, by a singular coincidence, on the 17th of June, 1865, the anniversary of the battle of Bunker’s Hill, at the residence of his son, near Danville, Va., by blowing off the top of his head with a gun, first writing a note, in which he said, “ I cannot survive the liberties of my country.” The first shot from Cummings’ Point was quickly followed by others from the semicircle of military works arrayed around the fort for its reduction. Full thirty heavy guns and mortars opened at once. For two hours and more there was no reply from Sumter, the storm of shot and shell seeming to make no impression upon it. This silence mortified the insurgents. Anderson gave orders for the men to remain in the bomb-proofs. He had men enough to work but nine guns, and it was necessary to guard against casualties. At half-past six the garrison partook of a hearty breakfast, little disturbed by the hurling of the iron hail outside of them. It was now broad daylight, and at seven o’clock Anderson ordered a reply to the attack. The first gun was fired at the Stevens battery on Morris Island by Captain Abner Doubleday,2 and a fire from the fort on all the principal opposing
1	Even this has been denied him. In 1875, the Rev. John Douglass wrote to the * Southern Home ’ that he heard the first gun, and that it was fired by Captain George James (afterwards killed at Gettysburg) from a little sand battery on James Island ; the second gun wTas fired by Lieutenant Wade Hampton Gibbes, also from James Island ; the third gun, by Mr. Ruffin, from Morris Island ; and the fourth gun was from Sullivan’s Island ; and the fifth, from the iron battery.
2	General Doubleday informed me that he fired the first shotted gun from Sumter at the rebel batteries. The bombardment of Sumter was opened on Henry Clay’s birthday,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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batteries followed. The first solid shot from Sumter hurled at Fort Moultrie was fired by Assistant-Surgeon S. W. Crawford. It lodged in the sand-bags, and was carried by the special reporter of the ‘ Charleston Mercury ’ to the office of that journal.
At noon on that fearful day, Surgeon Crawford, who had ascended the parapet to make observations, reported that, through the stormy, misty air, he saw the relief squadron, bearing the dear old flag. They signalled their mission by dipping their ensigns. Sumter could not respond, for its ensign was entangled in the halyards, which had been cut by the enemy’s shot, but it still waved defiantly. The vessels could not cross the bar. Its sinuous and shifting channels were always difficult in fine weather; now, the buoys had been removed, ships sunken in the channels, and a blinding storm was prevailing. During the day, the men worked at the guns without intermission, and received food and drink at their posts. The supply of cartridges began to fail, and before sunset all but six of the guns were abandoned. These were worked until after dark, when the port-holes were closed, and the garrison was divided into watches for work and repose. Several men had been wounded, but none mortally. Thus closed the first day of actual war upon our flag.
The night was dark and stormy; all night long the mortars of the rebels kept up a slow bombardment. The naval commanders outside were prevented by the storm from sending in relief. Before dawn, the storm ceased and the sun rose in splendor; but earlier than that the vigorous bombardment and cannonade at the devoted fortress was renewed. Four times, on Friday, the buildings inside the fort were set on fire, and the fires extinguished; the barracks and officers’ quarters were again and again ignited, and at last destroyed. The safety of the magazine, and the reserving of sufficient powder to last until the 15th, became now the absorbing care of the commander.1
and the fortress was surrendered on Jefferson’s birthday. It may interest those curious in such coincidences that the first conflict of the civil war in the streets of Baltimore, April 19, 1861, was on the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord.
In the New York Stock Exchange, April 12, when Kentucky sixes were called, the whole board sprang to their feet and gave three cheers for the gallant Major Anderson. —■ Evening Post.
1 A gentleman who was present states that a 96-pound shell entered Sumter just above the magazine, but outside of it, descended through a block of granite ten or twelve inches thick, and exploded, one of its fragments, weighing near twenty pounds, striking the door of the magazine, and so bending it inwards that it was found impossible to close it without the aid of a mechanic. Within a few hours after this, a red-hot shot from Fort Moultrie passed through the outer wall of the magazine, penetrated the inner wall four inches, and then fell to the ground. All this time, grains of powder,440
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Blankets and flannel shirts, the sleeves of the latter being readily converted, were used for making cartridges, and every man within the fort was fully employed. The last particle of rice was cooked, and nothing left for the garrison to eat but salt pork. The flames spread, and the heat became most intolerable. The fire approached the magazine, and its doors were closed and locked; glowing embers were scattered all about the fort. The main gate took fire, and very soon the blackened sally-port was open to the besiegers. The powder in the service magazine was so exposed to the flames that ninety barrels of it were thrown into the sea. The assailants knew that the fort was on fire, and that its inmates were dwellers in a heated furnace ; yet they redoubled the rapidity of their fire, and poured in upon it red-hot shot from most of their guns. The men were frequently compelled to lie upon the ground, with wet handkerchiefs on their faces, to prevent suffocation by smoke; yet they would not surrender, but bravely kept the old flag flying.1
Eight times had the flag-staff been hit without serious injury; but at twenty minutes before one o'clock it was shot away near the peak,
and the flag, with a portion of the staff, fell down through the thick smoke among the gleaming embers. Through the blinding, scorching tempest Lieutenant Hall rushed, and snatched it up before it could take fire. It was immediately carried by Lieutenant Snyder to the ramparts, and Sergeant Hart,2 who had been permitted to come to the fort with Mrs. Anderson in January, and remained after she had left, on a pledge that he should not be enrolled as a soldier, sprang upon the sand-bags, and with the assistance of Lyman, a Baltimore mason, fastened the fragment of the staff there, and left the soiled banner flying defiantly, while shot and shell were filling the air like hail, repeating an historical feat performed near the
spilled by the men in passing to and from the casements and magazine, were lying loose upon the floor, — ignited by a spark, they would have blown the structure to atoms. — Charleston Courier, June 11.
1	In this account of the attack on Fort Sumter I have followed and condensed the narrative in Lossing’s {History of the Civil War,’ examining and quoting largely from other authors and official reports. Mr. Lossing was furnished by Major Anderson with his letter-books and papers, and had unusual sources for correct information.
2	Hall was a musician, but subsequently received a lieutenant’s commission in the regular army. Hart was a sergeant of the New York Metropolitan Police. He had served with Major Anderson in the Mexican war.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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same spot by the brave and patriotic Sergeant Jasper, eighty-five years before. The halyards were so inextricably tangled that the flag could not be righted. It was therefore nailed to the staff and planted upon the ramparts.1
At half-past one, General Wigfall, who had been United States senator from Texas, accompanied by one white and two colored men, came in a little boat to the fort, bearing a white handkerchief as a flag of truce, and demanded admittance. He asked to enter an embrasure, but was denied. “ I am General Wigfall,” he said,if and wish to see Major Anderson.” The soldier told him to stay there till he could see his commander. “ For God’s sake, let me in,” cried the gallant new-made general, “ I can’t stand out here in the firing.” He then hurried around to the sally-port, where he had asked an interview with Anderson. Finding the passage strewn with the burning timbers of the fort, in utter despair he ran around the fort waving his white handkerchief imploringly toward his fellow-insurgents, to stop their firing. It was useless, the missiles fell thick and fast, and at last he was permitted to crawl into an embrasure, after he had given up his sword to a private, and when almost exhausted with fatigue and affright. Meeting several officers at the embrasure, trembling with excitement, he exclaimed: “ I am General Wigfall! I come from General Beauregard, who wants to stop this bloodshed ! You are on fire ; your flag is down; let us stop this firing ! ” One of the officers replied, Our flag is not down, sir, it is yet flying from the ramparts.” Wigfall saw it where Peter Hart and his comrades had nailed it, and said, “ Well, well, I want to stop this.” Holding out his sword and handkerchief, he said to one of the officers, “ Will you hoist this ? ” “ Ho, sir,” was the reply: “ it is for you, General Wigfall, to stop them.” “ Will any one of you hold this out of the embrasure ? ” he asked. Ho one offering, he said, “ May I hold it, then ? ”	“ If you wish to,” was
the cool reply. Wigfall sprang into the port-hole, and waved the white flag several times. A shot striking near, frightened him away, when he cried out, excitedly, “ Will you let some one show this flag ? ” Corporal Charles Bringhurst, by permission, took the handkerchief and
1 Mr. Raymond, at the Union Park meeting, said: “ I heard an anecdote to-day from Major Anderson. During the attack on Fort Sumter, a report came here that the flag, on the morning of the fight, was half-mast. I asked him if it was true, and he said there was not a word of truth in the report. During the firing, one of the halyards was shot away, and the flag dropped down, in consequence, a few feet. The rope caught in the staff and could not he reached, so that the flag could neither he lowered nor hoisted; and, said the Major, ‘ God Almighty nailed that flag to the mast, and I could not have lowered it if I had tried' "442
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
waved it out of the port-hole; hut he soon abandoned the perilous duty, exclaiming, “ I won’t hold that flag, for they don’t respect it. They are firing at it.” Wigfall replied, impatiently, “ They fired at me two or three times, and I stood it; I should think you might stand it once.” Turning to Lieutenant Davis, he said, “ If you will show a white flag from your ramparts, they will cease firing.” “ It shall be done,” said Davis, “ if you request it for that purpose, and that alone of holding a conference with Major Anderson.”
Major Anderson, with Lieutenant Snyder and Assistant-Surgeon Crawford, had in the mean time passed out of the sally-port to meet Wigfall. He was not there, so they returned, and just as Lieutenant Davis had agreed to display a white flag, they came up. Wigfall said to Major Anderson, “ I come from General Beauregard, who wishes to stop this, sir.” “Well, sir!” said Anderson, rising upon his toes, and settling firmly upon his heels, as he looked him in the face, with sharp inquiry. “You have defended your flag nobly, sir,” continued Wigfall. “You have done all that can be done, sir. Your fort is on fire. Let us stop this. Upon what terms will you evacuate the fort, sir ? ” Anderson replied, “ General Beauregard already knows the terms upon which I will evacuate this fort, sir. Instead of noon on the 15th, I will go now.” “I understand you to say,” said Wigfall, eagerly, “ that you will evacuate this fort now, sir, upon the same terms proposed to you by General Beauregard ? ” Anderson answered, “ Yes, sir, upon those terms only, sir.” “ Then,” said Wigfall, inquiringly, “ the fort is to be ours ? ”	“ Yes, sir, upon those conditions,”
answered Anderson. “Then I will return to General Beauregard,” said Wigfall, and immediately left.1 Believing what had been said to him to be true, Major Anderson allowed a white flag to be raised over the fort. At a little before ten o’clock, Colonels Chesnut, Pryor, Miles, and Captain Lee, went over from General Beauregard, who was at Fort Moultrie, to inquire the meaning of the white flag. When informed of the visit of Wigfall, they exchanged significant glances and smiles, and Colonel Chesnut frankly informed Major Anderson that the Texan militia general had not seen Beauregard for the last two days. Wishing to secure for himself the honor of procuring the surrender of Fort Sumter, Wigfall had, by' misrepresentations, obtained leave from the rebel commander on Morris Island to go to the fort with a white flag in his hand and a falsehood on his lips. Assured of
1 This account of 'W’igfalTs adventure is from Lossing’s ‘ Civil War,’ vol. i. pp. 326-327. Mr. Lossing derived it from the written statements of Captain Seymour, Surgeon Crawford, and Private Thompson, and the verbal statements of Major Anderson.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Wigfall’s mendacity, Anderson said to the new deputation, “That white flag shall come down immediately.” They begged him to leave matters as they were until they could see General Beauregard. He did so, and the firing ceased. At two p.m., the Pocahontas joined the relief fleet outside, and at half-past two the flag of Sumter was shot away and not raised again.
During the afternoon and early evening, several deputations from General Beauregard visited Major Anderson, endeavoring to obtain better terms than he had proposed; but he was firm. They offered assistance in extinguishing the flames in Sumter. He declined it, regarding it as an adroit method of asking him to surrender, which he had resolved never to do. Finally, between seven and eight o’clock in the evening, Major D. B. Jones, accompanied by Colonels Miles and Pryor, and Captain Hartstene, formerly of our navy, arrived at the fort with a letter from Beauregard, containing an agreement for the evacuation of the fort, according to Anderson’s terms; namely, the departure of the garrison, with company arms and property, and all private property, and the privilege of saluting and retaining his flag. Anderson accepted the agreement, and detailed Lieutenant Snyder to accompany Captain Hartstene to the relief squadron, outside, to make arrangements for the departure of the garrison. A part of that night the defenders of Fort Sumter enjoyed undisturbed repose. Hot one of their number had been killed or seriously wounded in that thirty-six hour bombardment, during which over three thousand shot and shell were hurled at the fort. The same extraordinary immunity from casualty was claimed by the rebels; and it is said the only living thing killed in the conflict was a fine horse belonging to General Dunnovant, which had been hitched to Fort Moultrie. It was too extraordinary for ready belief, and for a long time there was doubt about the matter, at home and abroad: testimony shows that it was true.
A fortnight later, a correspondent of f Vanity Fair’ sung in the following strain : —
u So, to make the story short,
The traitors took the fort,
After thirty hours7 sport With their halls;
But the victory is not theirs,
Though their brazen banner Hares From its walls.
u It were better they should dare a The lion in his lair,444
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Or defy the grizzly hear In his den,
Than to wake the fearful cry That is raising up on high From our men.
u To our banner we are clinging,
And a song we are singing,
Whose chorus is ringing From each mouth;
His the old constitution,
And a stern retribution to the South.”
The news soon spread in Charleston. Governor Pickens, who had watched the bombardment all Saturday morning with a telescope, in the evening addressed the excited populace from the balcony of the Charleston Hotel. “ Thank God! ” he exclaimed, “ the war is open, and we will conquer or perish. We have humbled the flag of the “United States. I can say to you, it is the first time in the history of this country that the stars and stripes have been humbled. That proud flag was never lowered before to any nation on the earth. We have lowered it in humility before the palmetto and Confederate flags ; and we have compelled them to raise by their side the white flag, and ask for an honorable surrender. The flag of the United States has triumphed for seventy years; but to-day, the 13th of April, it has been humbled, and humbled before the glorious little State of South Carolina.”
The populace were wild with delight, and indulged in a saturnalia of excitement in the rebellious city.
The next morning being Sunday, the fall of Sumter was commemorated in the Charleston churches. The venerable bishop of the diocese, Thomas Frederic Davis, D.D., wholly blind, and physically feeble, “ was led by the rector to the sacred desk ” in old St. Phillip’s Church, and addressed the people with a few stirring words. He said, “Your boys and mine were there, and it was right they should be there.” He declared it to be his belief that the contest had been begun by the South Carolinians “ in the deepest conviction of duty to God, and after laying their cause before God, and God had most signally blest their dependence on Him.” Bishop Lynd, of the Eoman Catholic Church, spoke exultingly of the result of the conflict, and a Te Detom was chanted in the Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar,1 where he was officiating.
1 At Richmond, Va., there was great rejoicing over the fall of Sumter; one hundred guns were fired. Confederate flags were everywhere displayed, while music and illumina-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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On Sunday morning, April 14, 1861, long before dawn, Major Anderson and his command made preparations for leaving the fort. These were completed at an early hour. Lieutenant Snyder and Captain Hartstene now returned, accompanied by Commander Gillis, commanding the Pocahontas; and about the same time the steamer Isabel, provided by the military authorities of Charleston for carrying the garrison out to the Baltic, approached the fort.
When every thing was in readiness, the battle-torn flag, which had been unfurled over Fort Sumter four months before, with prayers for the protection of those beneath it, was raised above the ramparts, and the cannon commenced saluting it. It was Major Anderson’s intention to fire one hundred guns, but only fifty were discharged, because of a sad accident. Some fixed ammunition near the gun was ignited, and the explosion instantly killed Private David Hough, mortally wounded Private Edward Gallway, and injured several others. The ' Palmetto Guard/ sent over from Morris Island, with the venerable Edmund Ruffin as its color-bearer, entered the fort when the salute was ended, and after the garrison had departed, and buried the dead soldier with military honors.
At the close of the salute, when the flag was lowered, the garrison, in full dress, left the fort and embarked on the Isabel, the band playing 'Yankee Doodle.’ When Major Anderson left the sally-port, it struck up ' Hail to the Chief.’ The last to retire was the surgeon, who attended the poor wounded soldiers as long as possible. Soon afterward a party from Charleston, composed of Governor Pickens and suite, General Beauregard and his aids, and several distinguished citizens, went to Fort Sumter in a steamer, took formal possession of it, and raised the Confederate and palmetto flags. It was evacuated, not surrendered4 The sovereignty of the republic symbolized by the
tions were the order of the evening. Governor Letcher was serenaded, and addressed the people. — Correspondent Neio York Herald, April 14.
1 The night after the evacuation of Fort Sumter, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were serenaded at Montgomery ; and his secretary of war, L. P. Walker, of Alabama, uttered these words : “ No man could tell where the war commenced this day would end, but he would prophesy that the flag which now flaunts the breeze here would float over the dome of the old Capitol at Washington before the 1st of May.”
In 1860, before the passage of the ordinance of secession by South Carolina, Captain Edward Mills, of the bark Jones, of the Palmetto line of packets, raised a palmetto flag at his masthead in New York harbor ; the vessel was mobbed, but he did not strike the flag. On his return to South Carolina, a palmetto cane was presented him by members of the Palmetto Guard, and he in turn transferred to them this the first disloyal flag hoisted in the struggle. At the siege of Sumter it marked their parade-ground, and was used in truce-boats, and after the surrender was the first flag raised on its walls. It is still owned by the Palmetto Guards. Time and exposure have dimmed its lustre. The446
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
flag had not been yielded up. That flag had been lowered, but not given up; dishonored, but not captured. It was borne away by the gallant commander, with a resolution to raise it again over the battered fortress, or be wrapped in it as his winding-sheet at last. Precisely on the anniversary of that day, — after four years of civil war, — Major Anderson, then a major-general in the army of the United States, again raised this tattered flag over the ruins of Fort Sumter, whose walls had been shaken and crumbled by the Union batteries arrayed against it.
The Isabel lay under the walls of the fort, waiting a favoring tide, until Monday morning, when she conveyed the garrison to the Baltic. Their late opponents, impressed loith the gallantry of their defence, stood on the beach 'with uncovered heads, as a token of their respect, as the vessel passed. When all the garrison were on board the Baltic, the precious flag for which they had fought so gallantly was raised to the masthead and saluted with cheers and by the guns of the other vessels of the relief squadron. It was again raised when the Baltic entered the harbor of New York on the 18tli, and was greeted by salutes from the forts and the plaudits of thousands of welcoming spectators.1 Off
field of tlie flag is white, with a green palmetto-tree in the centre, and a red star in the upper corner near the staff. — Charleston (S. C.) News.
1 A correspondent of the ‘Army and Navy Journal,’ who wrote from Philadelphia, Nov. 21, 1863, over the signature ‘C.,’ says that with the boat’s crew that was taken in the unsuccessful assault upon Fort Sumter a flag was captured, which Beauregard and his confederates received with unstifled bursts of joy, supposing it to be the flag which Major Anderson lowered with a salute when he was obliged to evacuate the fort, and that it had been carried by the storming party to rehoist in triumph where it formerly waved. ‘C.’ [probably Surgeon Crawford] says, “ When Anderson’s flag was lowered at Fort Sumter, our Spartan seventy determined to cut it into pieces, and keep the shreds as mementos of their martyrdom. One of Anderson’s principal officers, who is now a general, was at my house just after his return from Sumter ; and as a great favor, after telling the story, gave me a little scrap of his precious piece, which lies before me as I write.” “There may be,” he adds, “and usually are, two flags at a fort : one for fair weather and one for storms ; but only one flag was hoisted during the bombardment; only one braved the battle and the breeze ; only one can claim to be the flag of Fort Sumter. That flag exists only in the little carefully hoarded bits of bunting, and in the affections of all loyal Americans.” — Army and Navy Journal, Nov. 28, 1863.
Another correspondent, ‘ II.,’ dating from Washington, Dec. 1,1863, says, “I have in my possession a well-worn piece of bunting, which was presented to me with the following letter : ‘ This is a piece of the original Fort Sumter flag flying at the time of the bombardment, in April, 1861. It was presented by General Anderson to Major-General Sumner, who carried it through the Peninsular campaign, and at the battle of Antietam and South Mountain, as his head-quarters flag. On his leaving the army of the Potomac it was obtained by a friend of mine, from whom I procured this piece.’ Perhaps this was from flag No. 2, to which your correspondent [C.] refers.” — Army and Navy Journal, Dec. 5, 1863.
Another correspondent, who signs himself ‘ B.,’ Rochester, N. Y., Dec. 7, 1863, says,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
447
Sandy Hook, Major Anderson wrote the following brief despatch to the Secretary of War : —
“Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the gorge wall seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames, and its doors closed from the effects of heat, four barrels and four cartridges of powder only being available, and no provisions but pork remaining, I accepted terms of evacuation offered by General Beauregard, being the same offered by him on the 11th inst., prior to the commencement of hostilities, and marched out of the fort, Sunday afternoon, the 14th inst., with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns.”
A month later (May 14, 1861), Major Anderson was honored by the President of the United States with the commission of a brigadier-general in appreciation of his distinguished services, and at the request of leading Kentuckians was appointed to a command in that State. His terrible experience in Fort Sumter had, however, so prostrated his nervous system, that he was compelled to abandon active service. He was placed upon the retired list in the autumn of 1863, and the following year was brevetted major-general.
After the war, General Anderson removed with his family to Europe, where he died, at Nice, October, 1871. His remains arrived at Fortress Monroe, Va., Feb. 4, 1872, in the steam frigate Guerriere, and were conveyed to New York, and finally, with the battle-flag of Sumter waving over them, reached their last and appropriate resting-place at West Point, April 3, 1872.
On Saturday, the 18th of February, 1865, precisely four years after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis at Montgomery as “ Provisional
“ I would like to state that I have in my possession a piece of the flag, presented to me by the General himself, with the following indorsement : * In compliance with the request
contained in Mr. ——’s note, of-inst., General Anderson takes pleasure in sending
him a small piece of the Fort Sumter flag.’ ”
Still another correspondent, ‘ S.’ [General Truman Seymour], dating from Folly Island, S. C., Dec. 3, 1863, says, 4 C.’ is certainly in error, arising, doubtless, from a misunderstanding of the information given ; “ shreds were certainly cut from the flag as most precious memorials, but they were only shreds, and did not materially affect its size or condition. After being lowered at Sumter, the flag was hoisted on the Baltic, which steamer transferred Anderson and his command to the North : it was displayed at the great demonstration in Union Square soon afterwards, and is now safely deposited in New York.” —Army and Navy Journal, Dec. 19, 1863.
“Dr. Etta Paine, a feminine surgeon, who did service during the war, displayed from her window in Westerly, on Decoration Day, the shot-riddled flag from Sumter which Major Anderson had given her, and received a serenade from a patriotic band.” — New York Tribune, June 12, 1875.448
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
President of the Southern Confederacy/’ the first warlike act which followed that assumption was avenged at the place where the flag of the United States was lowered by its own soldiers to the maddened instruments of the Rebellion. About the same hour that the flag floated over the capitol at Montgomery in rejoicing at the birth of a new political monster, the stars and stripes were re-raised over the first of “ the forts and places captured by actual warfare. There was something -very significant in this coincidence. Four years before, the Rebellion had commenced its cruel experiment in pride, confidence, and defiance. The dearest spot in all its territories, the retention of which was its highest hope and effort, was the pestilential city in which the idea of secession and ruin had been nursed for thirty years, and from which the frenzy stole out like malaria, until it enveloped the whole South."1
There has been considerable dispute as to w7ho is entitled to the honor of first re-raising the stars and stripes over Fort Sumter after its evacuation. Lieutenant-Colonel A. G. Bennett, Twenty-first United States Colored Troop, commanding at Morris Island, in his official report, says : “ On the morning of the 18th of February, I received information that led me to believe the lines and defences guarding the city of Charleston had been deserted by the enemy. ... I directed Major Hennessy to proceed to Fort Sumter, and there replace our flag. The flag was replaced over the southeast angle of Fort Sumter at nine A.M.” The troops were conveyed to the fort, according to one account, by the steamer W. W. Coit, General Gillmore’s staff-boat, and the flag from her masthead was hoisted over the fort in the place of the ‘ stars and bars.’ The honor of hoisting the flag has been claimed for Major Hennessy, Lieutenant Bean, of the Fifty-second Pennsylvania Volunteers, Captain R. W. Bannatyne, of the same regiment, and Captain Henry M. Bragg, aid-de-camp to General Gillmore. Another account states that an oar and a boat-hook, lashed together, furnished an impromptu flag-staff. According to still another account, the honor belongs to the navy; and the first cutter of the United States monitor Catskill, distancing a boat from another United States steamer, carrying Lieutenant Charles W. Tracy, Surgeon Coles, Third Assistant-Engineer Henry M. Test, and two sailors, landed at Fort Sumter about eight A.M. on the morning of evacuation, and planted a pole they brought with them, and raised the first flag on the battered fort. They did not see a flag flying when approaching the fort, nor after they landed.
1 New York Tribune, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 1865.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
449
After their return to the Catskill, a second boat put off from the steamer to visit Fort Moultrie at half-past nine a.m.1
Dr. Kauffman, assistant-surgeon of the Fifty-second Pennsylvania Volunteers, states that Major Hennessy went to Fort Sumter at seven a.m. in a pontoon-boat, that thirteen rebels surrendered to him; and that another small detachment of the Third Ehode Island Artillery, under command of Lieutenant John Hackett, went in a pontoon-boat, and took possession of Moultrie and what was left of battery/Bee and that detachments of the Fifty-second Pennsylvania Volunteers occupied Castle Pinckney, the citadel, Fort Johnson, and the public buildings.2
On the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter, four years before, and a few weeks after the fall of Charleston, the Union flag borne away by Major Anderson, which had been preserved in the vaults of the Metropolitan Bank, New York, was, by the President's appointment, again flung to the breeze over that fortress, which, from the bombardments it had received from both parties, was reduced to a heap of ruins.
The following are the official orders, directing the re-raising of ‘ our flag ’ over its battered rampart: —
“War Department, Adjutant-General’s Office, “Washington, March 27, 1865.
“ General Orders, No. 50. Ordered, first, That at the hour of noon, on the 14th day of April, 1865, Brevet Major-General Anderson will raise and plant upon the ruins of Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, the same United States flag that floated over the battlements of that fort during the rebel assault, and which was lowered and saluted by him and the small force of his command when the works were evacuated on the 14th day of April, 1861.
“Second, That the flag, when raised, be saluted by one hundred guns from
1	Philadelphia Times, Feb. 21, March 2, and March 17, 1879.
2	The Confederate battle-flag, which had waved over the battlements of Sumter during its siege and bombardment by the Union forces, is now in the possession of the Washington Light Infantry, of Charleston, S. C., and bears the following inscription : —
“This Battle Flag,
Consecrated by the life-blood of many gallant soldiers, floated over
Fort Sumter,
Major Huguemie commanding, from 20th July, 1864, to 19th February, 1865, During which period occurred the sixty day-and-night bombardment,
The heaviest and most continuous fire made on a single fort during the war.”
There are rents in the flag indicating ten shot-holes, and only nine stars out of thirteen are shown now. It is stained and much faded. It was taken down previous to the evacuation of the fort. See note, p. 532.
29450
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Fort Sumter, and by a national salute from every fort and rebel battery that fired upon Fort Sumter.
“ Third, That suitable ceremonies be had upon the occasion, under the direction of Major-General William T. Sherman, whose military operations compelled the rebels to evacuate Charleston, or, in his absence, under the charge of Major-General Q. A. Gillmore, commanding the department. Among the ceremonies will be the delivery of a public address by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
“ Fourth, That the naval forces at Charleston, and their commander on that station, be invited to participate in the ceremonies of the occasion.
“ By order of the President of the United States.
“ Edwin M. Stanton,
“ Secretary of War.
“ Official:
“ E. D. Townsend,
“ Assistant Adjutant-General.”
In response to the invitations extended by the President and Secretary of War, Rear-Admiral Dahlgren issued the following order: —
“ Flagship Philadelphia, “Charleston Harbor, S. C., April 5, 1865.
“ General Orders, No. 32. By order of his Excellency President Lincoln, the flag of the Union that was hauled down at Fort Sumter on the 14th of April, 1861, is to be restored to its place by Major-General Anderson on the next anniversary of that event.
“ The naval forces at Charleston, and myself, are invited to participate.
“ Conformably to the above, the United States vessels Pawnee, Tusca-rora, Sonoma, Passaic, Kaatskill, Adams, and such others as can be spared will take position, as hereafter directed, near Fort Sumter, by six o’clock the morning of the 14th.
“ As soon as the ceremony begins in the fort, each vessel will dress full in colors.
9
“ When the flag is hoisted on Sumter, each vessel will man yards, or rigging if without yards, and give three cheers; then lay in and down ; which, having been done, each vessel will fire a salute of one hundred guns, beginning with the senior ship’s first gun, and not continuing after her last gun.
“ A body of seamen and marines will be landed, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Williams, who is the only officer present of those who led the assault on Sumter which I ordered Sept. 9, 1863, and will therefore represent the officers and men of that column.1
1 Commander E. P. Williams was drowned while in command of the United States steam-ship Oneida, when that vessel was sunk in Yedo Bay, Japan, by collision with the English steam-packet Bombay.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
451
“ The various details will be regulated by Fleet Captain Bradford.
“ All the officers of the squadron who can be spared from duty are invited to be present, and to accompany me to the fort on that occasion.
“John A. Dahlgren,
“ Commanding South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.”
Pertinent to the occasion is the following order, issued by the brigadier in command at Wilmington, 1ST. C.: —
“ Head-quarters, District of Wilmington, “Wilmington, N. C., April 11, 1865.
“ Three years ago this day, a portion of the troops of this command took possession of Fort Pulaski. Here, also, are men who were engaged in the capture of Forts Wagner and Fisher, and the siege of Sumter. To them the brigadier-general commanding takes great pleasure in publishing the following despatch received by him from Major-General Schofield, commanding the department: —
“ It having been reported at their head-quarters that a salute of one hundred guns was fired at Wilmington on the 14th of April, 1861, in honor of the fall of Fort Sumter, the commanding general directs that you will cause a salute of one hundred guns to be fired on the 14th of the present month, from rebel guns and with rebel ammunition, in honor of the restoration of the stars and stripes over the same fort.
“ Captain A. C. Harvey is charged with the execution of the order, and he will consult with Lieutenant P. Williams, depot ordinance officer, as to the selection of guns and ammunition.
“ By order of Brigadier-General Hawley.
“E. Lewis Moore,
“ Captain and A. A. 6r.”
Though the day coincided with Good Priday, it could not change the official date of the event commemorated, nor was the celebration discordant with the religious meditations Good Friday provokes in the minds of so many Christians.
A large number of citizens went from New York in the steamers Arago and Ocean us to assist in the ceremonies. Colonel Stewart L. Woodford, of the One Hundredth and Twenty-seventh New York Eegiment, who, on the evacuation of Charleston, was appointed its military governor, had charge of the exercises at the fort. When the multitude was assembled around the flag-staff, William B. Bradbury led it in singing his song of f Victory at Last/ followed by ‘Rally Round the Flag, Boys.’ The Rev. Matthew Harris, chaplain United States army, who made the prayer, Dec. 27, 1860, at the raising of the flag over Sumter, now offered an introductory452
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
prayer, and pronounced a blessing on the old flag. Dr. R S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, read selections from the Psalms. Then General Townsend, assistant adjutant-general of the United States army, read Major Anderson’s despatch of April 18, 1861, announcing the fall of Sumter. This was followed by the appearance of Sergeant Hart with a bag containing the precious old flag. It was attached to the halyards, when General Anderson, after a brief and touching address, hoisted it to the head of the flag-staff amid loud huzzas, which were followed by singing the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner.’ Then six guns on the fort opened their loud voices, and were responded to by all the
tion closed the ceremonies, and thus Fort Sumter was formally repossessed by the government.
LOYAL FLAG-RAISINGS, FOLLOWING THE FALL OF FORT
“ Let the flag of our country wave from the spire of every church in the land, with nothing above it but the cross of Christ.” — Rev. E. A. Anderson.
u Oh, raise that glorious ensign high,
And let the nations see The flag for which our fathers fought To make our country free!
u From every hill, in every vale,
Where freemen tread the sod,
And from the spires where freemen meet For prayer and praise to God, — Unfurl the flag beneath hut this,
The cross of Calvary!77 — W.
The fall of Sumter created great enthusiasm throughout the loyal States, for the flag had come to have a new and strange significance. The heart of the nation swelled to avenge the insult cast by traitors on its glorious flag. It is said that even laborers wept in the streets for
Repossession of Fort Sumter
guns from all the batteries around which took part in the bombardment of the fort in 1861. When all became silent, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, the orator chosen for the occasion, pronounced an eloquent address. A benedic-
SUMTER, 1861FLAGr OF THE UNITED STATES.
453
the degradation of their country. One cry was raised, drowning all other voices, — “ War! war to restore the Union! war to avenge the flag! 551
When the stars and stripes went down at Sumter, they went up in every town and county in the loyal States. Every city, town, and village suddenly blossomed with banners. On forts and ships, from church-spires and flag-staffs, from colleges, hotels, store-fronts, and private balconies, from public edifices, everywhere the old flag was flung out, and everywhere it was hailed with enthusiasm; for its prose became poetry, and there was seen in it a sacred value which it had never before possessed.1 2 3 “ Woe betide the unfortunate householder,” said a correspondent to the ‘ Charleston News,5 3 “ where colors are wanting when called for. Every window-shutter is tied with the inevitable red, white, and blue, and dogs, even, are wrapped in the star-spangled banner. There is hardly a house in Philadelphia from which the triune colors are not now floating.55
The demand for flags was so great that the manufacturers could not furnish them fast enough. Bunting was exhausted, and recourse was had to all sorts of substitutes. In New York the demand for flags raised the price of bunting from four dollars seventy-five cents a piece to twenty-eight dollars, and book-muslin, used for the stars, usually worth six to ten cents, was sold for three dollars a yard. Loyal women wore miniature banners in their bonnets, and blended the colors with almost every article of dress; and men carried the* emblem on breast-pins and countless other devices. The patchwork of red, white, and blue, which had flaunted in their faces for generations without exciting much emotion, in a single day stirred the pulses of the people to battle, and became the inspiration of national effort. All at once the dear old flag meant the Declaration of Independence; it meant Lexington; it meant Bunker Hill and Saratoga (although only in the last-named battle had it been used); it meant freedom; it meant the honor and life of the republic; and a great crop of splendid banners came with the spring roses. Tens of thousands of youths donned the blue at the call of the President, and advanced in line of battle, impelled not more by a conscious hatred of treason, than by the wonderful glory that had been kindled in the flag.4 The President’s proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand men to rally to
1	Story of the American war.
2	Morris and Croffet’s ‘ Military and Civil History of Connecticut,’ 1861-65, p. 55.
3	Charleston News, May 3.
4	Military and Civil History of Connecticut, 1861-65.454
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
the protection of the flag and the Union (certainly ciouble the number that had ever been assembled at one time under our banner), was addressed to the governors of all the States on the receipt of the news. The answers from the slave States were in terms of treason, defiance, and'contempt; the responses from the free States were unanimous, full, and complete, and so instantaneous that the proclamation seemed adopted by acclamation. Before a day had passed, more than twice the number called for was ready at his command.
The flag of the republic—how dear to those who were true to it they never knew till then! — was raised on that Monday morning after Sumter, by spontaneous impulse, upon every staff which stood on loyal ground; and from the Lakes to the Potomac, from the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Mississippi, the eye could hardly turn without meeting the bright banner which symbolized in its stripes the union and the initial struggle, and in its stars the growth and glory of the nation and government which the insurgents had banded together to destroy.1
In a recent address, Major Lambert, who risked his life in defence of our flag, eloquently said: “ The flag was dear to us, because it symbolized the glories of our early history; but our interest was in its past association, rather than in its present promise or future hope.
“ Travellers told us of the high emotions awakened by the sight of the flag in foreign lands; but we scarcely realized their story. Now find then some brave deed beneath its folds, inspired by its presence, quickened our pulses, — as when the gallant little army in Mexico, over hard-fought fields, reached the capital, and planted the banner on the halls of the Montezumas, — but, after all, it was only a beautiful emblem, to be displayed on national gala-days, and then laid aside until their next recurrence.
“ Party lines divided us, and we believed our differences were too radical for us to be united upon any question of national importance. We were a plodding, prosaic people, proud of our past, anxious for the present, uncertain of the future.
“ When, lo! the shot on Sumter dispelled all doubt, dissipated all gloom, and transformed the nation. We trod a new earth, we breathed a purer air; a brighter heaven shone above us. The blood of our fathers coursed in our veins, and we knew it was for us they had suffered and died. The flag was no longer a mere historic emblem, it was a living principle worthy of the costliest sacrifice. We were no longer Whigs, Democrats, Republicans, — we were citizens of a
1 Harper’s History of tlie Great Rebellion.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
455
common country. We were living among heroes in a new heroic age.” 1
The following, one of many similar songs, shows the spirit of the times: —
“ OUR STAR-GEMMED BANNER.
H. E. T.
“ God bless our star-gemmed banner, shake its folds out to the breeze,
From church, from fort, from house-top, o’er the city on the seas;
The die is cast, the storm at last has broken in its might;
Unfurl the starry banner, and may God defend the right!
“ Too long our flag has sheltered rebel heart and stormy will;
Too long has nursed the traitor who has worked to do it ill;
That time is past, the thrilling blast of war is heard at length,
And the North pours forth her legions that have slumbered in their strength.
“They have roused them to the danger, armed and ready forth they stand,
A hundred thousand volunteers, each with weapon in his hand;
They rally round that banner, tliey obey their country’s call;
The spirit of the North is up, and thrilling one and all.
“ ’Tis the flag our sires and grandsires honored to their latest breath,
To us ’tis given to hold unstained, to guard in life and death;
Time-honored, from its stately folds who has dared to strike a star That glittered on its field of blue; — who but traitors, as they are.
“Would to God it waved above us with a foreign foe to quell,
Not o’er brother faced to brother, urging steel and shot and shell;
But no more the choice is left us, for our friendly hand they spurn,
We can only meet as foemen, —sad, but resolute and stern.
“Father, dash aside the tear-drop, let thy proud boy go his way;
Mother, twine thine arms about him, and bless thy son this day;
Sister, weep, but yet look proudly, ’tis a time to do or die;
Maiden, clasp thy lover tenderly, as he whispers thee good-by.
“ Onward, onward to the battle, who can doubt which side shall win!
Right and might both guide our squadrons, and the steadfast hearts within; Shall the men who never quailed before, now falter in the field;
Or the men who fought at Bunker Hill be ever made to yield ?
“Then bless our banner, God of hosts ! watch o’er each starry fold,
’Tis Freedom’s standard, tried and proved on many a field of old;
And thou, who long hast blessed us, now bless us yet again,
And crown our cause with victory, and keep our flag from stain.”
1 Major W. H. Lambert’s Address before Post No. 2, G. A. R., Philadelphia, Decoration Day, May 30, 1879.456
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Accounts of a few of the flag-raisings that followed the fall of Sumter, found in the newspapers of the day, will convey an idea of this patriotic outburst of the people, and the loyalty and devotion which at once gathered around the chosen symbol of our Union. At Alida, in Illinois, the Republicans and Democrats, during the political campaign of 1860, had each erected their party flag-staff. When the news of the firing on Fort Sumter was received, by a common impulse the people cut down the partisan flag-staffs and spliced them together, and upon the new staff thus made hoisted the stars and stripes.
In the month of April, 1861, many young ladies of Hew York, relatives or friends of the men in the Seventh Regiment, ordered to the defence of the national capital, subscribed for a large silk flag, which, in a few weeks after the departure of the regiment, they made with loving care and mounted and sent to Washington, where it was presented to the regiment by General Thomas.
Accompanying it was a roll, inscribed with the names of all who had subscribed to the flag, headed by a few lines of dedication: —
u Dedication of a United States Flag sent by Ladies of Neio Yoric to the
Seventh Begiment.
li The flag of our country, what higher assurance Of sympathy, honor, and trust could we >send ?
The crown of our fathers7 unflinching endurance,
;Tis the emblem of all you have sworn to defend:
Of freedom and progress, with order combined,
The cause of the Nation, of God, and Mankind.17
April 20, 1861. A monster meeting of men, of all political and religious creeds, gathered around the statue of Washington in Union Square, Hew York, imbued with the sentiment of Jackson, — “the Union, it must and shall be preserved.” Places of business were closed, that all might participate in its proceedings. It was estimated that at least one hundred thousand persons were in attendance during the afternoon. Four stands were erected at points equidistant around Union Square; and the soiled and tattered flag that Anderson brought away from Fort Sumter, mounted on a fragment of the staff, was placed in the hands of the equestrian statue of Washington.
Hon. John A. Dix, a lifelong Democrat, and recently a member of Buchanan’s cabinet, — whose ‘ shoot him on the spot ’ order will long be remembered, —■ presided at the principal stand, near the statue of Washington, and the Hon. Hamilton Fish, since Secretary of State, Hon. William T. Havemeyer, and Hon. Moses PI. Grinnell, presidedFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
457
at the other stands. The meeting was opened with a prayer by the venerable Gardner Spring, D.D. Senator Baker, of Oregon, afterwards killed at Balls Bluff, in concluding his remarks, said: “Upon the wings of the lightning it goes out throughout the world that New York, by one hundred thousand of her people, declares to the country and to the world that she will sustain the government to the last dollar in her treasury, to the last drop of your blood. The national banners waving from ten thousand windows in your city to-day proclaim your affection and reverence for the Union/’
For many months after this great meeting, and others of its kind in the cities and villages of the land, the government had few obstacles thrown in its way by political opponents; and the sword and the purse were placed at its disposal by the people, with a faith touchingly sublime.1
April 24, 1861. A thirty-foot flag was flung to the breeze from the store of A. Morton, 25 Maiden Lane. It was made by the family of the Hon. 0. Newcomb, who volunteered their services, as the unprecedented demand rendered it impossible for the manufacturers to get one up in less than ten days. Four generations assisted in its construction. One of the ladies, though but sixty-seven years of age, was a great-grandmother. As she plied the needle with her not infirm hands, tears fell copiously on the bunting as she recounted her vivid recollections of the war of 1812. The crowd assembled to witness the raising gave nine cheers for the stars and stripes, and nine more for the patriotic ladies who made the flag.2
A sign-painter in New York raised an American flag over his doorway, bearing the significant motto, ‘ Colors warranted not to run/
Sunday, April 25. In nearly all the churches in New York City sermons were preached in reference to the war. Dr. Bethurie took for his text, “ In the name of God we hang out our banners/' Dr. Osgood’s text was, “ Lift up a standard to the people.” In Dr. Bellows’s church the choir sang the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner,’ which was applauded by the audience. Major Anderson, with his wife, attended service at Trinity. In the Presbyterian Church, in Williamsburg, the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner ’ was sung.
April 27. The vestry of Grace Church, New York, desired that an American flag should wave from the apex of the spire of the church, at the height of two hundred and sixty feet. Several persons under-
1	Lossing’s Civil War and the Rebellion Record. A full account of the meeting and speeches is in the 4 Record.’
2	New York Times, April 27.458
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
took the dangerous feat, hut, on mounting to the highest window in the steeple, had not sufficient nerve. At last two young painters, named O’Donnel and McLaughlin, decided to make the attempt. Getting out of the little diamond-shaped window about half-way up, they climbed the lightning-rod to the top. Here one of them fastened the pole securely to the cross, although quite a gale was blowing. The flag secured, the daring young man mounted the cross, and, taking off his hat, bowed to the immense crowd watching him from Broadway. As the flag floated out freely in the air, it was hailed with loud and repeated cheers.1 “The historian of the day,” said a paper which advocated secession,2 " will not fail to mention, for the edification of the men of future ages, the fact that the flag which was once the flag of our Union floats boldly to the breeze of heaven above the cross of Christ on Grace Church steeple.”
Eight days earlier (April 19), an American flag, forty by twenty feet, had been flung out upon a flag-staff from a window in Trinity Church steeple at the head of Wall Street, Hew York, at a height of two hundred and forty feet. At its raising the chimes in the tower played 'Yankee Doodle/ 'Red, White, and Blue/ and other appropriate airs, winding up with 'All’s Well.’3
April 23. Father Rapine, a priest of the Montrose Catholic Church at Williamsburg, with his own hands raised an American flag on the top of his church. Two thousand people, who had assembled, greeted the glorious emblem with cheer upon cheer as it waved majestically over the sacred edifice.4
An American flag was raised upon the steeple of the North Dutch Church at New York, and nearly every church edifice and public building in the city was decorated in the same manner.5
April 28. Dr. Weston, the chaplain of the Seventh New York Regiment, preached in the hall of the House of Representatives at Washington, with his desk tapestried with the American flag.
Dr. Bethune, at the raising of a flag over the University of New York, remarked: "The bravery shown by the three hundred Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae was well known, but there still was one coward among them. There was no coward among the men at Sumter. He had been present where a gentleman remarked he regretted that the major had not blown up the fort. Major Anderson replied, it was better as it was. The ruined battlements and battle-scarred walls of Sumter would be an everlasting disgrace to South Carolina.”
1 New York News.	2 New York Commercial Advertiser.
3 New York Tribune.	4 New York Tribune.	5 Commercial Advertiser.‘ FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
459
A flag-staff with a flag was run out of a window over the portico of St. Paul’s Church, Broadway, New York. The enthusiasm of the crowd that assembled was immense.
An American flag was displayed from the tower of the First Baptist Church, Broome Street, New York, with appropriate ceremonies. A large concourse listened to stirring speeches from President Eaton, of Madison University, the Eev. Dr. Armitage, Eev. Mr. Webber, of Eochester, and others.
Members of the Brown High School, of Newbury port, raised an American flag near their school building in the presence of a large concourse of citizens, and speeches were made by the Hon. Caleb Cushing and others.
Ajpril 27. The Hon. Edward Everett delivered an eloquent speech at a flag-raising in Chester Square, Boston. “ We set up this standard,” he said, “ not as a matter of display, but as an expressive indication that, in the mighty struggle which has been forced upon us, we are of one heart and one mind, that the government of the country must be sustained. . . .
“ Why is it,” he continued, “ that the flag of the country, always honored, always beloved, is now at once worshipped, I may say, with the passionate homage of this whole people ? Why does it float, as never before, not merely from arsenal and masthead, but from tower and steeple, from the public edifices, the temples of science, the private dwellings, in magnificent display of miniature presentiment ? Let Fort Sumter give the answer. When on this day fortnight, the 13th of April (a day for ever to be held in auspicious remembrance, like the dies AUiensis in the annals of Borne), the tidings spread through the land that the standard of united America, the pledge of her union and the symbol of her power, for which so many gallant hearts had poured out their life’s blood on the ocean and the land to uphold, had, in the harbor of Charleston, been for a day and a half the target of eleven fratricidal batteries, one deep, unanimous, spontaneous feeling shot with the tidings through the breasts of twenty millions of freemen, that its outraged honor must be vindicated.”1
May 31. Three national flags were raised with loud cheerings over the principal buildings of the Ladies’ Seminary at Bethlehem, and nearly two hundred young ladies joined in singing our national airs, after which the pupils, bearing flags and banners, paraded the town.
Cincinnati, after the fall of Sumter, was fairly iridescent with the
1 Boston Transcript.460
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red, white, and blue. From the point of the spire of the Roman Catholic cathedral, two hundred and twenty-five feet in the air, Archbishop Purcell caused a well-proportioned national flag, ninety feet in length, to be unfurled with imposing ceremonies, which, wrote the archbishop to Mr. Lossing, '' consisted of the hurrahs, the tears of hope and joy, the prayer for success from the blessing of God on our cause and army by our Catholic people and our fellow-citizens of all denominations, who saluted the flag with salvos of artillery. The flag was really ninety feet long, and broad in proportion. One of less dimensions would not have satisfied the enthusiasm of our people.”
The Queen City gave ample tokens that the mighty Northwest was fully aroused to the perils that threatened the republic, and was determined to defend it at all hazards.1
At Roxbury, Mass., a beautiful silk flag was presented by the ladies of the city to Captain Chamberlain’s company, and a presentation address was made by Rev. Dr. Putnam, of the Unitarian Church; after which the flag was placed in Captain Chamberlain’s hands by a little girl tastefully dressed in white, trimmed with red and blue. The captain knelt as he received the flag, and responded briefly, with a voice choked with emotion.2
May 1. Lieutenant Collier, of the United States Marines, attached to the steam-frigate Minnesota, raised the American flag on the steeple of the Old South Church, Boston, Mass. The following notice was published in the Boston morning papers : —
'' Notice. — Our national flag will be given to the breeze to-day, at twelve o’clock, from the Old South Meeting House,” &c.
In accordance with this notice, a flag was thrown to the breeze from the tower of the Old South Meeting-house. A large collection of people witnessed the exercises. The windows of the church and the neighboring buildings were filled with ladies. A platform within the enclosure belonging to the society, overlooking the street, was occupied by the standing committee of the society and the pastors and officers of the church. Gilmore’s band, stationed near the platform, gave 'Hail Columbia,’ which was followed by 'Washington’s March.’ Thousands having assembled at noon, George Homer, Esq., of the standing committee, addressed the assembly. The Rev. Dr. Blagden, senior pastor of the society, then invoked the Divine blessing. At the conclusion of the prayer the flag was unfurled, amid the cheers of the crowd. The band saluted it, playing the ' Star-Spangled Banner/ The Rev. J. M. Manning, associate pastor, then addressed the crowd,
1 Lossing’s Civil War.
2 Boston Transcript.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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and was followed, in conclusion, by the Rev. Dr. Blagden, who received nine cheers at the conclusion of his address, when the meeting broke up, with nine cheers for the flag, and three for the standing committee of the Old South Society.1
The flag bore the motto, “ True to our Revolutionary Principles.”
At an intermediate school at the North End, Boston, at the close of the morning recess, a small American flag was brought to the teacher’s desk by one of the pupils. The teacher, noticing much excitement among the children, in consequence of the appearance of the flag, raising it, said, “ Boys, you may cheer the flag, if you wish to.” Quick as thought, the boys, led by a smart little fellow of ten years, gave three rousing huzzahs, with a spirit which showed they were in earnest. At the afternoon session, several of the boys brought flags, which they placed over their desks, testifying to the loyalty and patriotism of these young Irish hearts.
June 28, 1861. A flag was raised upon a flag-staff on North Hill, Needham, Mass. It was run up by Newell Smith, Esq., one of the oldest inhabitants, and saluted by the firing of a cannon on a neighboring hill, and the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner ’ by Flag’s band, amid the cheers of the spectators.2
The attack on Sumter caused a wonderful change of sentiment in Maryland. On the 1st of May, a ‘ star-spangled banner ’ was raised, with great demonstrations of enthusiasm, over the post-office and custom-house at Baltimore, by order of the newly appointed officials. A new flag-staff had been erected over the portico of the custom-house, and at noon Captain Frazier, a veteran sea-captain of Fells Point, drew up the flag, which, as it spread to the breeze, was greeted with tremendous applause, waving of hats, cheers for the Union and the old flag. The crowd then joined in singing the f Star-Spangled Banner.’3
The authorities of Baltimore forbade the display of the American flag, but in many instances it was kept afloat, until torn down by the police. After several weeks of trouble and anxiety, the Union people prevailed, the rebel ensigns were secreted or destroyed, and the stars and stripes flung to the breeze from a thousand windows and spires all over the city.
An American flag was raised at Hagarstown, Md., with Union demonstrations. Alleghany County instructed its representatives that
1	From “Exercises at a Consecration of the Flag of the Union by the Old South Society, in Boston, May 1, 1861.” Boston : Printed by Alfred Mudge & Son, 34 School Street, 1861. 8vo.
2	Boston Transcript.	3 New York Advertiser, May 1.462
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if they voted for secession they would be hung on their return home. The stars and stripes were hoisted over Frederick City. The Home Guard refused to parade, unless the stars and stripes were displayed to the tune of fYankee Doodle;’ and at Clear Spring House our flag was hoisted, and the miners swore to resist secession to the death.1
May 7. Reverdy Johnson addressed the Home Guard of Frederick, Md., upon the presenting to them a national flag from the ladies of that place. The population of the city was swelled by upwards of two thousand persons, who poured in from the surrounding towns and villages. Union badges and cockades were displayed in profusion, and the stars and stripes fluttered from forty different points. The speakers’ stand was draped with the national colors, and immediately surrounded by the Brengle Guard, a body of about three hundred respectable citizens, principally aged and middle-aged men, organized for home protection and defence. Mr. Johnson concluded by saying, “ Though not especially impulsive, I cannot imagine how an American eye can look upon that standard without emotion. The twenty stars added to its first constellation tell its proud history, its mighty influence, and its unequalled career. The man who is dead to the influence of our national emblem is in mind a fool, or in heart a traitor. I need not commend it to your constant, vigilant care: that, I am sure, it will be ever your pride to give it. "When, if ever, your hearts shall despond; when, if ever, you desire your patriotism to be specially animated, — throw it to the winds, gaze on its beautiful folds, remember the years and the fields over which, from ’76 to the present time, it has been triumphantly borne; remember how it has consoled the dying and animated the survivor; remember that it served to kindle even a brighter flame, — the patriotic ardor of Washington, — went with him through the struggles of the Revolution, consoled him in defeat, gave victory an additional charm, and his dying moments were consoled and cheered by the hope that it would float over a perpetual Union.”
Sept 12, 1861. The anniversary of the battle of Baltimore was celebrated in that city with more than ordinary demonstration on the part of the loyal citizens. The national flag was displayed on the public buildings, hotels, and all the loyal newspaper offices, numerous private houses, shipping, &c., and the various camps. General Dix ordered salutes and dress parades, in honor of the day. The association of old defenders made their usual parade with their old flag, which they have not yet deserted. A few secession shop-keepers
1 New York Courier and Enquirer.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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arranged their goods to indicate their Southern principles, by hang-ing out rolls of red and white flannel, or by displaying three flannel shirts, — two red, with a white one in the centre. All this in
u Maryland, my Maryland.77
At a mass meeting at Kingston, N. Y., held to sustain the government and defend the Union, Mr. J. B. Steele, in taking the chair, said: “ It must never be supposed that the flag could be desecrated without touching the soul of every genuine American. No! whatever it must cost, the stars and stripes must wave.”1 Mr. Westbrook “laid aside party and political opinions and prejudices. He loved his party, but, thank God, he loved his country better. He wasn't going to stop to consider who was right or wrong, but, right or wrong, his country.” He grasped the folds of the stars and stripes, and said : “ Let it be known that, in the nineteenth century, traitors' hands and traitors’ hearts are found among us to disgrace that flag which had been their shield and protection as well as his own. He asked God to record his vow to stand by, protect, and, if need be, die for that flag.” 2
At Washington our flag was hoisted over the Department of the Interior, and enthusiastically greeted by a dense mass of spectators, and by the Bhode Island regiment which was quartered in the building. The regiment was attended by Governor Sprague and suite, in full uniform. President Lincoln and Secretaries Seward and Smith were near the staff when the flag was raised, and, having saluted it, they were in turn cheered. The regiment then returned to their quarters in the building, and sung ‘ Our Flag, it still Waves.’3
Colonel Corcoran’s regiment, the Sixty-ninth New York, on the occasion of transporting their flag-staff from Georgetown to Arlington Heights, celebrated the raising of the flag. A new song, by John Savage, called ‘ The Starry Flag,' was sung, the chorus being rendered by the thirteen or fourteen hundred voices assembled. Three cheers were then given for the author of the song.4
May 26. The Fifth Regiment of Massachusetts, Colonel Lawrence, received orders to march over Long Bridge into Virginia, when it was discovered that they had only their State colors, not having received their national ensign. Several Msssachusetts gentlemen immediately began searching for one, and succeeded in purchasing from a Mr. Hemmock a fine cashmere flag, which had been made by the ladies
1 New York Tribune, September 13.
3 New York Post, May 3.
2 New York Tribune, April 20.
4 National Intelligencer, May 3.464
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for his hotel. Securing a carriage, they overtook the regiment midway on Long Bridge, when it was halted, and the flag presented by the committee to the colonel. The night was a beautiful one; a full moon just mounting the eastern sky cast its silvery sheen over the rippling waters of the Potomac, and sparkled on the bayonets of a thousand muskets. Camp-fires and signal-lights dotted the river on both sides, making a picture of quiet beauty never to be forgotten.1
At Bedford, Westchester County, H. Y., on the occasion of a flagraising, Senator Hall, Hon. John Jay, the Bev. Mr. Bogg, of the Episcopal Church, and many others, addressed the assembly.2
At Hew York, Philadelphia, Trenton, and many other places the newspaper offices were compelled to display the American flag.3
A'pril 16. An excited populace assembled before the printing-office of the f Palmetto Flag/ a small advertising sheet in Philadelphia, and threatened to demolish it. The proprietors displayed the American flag, and threw the objectionable papers from the window, also f The Stars and Stripes/ another paper printed in the same office, and restored the mob to good humor. The crowd then moved to the * Argus ’ office, and ordered that the flag should be displayed.
After visiting the newspaper offices, the multitude marched up Market Street. At all points in their route haste was made to borrow, beg, or steal something red, white, and blue, to protect property with. Search was made for the publication rooms of the f Southern Monitor/ and its sign broken to pieces.
Mayor Henry, when the fPalmetto Flag’ office was threatened,
%
addressed the mob, and said: aBy the grace of God, treason shall never rear its head or have foothold in Philadelphia. I call upon you, as American citizens, to stand by your flag and protect it at all hazards ; but, in doing so, remember the rights due your fellow-citizens and their private property. That flag ” (hoisting the stars and stripes) “ is the emblem of the government, and I call upon all who love their country and the flag to leave to the constituted authorities of the city the task of protecting the peace and preventing every act which could be construed into treason.” 4
At Saybrook, Conn., a fine flag-staff was raised upon the spot which had given birth to the f Saybrook Platform/ and but a short distance from the old fort built by the first settlers of the place. Deacon Sill, ninety-one years of age, a colonel of the war of 1812-14, and the patriarch of the village, raised the flag. A prayer and ad-
1 National Intelligencer.	2 New York Times, April 27.
3 New York papers, April 16.	4 New York Tribune.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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dresses were then made, the intervals being filled by national songs sung by a club from a neighboring village. In conclusion, the old men who were present made short and telling speeches.1
May 30. An American flag was raised over the residence of Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, at Elizabethtown, 1ST. J., in the presence of five thousand people. The ‘ Star-Spangled Banner ’ was sung, and the people joined in the chorus, producing a fine effect. Speeches were made, and received with great applause.2
June 16. J. G. Morrison, Jr., and his friends, unfurled the star-spangled banner on the Maryland abutments of the lately destroyed bridge at Harper’s Ferry. The cherished symbol of the Union was hailed with delight by the people of Harper’s Ferry, and particularly by the women, who flocked to the opposite bank, and saluted it by waving of handkerchiefs and other manifestations of joy.3
At the raising of the stars and stripes over Andover Seminary, a hymn, written for ihe occasion by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was sung to the tune of f America.’
One of the most interesting and imposing ceremonies of the year was the flag-raising from the summit of Bunker’s Hill monument, on the 17th day "of June, the anniversary of the battle. The day was warm and pleasant, and a large concourse were assembled. At the base of the monument a stage was erected, on which were the officers of the association, the school children, the city authorities of Charlestown, Governor Andrew and his staff, Colonel Fletcher Webster, of the Twelfth Regiment, and many other prominent citizens of the State. A band of music played national airs. The services were opened with prayer by the Rev. James B. Miles, after which a short address was made by Hon. George Washington Warren, introducing Governor Andrew, who was received with hearty cheers. The Governor’s address was brief, fervent, eloquent, and patriotic. After referring to the men of the Revolution who had sacrificed their lives for independence, and made moist the soil of Bunker’s Hill with their blood, he said: —
“ It is one of the hallowed omens of the controversy of our time, that the men of Middlesex, the men of Charlestown, the men of Concord, of Lexington, of Acton, are all in the field in this contest. This day, this hour, reconsecrated by their deeds, are adding additional leaves to the beautiful chaplet which adorns the fair honor of good old Massachusetts. Hot unto me, not unto us, let any praise be given. Let no
1 New York Commercial, May 30.	2 Boston Advertiser, May 21.
3 Baltimore American, June 21.
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tongue dare speak a eulogy for us, but reserve all the love and gratitude that language can express for the patriotic sons of Massachusetts who are bearing our country’s flag on the field of contest.
“ Obedient, therefore, to the request of this association, and to the impulse of my own heart, I spread aloft the ensign of the republic, testifying for ever, to the last generation of men, of the rights of mankind, and to constitutional liberty and law. Let it rise until it shall surmount the capital of the column; let it float on every wind, to every sea and every shore; from every hill-top let it wave, down every river let it run. Respected it shall be in Charlestown, Mass., and in Charleston, S. C., on the Mississippi as on the Penobscot, in New Orleans as in Cincinnati, in the Gulf of Mexico as on Lake Superior, and by France and England, now and for ever. Catch it, ye breezes, as it swings aloft; fan it, every wind that blows; clasp it in your arms, and let it float for ever as the starry sign of liberty and union, now and for ever, one and inseparable ! ”
The flag had been raised to the top of the flag-staff, forty feet above the summit of the monument, and two hundred and sixty feet from the ground, rolled up as the signal-flags are on board of a man-of-war As Governor Andrew concluded, he pulled the rope, the knot was loosened, and the flag floated out on the breeze, amid the shouts of the assembled thousands, and the playing of the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner ’ by Gilmore’s band. The ‘ Star-Spangled Banner ’ was then sung by F. A. Hall, Esq., of Charlestown, the whole assemblage joining in the chorus, and the ladies taking part with peculiar zest.
The Governor then called for nine cheers for the glorious star-spangled banner, which were given with great heart, the ladies waving their handkerchiefs.
When the excitement had somewhat subsided, the Governor came forward, and, in a few complimentary remarks, introduced Colonel Webster. The speech of this gentleman was brief and appropriate. His father had made the oration when the corner-stone of the monument was laid, and again when the monument was completed. Colonel Webster said he well remembered the preliminary meetings of the committee selected to decide upon the size, character, design, and site of this monument. They met frequently at his father’s house. He could remember the appearance of most of them, — Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, William Sullivan, and Gilbert Stuart, the great painter, whose enormous block-tin snuff-box attracted his youthful attention.
“ As a boy, I was present at the laying of the corner-stone of this great obelisk under whose shadow we now are. Lafayette laid theFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
467
stone with appropriate and imposing masonic ceremonies. The vast procession, impatient of unavoidable delay, broke the line of march, and in a tumultuous crowd rushed towards the orator’s platform, and I was saved from being trampled under foot by the strong arm of Mr. George Sullivan, who lifted me on his shoulders, and shouting, ‘ Don’t kill the orator’s son! ’ bore me through the crowd, and placed me on the staging at my father’s feet. I felt something embarrassed at that notice, as I do now at this unforeseen notice by his Excellency, but I had no occasion to make an acknowledgment of it.” He had also witnessed the ceremonies on the completion of the monument in the presence of many distinguished -persons from all parts of the country, “ some of whom,” said Colonel Webster, “ I regret to say, would hardly like to renew that visit, or recall that scene.” “ Within a few days after this I sailed for China, and I watched while light and eyesight lasted, till its lofty summit faded at last from view. I now stand again at its base, and renew once more, on this national altar, vows, not for the first time made, of devotion to my country, its constitution and union.”
He concluded as follows: “ From this spot I take my departure, like the mariner commencing his voyage; and whenever my eyes close, they will be turned hitherward toward the north, and in whatever event, grateful will be the reflection that this monument still stands, still is gilded by the earliest beams of the rising sun, and that still departing day lingers and plays on its summit for ever.”
The services concluded with a benediction by the venerable Father Taylor. The flag thus raised floated from its serene height during the entire war, until it was as respected in Charleston, S. C., as in Charlestown, Mass. Hone who knew Colonel Webster can read his words on this occasion without recalling many pleasant memories connected with his name. It was his last utterance in public; for, before the close of the next year, he fell in Virginia, at the head of his regiment, in a desperate battle. His body was brought home to Massachusetts, and lay in state in Faneuil Hall a day, when it was taken to Marshfield and buried by the side of his illustrious father, and there it will remain for ever.1
1 Sehouler’s History of Massachusetts in the Civil War.468
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t
OUE FLAG IN SECESSIA.
u Thank God! the struggle’s over, peace reigns in all onr land,
United now as brothers for ever let ns stand;
One flgg, one country, — Union,—no North, South, East, or West, Each vying with each other to do the very best;
With millions of defenders to rally at its call,
( Old Glory 7 is an emblem that truthful speaks to all;
We love to look upon it as it proudly floats on high,
No star is darkly blotted, no stripe but of royal dye.77
B. Bead Wales.
New Orleans there was a decided excitement before the fall of Sumter, by a flag being hoisted at the masthead of the ship Adelaide Bell (owned in New Hampshire), which the captain, more indiscreet than wise, proclaimed to be a black republican flag, defying anybody to pull it down.
Intelligence of the exhibition and this defiance spread abroad, and the captain was waited upon and induced to lower the obnoxious bunting. The flag was the old stars and stripes, only the stripe below the union was red, while commonly the union rests on a white stripe. The captain denied the flag had any political significance, and stated it was presented to the ship seven years before, by Isaac Bell, of Mobile, for whose wife the ship was named. His statement was disbelieved, and the vigilant committee asserted that the flag was known among sea-captains as the flag of the Northern republican States, and had been so recognized for three or four years.
It would have eased the excitement of those gentlemen could they have been informed that in 1835, a quarter of a century before, flags with the union resting on the red stripe were made at the Norfolk Navy Yard for all the vessels of war equipped at that station, and for many years after. They were called by signal quartermasters “Norfolk war-flags,” because the union rested on a red or war stripe. From 1794 ta 1818, when our flag had fifteen stripes, the union invariably was made to rest on the ninth, — a red stripe, — and under such flags all our battles of the war of 1812-14 were fought.
The commercial code of signals published yearly in London under the authority of the British Board of Trade has, since 1859 and up to the present time, committed the same error. In the colored plate of the ensigns worn by merchant vessels of different nations in that code, the United States ensign is represented wfith three red and three whiteFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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stripes joining the vertical edges of the union, and the union resting on the fourth red stripe, instead of being made to rest on the fourth white stripe, — a singular error in a work of such high official standing.
On the 22d of February, 1861, an American flag was hoisted at New Orleans in honor of the day, which is believed to have been the last Union banner raised there previous to Farragut’s arrival off the city. As Mr. Richard Fairchild was proceeding down Front Levee Street, he saw a gentleman on that day raise a large American flag, on which was inscribed under two clasped hands the words, “ United we stand, divided we fall.” The announcement of this defiant act created great excitement, and a crowd of secessionists assembled in front of the St. Charles Hotel and proceeded in a body to the levee with the purpose of taking down the flag. They found, however, hundreds of determined men surrounding the flag-staff, all armed, many with rifles, with the avowed purpose of keeping the f old flag ’ flying on the birthday of the father of his country until night, when it was voluntarily taken down.1 The flag was shown from the house of Cuthbert Bullitt, on Lafayette Square.2
After New Orleans was captured, hotels, saloons, and stores were full of concealed rebels, who would have fiddled and danced over the massacre of Union men. At that time few American flags waved in New Orleans, and those only over military quarters; and it became necessary to issue an order for the display of the stars and stripes over places of public resort licensed by the provost-marshal. The order was reluctantly complied with, and a few old flags waved from some of the hotels and theatres. But so vindictive and morose was the secesh feeling, that the managers of the theatres refused to permit the orchestra to play any of our national airs. A thrilling scene occurred one night when a call arose from a few Union men and United States officers in the theatre for the band to play ‘ Hail Columbia ’ and the f Star-Spangled Banner.’ The cowardly manager declined. It was then a single man arose in the boxes and cried out that the American national airs should be played, and called upon loyal men to second him. The house became at once a scene of fierce excitement. But the brave loyalist stood his ground. He demanded the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner ’ and ‘ Red, White, and Blue’ should be given, and the manager was forced to yield. That gallant loyalist was Dr. A. P. Dostie, who, after the war, was murdered in New Orleans.3
The Union Association of New Orleans held their first public meet-
1 New York Sunday Dispatch.	2 Sherman’s Memoirs, vol. i. p. 168.
3 Banner of the Covenant, June 15, 1861.470
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ing in that city on the 3d of June, 1862, and resolved to rehoist the United States flag on the following Saturday. It was determined to appoint a committee of thirty-four to perform the duty; but the president of the association finding difficulty in selecting that number, volunteers were called for, and readily found. Six or seven of the thirty-four were intimidated by anonymous threatening letters, which were received by nearly every member of the committee; the others ascended to the top of the city hall and hoisted the flag. In 1866, this flag was sent to Washington, and by advice of General Butler was delivered to the Revenue Department of the Treasury. Secretary McCulloch wrote to Dr. James Ready, who had been charged with the duty of conveying the flag to the capital: “ I will carefully preserve it as a memento of the great trial through which the nation has safely and honorably passed, and of the loyalty of the gallant little band who first gave it to the breeze. It will be preserved, not as a reminder of the triumph of one section of the country over another, but of the union over those who attempted to dismember it; not of a victory of the North over the South, but of constitutional liberty and republican institutions in the great struggle of the government for the maintenance of both.”
The Restoration of our Flag at Neiv Orleans. — On the 26th of April, 1862, Flag-Officer Farragut wrote to the Mayor of New Orleans, demanding “ that the emblem of the sovereignty of the United States be hoisted over the city hall, mint, and custom-house by meridian of this day, and all flags and other emblems of sovereignty, other than that of the United States, be removed from the public buildings by that hour.” To this, the next day (Sunday, April 27), the mayor replied : “ The city is yours by the power of brutal force, not by my choice or the consent of its inhabitants. As to hoisting any flag not of our own adoption and allegiance, let me say to you, that the man lives not in our midst whose hand and heart would not be paralyzed at the mere thought of such an act; nor could I find in my entire constituency so desperate and wretched a renegade as would dare to profane with his hand the sacred emblems of our aspirations.” The substance of the mayor’s meaning seemed to be, tc Come on shore and hoist what flags you please; don’t ask us to do your flag-raising.”1
The commander of the fleet refused to confer further with the mayor; but with regard to the flag-hoisting, determined to take him at his word, and Captain H. W. Morris, whose ship (the Pensacola) lay off the mint, was ordered to hoist the flag of the United States
1 Parton’s ‘ Butler at New Orleans/ from which this account is condensed.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
471
upon that edifice. At eight a.m., the stars and stripes were floating over it, and the officer detailed to hoist them warned the bystanders that the guns of the Pensacola would certainly open fire upon the building if any one should be seen molesting the flag. Without leaving a guard to protect the flag, he returned to his ship; but the howitzers in the maintop of the Pensacola, loaded with grape, were aimed at the flag-staff, and the guard ordered to fire the moment any one should attempt to haul down the flag.
At eleven A.M., the crews of all the ships were assembled on deck for prayers, agreeably to the flag-officer’s order, “ to render thanks to Almighty God for his great goodness and mercy in permitting us to pass through the events of the last two days with so little loss of life and blood.” The solemn service had proceeded about twenty minutes, when a discharge from the howitzer overhead startled the crews from their devotions. They rushed to quarters; every eye sought the flagstaff of the mint. Four men were seen on the roof of the building, who tore down the flag, hurried away with it, and disappeared. Fortunately, the wafers by which the guns are discharged had been removed from the vents; for, without orders, by a sudden impulse, the lanyards of the guns all along the broadside of the Pensacola were snatched at by eager hands, and nothing but the removal of the wafers saved the city from a fearful scene of destruction and slaughter. The exasperation throughout the fleet at the audacious act was equally great.
The next day (Monday), the ‘New Orleans Picayune ’ proclaimed the names of the persons “ that distinguished themselves by gallantly tearing down the flag that had been surreptitiously hoisted,” as “William B. Mumford, who cut it loose from the flag-staff amid a shower of grape, Lieutenant N. Holmes, Sergeant Burns, and James Reed,” and added, “ they deserve great credit for their patriotic act.”
These four men, having secured their prize, trailed it in the mud of the streets amid the yells of the mob, and, mounted with it upon a furniture cart, they paraded it about the city with fife and drum, tore it into shreds, and distributed the pieces among the crowd. Defied and insulted by a town that lay at his mercy, Farragut warned the mayor of the danger of drawing the fire of the fleet, from the spontaneous action of his men,1 and concluded by saying, “ The election is with you; but
1 “The first United States flag hoisted outside the squadron when in front of New Orleans was a small boat-flag, hoisted by my order, Friday, April 25, at the masthead of the schooner John Gilpin, lying at a wharf at Algiers, opposite side the city. Her master, John Forsyth, I took on board the flag-ship, where he was paroled on his agreeing to keep the flag flying, and secure the schooner from destruction by the mob. On the 28th, a man came on board the Kathadin, and stated to me that he was a loyal man, but was afraid the472
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it becomes my duty to notify you to remove the women and children from the city within forty-eight hours, if I have rightly understood your determination.” This note the authorities chose to interpret as a formal announcement of his intention to bombard the city at the end of the specified time.1 The surrender of the forts, the news of which reached the city on Monday, lowered the tone of the authorities. They dared not formally disclaim the exploit of Mumford and his associates, but the flag-officer was privately assured that the removal of the flag from the mint was the unauthorized act of a few individuals. On the 29th, Captain H. H. Bell, with a hundred marines, landed on the levee, marched into the city, hauled down the rebel flag from the mint and custom-house, and hoisted in their stead the flag of the United States. Captain Bell locked the custom-house, and took the keys to the flag-ship. These flags remained, though the marines were withdrawn before evening.2 On the 1st of May, General Butler landed a portion of his troops about five p.m., took permanent possession of the city, and issued his proclamation, in which he says: “ All ensigns, flags, or devices tending to uphold any authority whatever, save the flags of the United States and those of foreign consulates, must not be exhibited, but suppressed. The American ensigns, the emblem of the
fleet would "bombard his little place at Gretna, opposite New Orleans, and destroy his house and garden. I told him he could easily prevent that by hoisting the stars and stripes over his place. He said he was afraid to do that; the mob would murder him. I then told him he must choose between the dangers of the mob and a bombardment, and offered to loan him a flag, which he accepted, and carried away with him, and, I have reason to believe, hoisted it, but of that am not certain.” — G. H. P.
1	Parton’s General Butler in New Orleans.
2	‘‘I find in my private diary, under date, United States Gunboat Kathadin, Tuesday, April 29, 1862 : —
“Heard great cheering in the fleet at eight A.M., and the ships all hoisted the stars and stripes at their mastheads, indicative of good news, but what I could not tell. Nevertheless, I hoisted the ensigns. The Kennebec came up, showing either she had run the forts, or that they had surrendered. At one p.m., got under way and anchored near the Hartford, and went on board to obtain the news, and learned that both Forts Jackson and St. Phillips have surrendered to Porter, and the Cayuga would sail in a few hours for the North with Captain Theodorus Bailey, bearer of despatches, Commander Boggs and the New York Herald correspondent going in her as passengers. Delivered to Captain Bailey the flag of the Challamette regiment. At two p.m., the Cayuga got under way. As she passed the Kathadin, we gave three cheers for Captain Bailey, three for Commander Boggs, and three for Lieutenant-Commanding Harrison and the brave tars of the Cayuga. The Diana, Tennessee, and another of the seized steamers went down river to bring up troops. The flag-officer landed two hundred marines and took possession of the public buildings on shore, and hoisted our flag over the new custom-house. The State flag of Louisiana was hauled down from the city hall, and sent North by the Cayuga.” — G. E. P.FLAG of the united states.
473
United States, must be treated with the utmost deference and respect by all persons, under pain of severe punishment.”
After the occupation of the city by the United States troops, Mum-ford still appeared in the streets, bold, reckless, and defiant, one of the heroes of the populace. He was seen even in front of the St. Charles Hotel, General Butler’s head-quarters, relating his exploit to a circle of admirers, boasting of it, and daring the Union authorities to molest him. He was arrested, and tried by a military commission, who condemned him to death. General Butler approved the sentence, and issued the following order for his execution: —
Special Order, No. 10.
*	“ New Orleans, June 5, 1862.
“ William B. Mumford, a citizen of New Orleans, having been convicted before a military commission of treason, and an overt act thereof in tearing down the United States flag from a public building of the United States, for the purpose of inciting other evil-minded persons to further resistance to the laws and arms of the United States, after said flag was placed there by Commodore [flag-officer] Farragut, of the United States navy.
“ It is ordered that he be executed according to the sentence of the said military commission, on Saturday, June 7th inst., between the hours of eight a.m. and twelve m., under the direction of the provost-marshal of the district of New Orleans; and for so doing, this shall be his sufficient warrant.”
During his trial, and after his conviction, Mumford showed neither fear nor contrition, and evidently expected a commutation of his sentence, not believing that General Butler would dare execute it. His friends — the thieves and gamblers of the city — openly defied the General, resolved in council not to petition for his pardon, and bound themselves to assassinate General Butler if Mumford were hanged. Between Mumford’s condemnation and the time set for his execution, General Butler reprieved and sent to Ship Island six Confederate soldiers, who had been condemned to be shot for violating their paroles, but he could not be made to consider that Mumford deserved the same clemency; and when the day set apart for his execution arrived, he was hanged. Mumford met his doom with composure. He said that “ the offence for which he was condemned was committed under excitement, and that he did not consider he was suffering justly. He conjured all who heard him to act justly to all men; to rear their children properly: and when they met death, they would meet it firmly. He was prepared to die; and, as he had never wronged any one, he hoped to receive mercy.” An immense concourse attended his execution, but there was no disturbance.474
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The name of Mumford, if we may believe the Confederate newspapers, was immediately added to their roll of martyrs to the cause of liberty. The fugitive Governor of Louisiana, from his safe retreat up the river, issued a proclamation, in which he said: “ The noble heroism of the patriot Mumford has placed his name high on our list of martyred sons. When the Federal navy reached New Orleans, a squad of marines was sent on shore, who hoisted their flag on the mint. The city was not occupied by the United States troops, nor had they reached there. The place was not in their possession. William B. Mumford pulled down the detested symbol with his own hand, and for this was condemned to be hung by General Butler after his arrival. Brought in full view of the scaffold, his murderers hoped to appall his heroic soul by the exhibition of the implements of ignofhinious death. With the evidence of their determination to consummate their brutal purpose before his eyes, they offered him life, on the condition that he would abjure his country, and swear allegiance to her foe. He spurned the offer. Scorning to stain his soul with such foul dishonor, he met his fate courageously, and has transmitted to his countrymen a fresh example of what one will do and dare when under the inspiration of fervid patriotism. I shall hot forget the outrage of his murder, nor shall it pass unatoned.”1
June 13, 1862. A United States flag was raised at the village of Gretna, La., opposite New Orleans, amid the rejoicings of a large number of spectators, and patriotic resolutions were passed.
At Bichmond, Va., “on the morning of the 18th of April, 1861, tumultuous crowds assembled at the capitol, in that city, in the square in front of Governor Letcher’s house, and, amid shouts of execration and defiance, demanded the removal of the United States banner, and that the flag of the confederacy should be forthwith hoisted in its place. One fellow in this unruly mob, too impatient to wait for a formal compliance with this demand, rushed up the steps of the capitol, and, climbing to the roof, attempted to mount the flag-staff, that he might tear down the flag of our Union, encouraged and cheered in his efforts by the tumultuous crowd below. He had nearly reached the top when he slipped, and, falling on the roof, was severely hurt. Shortly afterward, a detachment of soldiers was ordered to the spot to keep the crowd in order. In the afternoon, however, the mob increased to such an extent, that the small knot of respectable citizens, who resolutely aided the soldiers in their efforts to keep order, were driven back, the capitol taken by storm, the flag of the Union tom down, and that of the confederacy hoisted.”
1 Parton’s General Butler in New Orleans.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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“ I could not but feel moved/’ said Colonel Estevan, “ at this out-xageous act of the populace, in thus ignominiously hauling down the flag of the republic, under which I had found a refuge and a home, especially when I saw how deeply affected were many of the bystanders of both sexes, loyal adherents of the Union, on witnessing the occurrence.”1
Captain Gardner C. Whiting, of Massachusetts, who died in 1876, aged sixty-eight, in the early months of the Kebellion was captured by the privateer Jeff. Davis, and taken in his own vessel into Florida. After stranding the vessel on the beach, the prize-crew left her, taking everybody with them, excepting Captain Whiting and his wife. During their absence, Captain Whiting cut down the palmetto flag, in face of hundreds of rebels on shore, and the next moment sent up to the masthead the beloved stars and stripes. The act nearly cost him his life, and through it he lost all of his possessions, except the clothes he stood in, as the enraged populace immediately set fire to his vessel. He and his wife were rudely hustled on shore, and subjected to the vilest taunts and most cruel usage. Captain Whiting, even with a rope around his neck, and the threat of an ignominious death, did not succumb, but awaited his fate, calmly and unflinchingly.
April 21, 1861. The burial of the American flag was publicly celebrated at Memphis, Tenn.2
April 22, 1861. At Lexington, Ky., two or three hundred Union men raised the stars and stripes, and expressed their determination to adhere to them to the last. Speeches were made by Messrs. Field, Crittenden, and others. The most unbounded enthusiasm prevailed, and the speeches were greeted with unbounded applause.8
May 7, 1861. A serious riot occurred at Knoxville, Tenn., by the hoisting of a Union flag, and the delivery of inflammatory speeches. One man was mortally wounded.4
May 10, 1861, was observed as a fast-day at Wheeling, Ya. Patriotic sermons were delivered in nine out of the twelve churches. The Methodist pulpit was decorated with the stars and stripes. Eev. Mr. Smith delivered an eloquent address. He said, if there was any secessionist in his congregation, he wanted him to leave. Other ministers prayed that the rebels might be subdued, and wiped from the face of the earth.5
At Amity County, Miss., after the news of the secession of Virginia,
1	Colonel Estevan’s War Pictures from the South, pp. 34, 35.
2	New York Express, April 29, 1861.	4	3 Philadelphia Enquirer,
4 Washington National Intelligencer, May 11, 1861.	6 New York Herald.476
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the star-spangled banner was burnt in tbe public square of tbe town of ‘ Liberty/ in the presence of a crowd of spectators, who would not tolorate such a memento of tbe Federal Union.
July 23, 1861. The ladies of Martinsburg, Va., presented the Second Wisconsin Regiment a beautiful national ensign. The ladies said, in presenting it, “We welcome you into our midst, bearing the flag of our glorious country, trusting in God; this flag has protected the oppressed of all lands who have sought its shelter, and so long as this flag shall wave, the oppressed shall be free.” Coming, as it did, from a State which was declared out of the Union by its constituted authorities, the regiment received the donation with peculiar pleasure.1
Sept. 6, 1861. General Grant gave permission to several Union officers to hoist a Union flag on the top of the St. Francis Hotel, at Paducah, Ky. The landlord objected, saying that it would bring him trouble, and he did not want its protection. He was told to keep quiet; that the flag must wave there, in place of the secession flag he had allowed to float over it before our troops came; and that if he or other rebels interfered with the flag, or pulled it down, they would be led out and shot. This assurance, from Brigadier-General Paine, quieted his nerves, and the flag floated, defying the rebels, despite many remarks by them that “the damned rag must come down.” 2
Nov. 8, 1861. After the battle of Belmont, a wounded man, with both legs nearly shot off, was found in the woods singing the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner; ’ but for this circumstance, the surgeons say they
would not have discovered him.3
\
Nov. 25, 1861. Woolfolk, a secessionist in Paducah, Ky., hung out of his window a secession flag, as some United States troops were passing, and hurrahed for Jeff. Davis. He had done the same thing previously. General Wallace sent his aid-de-camp with a squad of men to take it in. Woolfolk refused to obey the order, whereupon the flag was forcibly hauled down, and the stars and stripes hoisted in its stead.
May 22, 1863. At the assault on Vicksburg, the storming party looked in vain for the support which had been promised it. The brigade which had been ordered to follow it hesitated, and all but one of the one hundred and fifty of the storming party got discouraged, and sought the shelter of a deep ravine. That one hero, William
1 Baltimore American, July 23.
3 From a newspaper account of the battle.
2 St. Louis Democrat.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Wagden, a private of Company B, Eighth. Missouri, the color-hearer of the storming party, refused to retrace a single step. When his comrades left him, he dug a hole in the ground with his bayonet, planted his flag-staff in it, within twenty yards of the enemy’s rifle-pits, and sat down by the side of his banner, where he remained all day.1
At the fight at Prairie Grove (1862-63), the color-sergeant of the Nineteenth Iowa Regiment on the retreat was killed. As he fell, Lieutenant William S. Brooks, already wounded, received the colors. The rebel colonel shouted, “ God d—n them, take their colors.” This enraged Brooks, and he hallooed back, “ You can’t do it! ” The rebels did not dare to close, but fired a volley which left nine holes in the flag and eighteen in the lieutenant’s clothes. Four bullets passed through the cuff of his shirt-sleeve, but they could not wound the hand that held the dear old flag.
When Lincoln issued his proclamation, Jan. 1, 1863, declaring the slaves in certain States and parts of States in rebellion to be henceforth and forever free, the day was celebrated in Norfolk, Va., by the entire negro population. They marched through the town in procession, numbering over four thousand persons, headed by a band of music, carrying the Union flag, and cheering for the downfall of slavery.
About Christmas time, 1862, and just previous to the battle of Murfreesborough, that city was the scene of much gayety. The President of the confederacy, Jeff. Davis, had come from Richmond to counsel, perhaps to invigorate, Bragg. There were wedding festivities at which the bishop-general, Polk, officiated, and giddy Confederates danced on floors carpeted with the American flag. In the dreadful battle, closing on the 3d of January, 1863, which followed, the Confederates lost 14,700 men. The losses were about one-fourtli of each army, but the final victory was on the side of our flag.2
Amid the horrors of the Libby prison, the loyal soldiers, there confined in filth, negligence, and beggary, wretched, poor, and almost forgotten, determined to have a celebration of their country’s independence among themselves. But as they looked around they found themselves without a flag; and a celebration of their country’s independence without a flag seemed impossible. After a while, one man looked upon himself and said, “ I have a red shirt; ” and another man said, “ I have a blue blouse; ” another man, “ I have a white shirt; ”
1 Report of the assault.	2 Draper’s History of the Civil War, vol. ii. p. 366.478
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and no sooner was it said than they stripped themselves and gave their red, white, and bine shirts to be torn up into strips and pinned together to extemporize their country’s flag.1
Parson Brownlow kept our flag flying over his house, at Knoxville, Tenn., and was the last in the State to take it down. Threats having been made of taking it down, Mr. Brownlow, in one of his characteristic editorials, said: “ This flag is private property, upon a private dwelling, in a State that has never voted herself out of the Union or into the Southern confederacy, and is, therefore, lawfully and constitutionally under these same stars and stripes I have floated over my house. ... If these God-forsaken scoundrels and hell-deserving assassins want satisfaction for what I have said about them, — and it has been no little, — they can find me on these streets every day of my life but Sunday. I am at all times prepared to give them satisfaction. I take nothing back that I have ever said against the corrupt and unprincipled villains, but reiterate all, cast it in their dastardly faces, and hurl down their lying throats their own infamous calumnies.” Two armed rebels went at six o’clock in the morning to haul it down, and were met on the piazza by his daughter, who demanded their business. “ To take down that damned stars and stripes,” was their rough reply.
The young lady instantly drew a revolver, and said, “ Go on, I am good for one, and I think for both of you.” “ By the looks of this girl’s eye she will shoot,” said one of the rebs; “ we had better go and get more men.” “ Go and get nine,” said Miss Brownlow, “ and come and take it if you dare.” They went, and soon returned with ninety armed men; but on discovering that the house was filled with gallant men armed to the teeth, who had rather die than see their country’s flag dishonored, they thought it prudent to withdraw without accomplishing their object.2
May 22, 1861. While secession banners were waving at Nashville, Tenn., from every other building, both public and private, a Mrs. McEwin placed the national flag on her house, and threatened to shoot whoever attempted to pull it down.3
This flag is now in the flag museum of the War Department. As General Buell was riding through the streets of Nashville at a later period in the Rebellion, Mrs. W., living in a large house, stood at an open window and waved a rebel flag toward him, crying, “ Hurrah for Jeff. Davis and the Southern confederacy!” The General reined in his horse, turned towards the lady, touched his hat with all the
1 Rev. Dr. Tyng’s Address.	2 Chicago Journal. 3 Louisville Journal.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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courtesy and suavity for which he was remarkable, and, surveying the fine house from top to bottom with the eye of a connoisseur, quietly said, “An excellent house for a hospital!” In less than two hours every room was full of sick soldiers, and Mrs. W. was politely requested to take care of them.
An Indiana regiment, attacked by a whole brigade in one of the battles in Mississippi, was unable to stand such great odds, and was compelled to fall back thirty or forty yards, leaving their flag in the hands of the enemy. Suddenly a tall Irishman, a private in the color company, rushed from the ranks across the vacant ground, attacked the squad of rebels who had possession of the flag, and with his clubbed musket felled several to the ground, snatched the flag from them, and returned safely back to his regiment. His captain made the daring fellow a sergeant on the spot. “ Say no more about it, Captain,” said the hero, “ I dropped my whiskey flask among the rebels, and fetched that back, and I thought I might just as well bring the flag along too ! ”
A few days after the fearful scene of butchery at Fort Pillow (April 14, 1864), it was relieved by the play of nobler sentiments, and by the presence and heroic words of a brave, though heart-broken woman. At Fort Pickering, a regiment of United States artillery is drawn up in perfect order; every face sober; a high and firm resolve is burning in many a dark eye. Six paces in front of the line are standing fourteen hardy-looking, brave-hearted men. They have no commander. What wreck of war is this ? What waif floating on the stormy ocean of civil strife ? A lady, clad in the deepest mourning, steps in front of these fourteen survivors. Many a face shows by the quivering lip and the moistening eye how the sight of that bereaved woman affects them. She is the widow of Major Booth, and these fourteen are all that are alive of the battalion he commanded at Fort Pillow. In her hand she bears a regimental flag, torn with balls, stained with smoke, and clotted with human blood. Amid a silence, broken only by the hoarse roar of the river chafing against the banks below, she commences to address them in a voice low and sorrow-broken, but whose slightest cadence reaches their hearts.
“ Boys ! ” she says, “ I have just come from a visit to the hospital at Mound City. There I saw your comrades wounded at the bloody struggle at Fort Pillow. There I found this flag: you recognize it. One of your comrades saved it from the insulting touch of traitors at Fort Pillow. I have given to my country all I had to give, — my husband. Such a gift! Yet I have freely given him for freedom and480
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my country. Next my husband’s cold remains, the dearest object left me in the world is this flag, the flag that once waved in proud defiance over the works of Fort Pillow. Soldiers ! this flag I give you, knowing that you will ever remember the last words of my noble husband, — ‘ Never surrender the flag to traitors.’ ”
Colonel Jackson received from her hand the war-worn and bloodstained flag. He called upon the regiment to receive it as such a gift ought to be received. Then he and the whole line fell upon their knees, and, solemnly appealing to the God of battles, each one swore to avenge their brave and fallen comrades, and never, “ never to surrender the flag to traitors.”
The memory of the scene can never pass from before the eyes of those who witnessed it.1
A court-martial, of which Major Collin Ford, One Hundredth United States Colored Infantry, was president, was convened at Nashville, Tenn., before which was arraigned and tried Miss Emma Latimer, on a charge of disloyalty, the specification being that, on the 4th of July, 1865, she did tear down and trample under her feet, with intent to express contempt for the same, the American flag, which had been put up in honor of the anniversary of the national independence of the United States, at the house of A. R. Latimer, in Edgefield, Tenn., and did threaten, if it was put up a second time, she would tear it down and burn it up. She was found guilty of the charges and specifications, and sentenced to be confined in a military prison for ninety days, and to pay a fine of three hundred dollars; and in default of payment to be further imprisoned until the whole fine was satisfied, at the rate of two dollars a day for each day’s imprisonment.
Brevet Major-General Johnson approved the finding and sentence, Sept. 24, 1865, but, in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of the case, he remitted the entire sentence, with this indorsement: "It will be well for Miss Latimer to remember that it will not do to trifle with the sacred emblem of our nationality. That, in spite of the opposition of all the school-girls in the South, the banner of glory and beauty will still wave over the land of the free, and, notwithstanding the united efforts of all the rebellious women in the country, will continue to float, until time shall cease to be, upon every breeze, the pride and admiration of all thinking persons. She will be released from confinement and restored to her parents, with attention to Solomon’s sage remark: ‘ He that spareth the rod spoileth the child.’
1 Frank Moore’s Women of the War, pp. 310, 311.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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“ The conduct of the prosecuting witnesses deserves a passing remark. The testimony shows that they had resolved on changing their place of abode previous to July 4, but agreed to remain at the house of Mr. Latimer until after that date, in order to ensnare his little daughter, and get her into trouble. Their first battle for the flag was with a thoughtless school-girl! The entire transaction looks like the work of children temporarily removed from parental care.” 1
How our Flag was restored to the Soil of South Carolina at Port Royal. — Commander John Rodgers, in his letters relating the occurrence at Hilton Head, November, 1861, says: “ Commodore Dupont had kindly made me his aid. I stood by him and did little things which I suppose gained me credit; so when the boat was sent in, to ask whether they had surrendered, I was sent. I carried the stars and stripes; I found the ramparts utterly deserted, and I planted the American flag with my own hands, first to take possession, in the majesty of the United States, of the rebel soil of South Carolina.”
A correspondent of 'The New York World’ wrote: “The cheers that uprose on the hoisting of the flag on Fort Walker were deafening ; the stentorian ringing of human voices would have drowned the roar of artillery. The cheer was taken up man by man, ship by ship, regiment by regiment. Such a spontaneous outburst of soldierly enthusiasm never greeted the ears of Napoleon, amid the victories of Marengo, Austerlitz, or the pyramids of the Nile.”
The journal of the United States steamer Vanderbilt says it was greeted with deafening cheers, and all the bands as of one accord struck up our national airs.
The correspondent of ' The New York Times ’ wrote: “ Another and a larger star-spangled banner was afterwards displayed upon the flag-staff of a building a few rods to the left, where the rebel standard had waved during the combat, and where it had just been taken down.”
The correspondent of the 'National Intelligencer' reported: “A boat from the Wabash was seen making for the shore with a white flag at the bow and an American ensign at the stern. She soon touched the sand}?' beach, and in a moment after we thought we could discern our flag upon the ramparts. Our men could not help giving utterance to exclamations of hopeful joy; but the less sanguine waited a few moments in eager suspense, until suddenly, from the roof of an old mansion by the fort, a great flag, that could not be mistaken, dis-
1 Published officially in the Army and Navy Journal, Oct. 7, 1865.
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played the stars and stripes in all their glory, in beautiful contrast with the green woods beyond. Loud and repeated cheers rang from vessel to vessel throughout the harbor.” 1
The Story of Barbara Frietchie. — The daring act of displaying the stars and stripes as the rebel army passed through Frederick on the
6th of September, 1862, which this nonagenarian dame is reputed to have performed, forms one of the most charming episodes of the Rebellion. Whittier’s poem has immortalized her name and the story. In reply to a letter inquiring the origin of the poem, Mr. Whittier wrote me under date “ Amesbury, 6 mo. 16, 1872. My original informant was Mrs. Southworth, the authoress, of Washington. Soon after, Miss Dorothea Dix visited the city of Frederick and confirmed her statement. Within two years, a nephew of Barbara Frietchie visited me, with full confirmation of the heroism of his relative, and I have no doubt the main facts of the story are true.”
The following is a portion of Mrs. Southworth’s letter to the poet, dated “Aug. 3, 1863. When Lee’s army occupied Frederick, the only Union flag displayed in the city was held from an attic by Mrs. Barbara Frietchie, a widow lady aged ninety-seven years.” Such was the paragraph that went the rounds of the Washington papers last September. From friends who were in Frederick at the time I have heard the whole story. . . . When, on the 6th of September, the advance of Lee’s army, led by the formidable rebel, General Stonewall Jackson, entered Frederick, every Union flag was lowered, and the halyards cut; every store and every dwelling-house was closed. The inhabitants had retired indoors, the streets were deserted, and, to quote the official report, ‘ The city wore a church-yard aspect.’ But Mrs. Barbara Frietchie, taking one of the Union flags, went to the top of her house, opened a garret window, and held it forth. The
BARBARA FRIETCIIJK.
1 A letter from an officer on board the Pocahontas at Port Royal, says : “A shot from our 10-inch put a hole in their stars and bars, another took down the flag-staff; but the Confederates ran another up pretty quickly, but it was a doomed piece of bunting. The Forbes fired with her rifled gun, and the ball catching the flag wound it around and carried it off into the woods.” —Rebellion Record, vol. iii. p. 114.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
483
rebel army marched up the street, saw the flag, and the order was given, “ Halt! Fire! ” and a volley was discharged at the window .... .	from which it was displayed.
The flag-staff was partly broken, so that the flag drooped. The old lady drew it in, broke off the fragment, and, taking the stump, with the flag still attached to it, in her hand, she stretched herself as far out of the window as she could, held the stars and stripes at arm’s length waving over the rebels, and cried out, in a voice of indignation and sorrow, ‘Fire at this old head, then, boys; it is not more venerable than your flag.’ They fired no more; they passed in silence, and with downcast looks; and she secured the flag in its place, where it waved unmolested during the whole of the rebel usurpation of the city. Stonewall would not permit her to be troubled. She died a few weeks after the Union troops entered; some thought of joy at the presence of the Union army, and others from the fatigue and excitement that she underwent in the c lionization ’ that she received from those who would not emulate the-old lady’s courage, but did honor to her act.”1
Such is the story which the poet has so beautifully paraphrased.
BARBARA. FRIETCIIIE’S HOIT33S.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain-wall, —
1 Mrs. Barbara Frietchie, the widow of John C. Frietchie, and whose maiden name was Haner, the heroine of the poem, was born Dec. 3, 1766, and died at Frederick, Dec. 18, 1862, aged ninety-six years and fifteen days.484
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Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind : the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down
In her attic-window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
u Halt! ” the dust-brown ranks stood fast. u Fire !” out blazed the rifle blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
u Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,” she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came ;
The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman’s deed and word:
li Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog ! March on ! ” he said.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
485
All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet:
All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
And the Kebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her ! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.
Barbara Frietchie’s house, of which we give an illustration, drawn by Mr. Lossing in 1866, was close to the bridge which spans the stream that crosses through Frederick. The house has since been pulled down, in order to widen the street, and a plain oaken cane, made from its wood-work, was given to the poet by a nephew of the
1 From ‘National Lyrics.’ University Press, 1865.486
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
old dame in 1870, when he visited him, and confirmed in every particular the facts in the matter. Shortly after the poem was published, and began its never-ending circulation, Mr. Whittier received a letter from Judge Underwood, of the Supreme Court of Virginia, written at the request of a daughter of Stonewall Jackson, then resident in the Judge’s family, to thank the poet for his tender and graceful mention of her father in the true incident, where the General played such a conspicuous and noble part.
The story, as told by Mr. Whittier, has been the occasion of much newspaper controversy; and one lady, over her own signature, has claimed to herself the honor of the deed which is inseparably connected by the poet with Barbara Frietchie. Says one writer:1 “It is really of the smallest intrinsic consequence whether the actual Barbara Frietchie, nonagenarian dame of Frederick City, during the troubled war times, now with God, did really set the patriot flag-staff on her attic window, and from that high perch, with shrill voice and gaunt gesture, address the oncoming bands of Confederates, with Stonewall Jackson at their head, in the energetic terms recited by the poet; for, whatsoever the actual nonagenarian dame of invaded Frederick did or did not do on that memorable day, the lady of the poem, who is the imperishable personage of this spirited battle-piece, certainly did stand (and stands yet) at her attic window; certainly did wave above the advancing foe (and waves yet) the old heart-kindling ensign; and in this attitude — somewhat more real and enduring than her frail and passing prototype, or the dusty files that, under her slow-waving banner, have marched by into the still kingdoms — she will continue to stand, till all the memories of our war and Mr. Whittier’s poetry have died out in the clamor of wilder wars and louder songs. There is no Barbara Frietchie for whom the world cares a fig, except the Barbara Frietchie of Mr. Whittier.”
A correspondent of the ‘ Army and Navy Journal ’ furnishes the following as the true story of Barbara’s deed: —
“ Old Barbara was both brave and patriotic. During the passage of the rebels through the town, she is said to have had a very small flag inside of one of her windows, which she refused to give up on the demand of an officer or soldier. One day, returning from a walk, she found her steps occupied by a large number of rebel soldiers, to whom, using her cane with some energy, the old dame cried out,‘ Clear out, you dirty, lousy scoundrels.’ When our troops entered Frederick, she was at the window waving a flag. A general, said to have been Gen-
1 Philadelphia Press, May 18, 1876.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
9
487
eral Beno, raising his cap, and reining in his horse, asked,f How old is grandmother ? ’ Some one at the window mentioned her age (over ninety), when he cried, ‘ Three cheers for the loyal old grandmother! ’ They were lustily given, and the column moved on.
“ Mrs. Frietchie was a stout-hearted, patriotic, Christian woman, and it was not her fault that she did not do all attributed to her. Her house was a quaint hut attractive old-fashioned, steep-roofed structure, with curious rear buildings, immediately on the banks of Carroll's run, a little stream which flows through Frederick City. In the slope of the roof which looks towards the street are two attic dormer windows, from one of which Barbara displayed her flag. This, the true story of Barbara's achievement, was obtained from a gentleman who knew the old woman wTell, possessed her autograph, and had every opportunity for knowing the truth.”1
Professor Samuel Tyler, of Georgetown, D. C., says, on authority, that Jackson did not pass Barbara’s house, but that “ while General Eeno, who was killed at South Mountain, was passing it with the United States troops,” as I have heard, “ a little girl held at the window a small United States flag. Barbara Frietchie wras at the window, then about ninety-six years old, and it is likely out of these facts the imaginative informant gave Whittier the ideas of the poem. All that relates to the Confederate general and his troops is pure fiction.”
Jacob Engelbrecht, who was the mayor of Frederick from 1865 to 1868, and who had known Mrs. Frietchie nearly all his life, and lived opposite her for thirty-six years, says: “ When General Lee passed through with his army, I posted myself at one of the upstair windows, where I had a full view of all that passed below in the street. When General Lee got in front of Mrs. Frietchie’s house and also in front of mine, he and his whole army halted, and I afterwards ascertained that General Stonewall Jackson with his army was coming up Mill Alley or Bentz Street. So General Lee waited until General Jackson and his army had passed. All the time that General Lee stopped in front of Mrs. Frietchie’s house I saw no flag waving. If there had been, I certainly would have seen it; and as for General Jackson, he did not pass over the bridge, but up Another street. If there was any thing like flag-waving at Mrs. Frietchie’s house, I think it was when General McClellan’s army passed through in pursuit of Lee four or five days after. One of my family is under the impression that Mrs. Frietchie came out with her small flag to the front door, and at the same time
1 Army and Navy Journal for July 20, 1867.488
»4
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
an officer was passing, who supposed that from her manner of holding it she intended it for him; he accordingly reached up, and she handed it to him. This, I think, is all about the flag-waving. The fact is, Mrs. Frietchie had no flag in the house of larger size than twelve or sixteen inches square. The most courageous conduct of hers I noticed was that in returning home one day from her niece’s, the steps and the front of her house were full of rebel soldiers who were sitting in its shade, when she pushed her cane between them and said, ‘ Get up, you dirty fellows, and let me get in! ’ ”
Mr. Thomas M. Brewer, in a communication to the ‘ Boston Advertiser,’ says: “ In travelling from Philadelphia to Baltimore in the winter of 1864-65,1 chanced to be seated by an elderly gentleman, who proved to be the Presbyterian clergyman of Frederick, who had been the pastor of Barbara Frietchie.” He had not been an eye-witness of the incident, but spoke of it as true beyond all question, and stated Mr. Whittier’s account was substantially correct, with two exceptions. One was, that the expression “ Dame Frietchie ” gave the world the impression that she was in the humbler walks of life, whereas she was a lady, and well connected; the other, that when the flag had been shot down, the heroine snatched it up, and, leaning out of the window, waved it from there as the troops marched on; the fact being that the flag fell to the sidewalk, and Mrs. Frietchie hastened to pick it up, in the midst of a crowd of hostile and insulting soldiery, went with it to the edge of the sidewalk, and, stepping on the mounting-block that stood there, waved the flag in close proximity to the passing troops. This clergyman Mr. Brewer believes to have been the Rev. Mr. Junkin, father-in-law of Stonewall Jackson.
Dr. Steiner, a native and resident of Frederick, after testifying to the character of the old lady, and her decided views, fearless utterances, and ardent patriotism, says, that a neighbor informed him she was in the habit of displaying a flag, not one six by eight inches, but of respectable size, in her west attic window, and that he saw this flag during some of the darkest hours of the war, although he is not positive whether he saw it during the rebel occupation in 1862. Her intolerance of those who fought against the Union was displayed in many ways, and notably in the employment of her cane too clear her steps of crowds of Confederate soldiers she would at times find sitting on them, when she employed epithets by no means complimentary to them.
In 1869, Mrs. Mary A. Quantrill claimed, in the ‘ Washington Star,’ for herself the praise and honor which has been awarded to old Grand-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
489
mother Frietchie for displaying the stars and stripes to the rebel forces. She says : —
“On the eve of Sept. 6, 1862, not a flag was to be seen; not a citizen upon the streets; the pulse of business had almost ceased to beat; and as friend met friend, they whispered with white lips of the approach of the enemy. General Eobert Lee, at the head of the Confederate army, was marching on Frederick, left, with its women and children, to the mercy of the chivalrous enemy. General Stonewall Jackson entered the city on Saturday, the 6th of September, and General Longstreet, on the following Monday, came in with the remaining forces.
“ The morning of the 10th day dawned upon columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, wending their way to South Mountain and Antietam. Onward they pressed, presenting little variety, excepting that national flags were tied to the horses* tails, and trailed through the streets, as a warning to Unionists of what might occur thereafter. Seated at my door, I had been a silent observer of the morning’s pageant. Music was swelling, the stars and bars were waving, and as I gazed upon brave men enduring every degree of danger and suffering for what they called their rights, my reverie was interrupted by the sudden halt of a subordinate officer before my door, who shouted at the top of his voice, ‘ G— d— the stars and stripes to the dust, with all who advocate them ! ’ The hero was borne off by the dense throng, but the insult admitted of no second thought. The flag of my country, sacred to the memory of my grand sires, and to the best men of revolutionary history, damned to the dust ? It was too much. My little daughter, who had been enjoying her flaglet secretly, at this moment came to the door, and, taking it from her hand, I held it firmly in my own, but not a word was spoken. Soon a splendid carriage, accompanied by elegantly mounted officers, approached. As they came near the house they caught glimpse of the tiny flag, and exclaimed: ‘ See, see ! the flag, the stars and stripes! * and, with true chivalry, hats were removed and courtesies were offered the bearer, but not to her standard. They had advanced some paces when a halt was ordered, and a lady — Miss Martha Sinn, now Mrs. James Arnold — of Frederick, standing near other ladies of the neighborhood, admonished me to fly with my colors, but I did not move until an officer rode up, and the following remarks were exchanged : —
“ Officer, ‘ Madam, give me your flag.*
“Answer. ‘No, sir, you can’t have it.’
“ Officer. ‘ Give me your flag to present to General Lee.’
“ Ansiuer. ‘ General Lee cannot have my flag.’
“Officer.	‘Why1?’
“Answer.	‘1 think it worthy of a better cause.’
“ Officer. ‘Your flag has been dishonored.’
“Answer. ‘Only by the cause you have espoused.’490
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ Officer (regarding me sternly). ‘ Come down South, and we will show you whole negro brigades equipped for the service of the United States.’
u Answer. ‘I am informed on that subject.’
“ Here a brother officer warned him of the value of time, and urged a return, which was accordingly made. The Confederate soldier said, the officer who asked for the flag was General Hill.
“ I remained resting the staff of my ffaglet on the railing of the porch, when a soldier, who had heard the remarks, stepped behind me, and with his bayonet cut off my staff close to my hand. The report resembled that of a pistol, and turning about I saw him tear my flag into pieces, and stamp them in the dust. I pronounced this the act of a coward. Among the young ladies present was Miss Mary Hopwood, daughter of a well-known Union citizen of Frederick. Seeing my flag cut down, she drew a concealed flaglet from her sleeve and supplied its place. In an instant the second flag was cut down by the same man. As soon as information was conveyed to the officers, a man, more advanced in years than either of those already referred to, came back and reproved in sharp language the man who cut down my flags.
“ Mrs. Barbara Frietchie was held in high esteem by the people of Frederick City, and the ladies generally are second to none for their devotion to the cause of our country.
“ Mary A. Quantrill.1
“ Washington City, D. C., Feb. 9, 1869.”
Mr. Whittier, in reply, wrote the editor of the ‘ Washington Star’:—
“ To the Editor of the ‘ Star: ’ — I have received a copy of thy paper, containing a letter from a lady who claims to have been the heroine of the flag at Frederick. I have never heard of her before, and, of course, know nothing of her veracity or loyalty. I must say, however, in justice to myself, that I have full confidence in the truth of the original statement furnished me by a distinguished literary lady of Washington [Mrs. Southworth], as respects Barbara Frietchie, — a statement soon after confirmed by Dorothea Dix, who visited Frederick, and made herself acquainted with many interesting particulars of the life and character of that remarkable woman.
“ Very truly thy friend,
“John G. Whittier.
“ Amesbury, 19th 2d mo., 1869.”
The editor remarks: “ Mr. Whittier gives good reason for his faith in Barbara Frietchie; but as there is no doubt, from the testimony of at least four witnesses, that Mrs. Quantrill’s claim is well founded, there seems to be considerable mystification in the matter.” Probably the solution is, that both these brave women displayed their patriot-
1 Mrs. Quantrill’s death was reported in 1879.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
491
ism and courage in the same way, and on the same occasion. The true story, as told by the correspondent of the f Army and Navy Journal/ furnishes a clew toward solving the question. Barbara raised her flag, and was honored for it by a Union general, as our troops passed through Frederick, and Mrs. Quantrill displayed her “ flaglet,” as she calls it, when the rebels marched through.
Many anecdotes of the bravery displayed by color-bearers are told: —
Color-Sergeant Jefferson Foster, of the Fifty-ninth New York Volunteers, at the battle of----, said to Orderly-Sergeant G. S. Adams,
of the Sixth New York Artillery, “ Here, sergeant, take this star; it is the last of thirty-four from our old flag; the remainder are shot away in eleven battles,—Malvern Hill, Chantilly, South Mountain, Antietam, first and second Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Falling Water, Bristow Station, Bappahannock Station, and Mine Bun; and if I am not permitted to take it to the ladies who gave it, perform the duty for me, and tell them it never left the field disgraced.”1
At the terrible battle of the Wilderness, a color-bearer, who had received four wounds, carried his flag forward, and planted it on one of the enemy’s cannon, before the smoke from its deadly mouth had risen over it. Alas! the brave fellow, after standing on the cannon, and waving his flag over it, fell to earth with a bullet through his brain. One of his companions caught and held the flag aloft, whilst others pressed forward; the enemy gave way, and a victory crowned the Union arms.
On the 4th of July, 1864, at the Prison Camp at Macon, Ga., Captain Todd, of the Eighth New Jersey Volunteers, a very tall man, placed in his hat a small silk flag, which had been presented to him by a lady of Jersey City, and which he had kept secreted. No sooner was it displayed, than it was welcomed by three hearty cheers, and one of the prisoners struck up the f Star-Spangled Banner/ which he sung in a fine manly voice, every one present joining in the chorus with full power of the lungs. All then proceeded to the centre of the prison, where Chaplain Dixon, of the Sixteenth Connecticut Volunteers, made an appropriate and patriotic prayer. Speeches and patriotic songs followed, and ‘ Home, Sweet Home ’ was sung, which brought tears to every eye. The crowd went noiselessly to their quarters comforted, and feeling it was one of the most glorious Fourths they had ever spent.2
When the Union forces were captured at Plymouth, N. C., the
1 Rebellion Record, vol. vii.	2 Recollections of Dr. Joseph Ferguson.492
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
colors of the Sixteenth Connecticut Regiment were torn up and distributed among the officers and men to save them from the enemy. Many who had these relics were taken to Southern prisons, but through all their privations they kept their trusts carefully. An effort is being made to gather those pieces, and place them among the other colors at the State House.1
In April, 1861, a squad belonging to Company E, Sixty-seventh New York State Militia, was guarding a point on the railroad between Annapolis Junction and Washington, and a collection was taken up for the purchase of material for an American flag, to be hoisted on the highest pine in the neighborhood, which was successful; and one cold,, rainy morning, the not very loyal inhabitants were surprised to see and hear the hearty cheers which greeted the unfolding of the dear old flag. On the departure of the squad the flag accompanied it, and was afterward inspected by President Lincoln and Secretary Seward, and the colonel of the regiment ordered it thenceforward to be borne as a guide-flag. It was lost on the field of Bull Run, but found by the drummer-boy, Patsey Coyle, who restored it to Company E. On the return of the regiment, Messrs. Tiffany & Co., of New York, had the flag handsomely fringed, and the original inscription in pencil on the white stripes, “ Camp Heat, E Co., 69th N. Y. S. M., Piney Brook,.. Md., April 23,1861,” replaced with letters of gold. It accompanied the regiment on its second campaign, and was afterwards loaned to an officer recruiting for the Irish Brigade.2
I am indebted to the Hon. J. E. H. Claiborne, ex-Governor of Mississippi, for the following interesting incident. Writing from Natchez, he says: “ Let me now tell you the story of a flag. When the late civil war broke out, I was residing on a large sea-island cotton plantation in the extreme southwestern angle of Mississippi, near the mouth of Pearl River. I had sent my wife and daughter here to my mother-in-law. My only son, of course, was in the Confederate army. I remained in charge of a large and highly improved property. When New Orleans was occupied by the national forces, a regiment was quartered at Fort Pike in the Rigolets, twelve miles from my plantation. A few weeks afterwards, a steamboat, with a party of officers and two companies, landed at my house. The major in command said that information had reached the fort that I kept a rebel flag in my house,, and had hoisted it since the fall of New Orleans. Of course, and truly, I denied the charge. He said that his duty required him to make a
1	Newspaper paragraph. See the returned flags of Connecticut regiments.
2	New York Herald, May, 1877.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
493
search; but it was evidently a police duty he did not relish, for he was an educated and polished gentleman, and believed my word. I called my servants to conduct two of his subalterns over the house, and to open every possible hiding-place. I ordered all the chests and trunks brought into the hall and opened. No flag was found; the search was over; and when taking some grog with me, the officers, one and all, expressed their satisfaction. I then said, ‘Now, Major, you have failed to find a flag, but I confess I have one/ He and his comrades looked grave and, I thought, distressed. I said, fYes, I have, und will never part with it. If you take me, you shall take it; if you take it, you shall take me !9
“ I then ordered a servant to bring a certain trunk. It was old and weather-beaten, marked in brass tacks F. L. C., U. S. A. On opening it, there were the emblems and insignia of a Eoyal Arch Mason, a pair of epaulettes, a sash, a bundle of commissions, and a faded, moth-eaten flag, — the genuine stars and stripes. General Claiborne, my father, had been ensign, lieutenant, captain, and adjutant of the first regiment of the United States in Wayne's army, and this was the old flag of that regiment.
“ You may imagine the reaction that occurred; the delights of those gallant young officers; and how very soon the champagne began to flow. The story went to the fort, from the fort to head-quarters, and thenceforth my large property, lying on twenty feet tide-water, was as safe as it is to-day. I had about one hundred negroes, large herds of cattle and sheep; and though the United States forces, military and naval, were often there, I never lost a dime/'1
1 Letter from Hon. J. F. H. Claiborne, April 21, 1879. The officer referred to was Captain Rockwell, Thirty-first Massachusetts Volunteers, stationed at Fort Pike in the Rigolets. He was a son of Judge Rockwell, of Boston. He subsequently died at Baton Rouge. The flag was the flag of the original First Regiment United States Infantry, commanded by Colonel John F. Hamtramack, of Wayne’s Legion. It floated oyer Fort Washington (Cincinnati), was in the battle of Maumee, and was subsequently hoisted at Fort Grandville. After its long and eventful history it was burned in Mr. Claiborne’s house, near the Bay of St. Louis, in 1878, together with a sword worn by Count Roch-ambeau at the siege of Yorktown.494
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
SOUTHERN FLAGS IN THE GREAT REBELLION.
1860-1865.
il Across tlie chasm dark and bloody,
Where armed hate once cruel stood,
Let us build anew the union Of our common brotherhood.
u Unfurl for us the nation’s banner,
Flag of a land forever free)
We, too, would claim and share its glory,
As it floats o’er land and sea.
In the days long past, our fathers Stood beneath the flag’s broad fold;
In the days to come, our children Will with yours its fame uphold.
u Thus, by friendship’s ties united,
We will change the bloody past Into golden links of union,
Blending all in love at last.
u Thus beneath the one broad banner,
Flag of the True, the Brave, the Free,
We will build anew the union,
Fortress of our Liberty.” 1
As in the non-seceding States at the breaking out of the Bebellion there was a universal and patriotic display of Union banners, so each of the seceding States made haste to desecrate and insult the stars and stripes, and display banners with strange devices as emblems of their State sovereignty.
Three days after the passage of the ordinance of secession, a railway train came in from Savannah with twenty delegates of “ the Sons of the South/’ representing three hundred and fifty gentlemen in Georgia. They brought with them the banner of their association, which was white, with the device of a palmetto-tree, having its trunk entwined with a rattlesnake; also five stars and a crescent, and the words, “ Separate State Action.” 2
1	‘ Virginia to Massachusetts, in 1876,’ by C. C. Baylor.
2	Senator Baker, of Oregon, who sealed his devotion to the flag with his life at Ball’s Bluff, made an eloquent speech for the preservation of the Union, Jan. 12, 1861, during which he said : “ The American man-of-war is a noble spectacle. I have seen it enter an ancient port in the Mediterranean ; all the world wondered at it, and talked about it;FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
495
After a little while, in defiance of the very principles of secession, these State flags were, as in the loyal North, made subordinate to a general union flag established by the Eebellion confederacy.
On the adjourning of the South Carolina legislature (which had provided for a convention) on the loth of November, 1860, a few days after the election of Lincoln was ascertained, the members were honored with a torchlight procession in the streets of Columbia. The old banner of the Union was taken down from the State House, and the palmetto flag unfurled in its place; and it was boastfully declared that the old ensign, “ the detested rag of the Union,” should never again float in the free air of South Carolina.
On the 16th of November the Chancellor (Dunkin) of South Carolina closed his court, and expressed a hope that when the members should reassemble it would be “ as a court in an independent State, and that State a member of a Southern confederacy.” The next day was a gala-day in Charleston. A pine liberty-pole ninety feet in height was erected, and a palmetto flag unfurled from its top. The flag was white, with a green palmetto-tree in the middle, and bore the motto of South Carolina: Animis Opibusque Parati ; that is, “ Prepared in mind and resources, ready to give life and property .”
The raising of this flag was greeted with the roar of cannon a hundred times repeated, and the Marseillaise Hymn, by a band; then followed the Miserere, from II Trovatore, played as a requiem for the departed Union. Full twenty thousand people participated in this inauguration of revolution, and the Eev. C. P. Gadsden invoked the blessing of God upon their acts. These ceremonies were followed by speeches (some from Northern men temporarily in Charleston) in which the people were addressed as citizens of the Southern republic. Processions filled the streets, bearing from square to square many banners with significant inscriptions; such as, “ South
salvos of artillery from forts and shipping in the harbor saluted its flag ; princes and princesses and merchants paid it homage ; and all the people blessed it as a harbinger of hope for their own ultimate freedom. Imagine now the same noble vessel entering the same haven. The flag of thirty-three stars and thirteen stripes has been hauled down, and in its place a signal has been run up which flaunts the device of a lone star or of a palmetto-tree. Men ask, * Who is the stranger that thus steals into our waters ? ’ The answer, contemptuously given, is, ‘She comes from one of the obscure republics of North America ; let her pass on.’ ”
STREET FLAGSTAFF.496
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Carolina goes it alone; ” “ G-od, liberty, and the State; ” “ South Carolina wants no stripes ; ” “ Stand to your arms, Palmetto boys; ” “ Huzza for the Southern confederacy;” “Now or never strike for independence;’’ “Good-by Yankee Doodle;” “Death to all abolitionists;” “ Let us bury the Union’s dead carcass,” &c.
No Union flag was to be seen upon any staff in the harbor, for vigilance committees, assuming police powers, had already been formed to prevent any such lingering display of loyalty.1
Governor Gist, in his farewell message, December 10, intended as much for the convention as the legislature, stimulated it to revolutionary action, and said “he hoped that by the 28th of December no flag but the palmetto flag would float over any part of South Carolina.
Back of the president’s chair of the South Carolina convention which adopted the ordinances of secession was a banner composed of
cotton cloth, with devices painted by a Charleston artist named Alexander. The base of the design was a mass of broken and disordered blocks of stone, on each of which were the ¿lame and arms of the free States. Rising from this mass were two columns of perfect and symmetrical blocks of stone, connected by an arch of the same material, on each of which, fifteen in number, were the name and coat of arms of a slave State. South Carolina, foremost in the treason, forms the key-stone of the arch, on which stood Powers’s statue of Calhoun, leaning upon the trunk of a palmetto-tree, and displaying to spectators a scroll inscribed, “ Truth, Justice, and the Constitution.” On one side of Calhoun was a figure of Faith,
1 Lossing’s Civil War.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
497
and on the other side one of Hope. Beyond these, on each side, was the figure of an Indian armed with a rifle. In the space between the columns, and under the arch, was the device of the seal and flag of South Carolina; namely, a palmetto-tree with a rattlesnake coiled around its trunk, and at its base a park of cannon and emblems of the State’s commerce. On a scroll, fluttering from the trunk of the tree, were the words, “ Southern Bepublic.” Over the whole design, on the segment of a circle, were fifteen stars, the number of the slave States, and underneath all, “ Built from the Ruins!' The banner was intended as a menace and a prophecy. After doing duty in the convention, this banner was suspended across the street in front of the hall, and by the action of the weather became much faded. It was presented by Alexander, the artist, to a cousin of John H. S. Fogg, M.D., of Boston, who gave it to that gentleman in 1861. It remained in his possession until 1874, when he presented it to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, in whose custody it remains.1
The Kansas Historical Society has in its possession the flag which was carried into that State by a company of South Carolinians in the tumultuous early days of its history, and figured conspicuously in Lawrence during the burning of the Free State Hotel and the destruction of the press and types of the f Herald of Freedom,’ May 21, 1856. It was captured by Captain James A. Harvey, of Chicago, who commanded the ' Free-State Boys ’ in an engagement near Oskaloosa on the 11th of September. It is a crimson banner of cotton stuff, in size four by six feet, having in the centre and shown on both sides a large white star; and on one side the inscription, “ South Carolina,” and on the other, “ Southern Bights.”
The ordinance of secession, having passed the South Carolina convention Dec. 19, 1860, was welcomed by the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, and other demonstrations of joy. The State had become a free and independent nation. A procession of gentlemen repaired to St. Philip’s church-yard, and, encircling the tomb of Calhoun, vowed to devote their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to Carolinian independence. The sidewalks were crowded with ladies wearing bonnets made of black and white Georgia cotton, decorated with ornaments of palmetto-trees and lone stars. In the frenzy of their misdirected patriotism, they surpassed the men. At the signing the ordinance, — a ceremony declared to be profoundly grand and impressive, — a venerable clergyman, whose hair was white as snow, implored the favoring auspices of Heaven.2
1 Dr. Fogg’s letter to G-. H. P., Jan. 9, 1879.
32
2 Draper, vol. i. p. 515.498
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
BANNER OP SOUTH CAROLINA.
The Governor was authorized to receive ambassadors, consuls, &c., from abroad; to appoint similar officers to represent South Carolina in foreign countries, and to organize a cabinet.1
A banner of red silk was adopted. It bore a blue cross, on which were set fifteen stars for the fifteen slaveholding States; one of them,
central and larger than the rest, represented South Carolina. On a red field was a palmetto and crescent.2 Polkas and the Marseillaise Hymn were played in the streets. The Charleston newspapers published intelligence from other parts of the United States under the title of Foreign News.
Several of our national airs were struck from the music-books in South Carolina, and replaced by revolutionary melodies of France, with the necessary variations to suit the change of place, &c.3
In June, 1861, a Charleston, S. C., ship hoisted the flag of the Confederate States at Cronstadt, and for so doing the captain was arrested and placed in the guard-house by the Russian officers.
On the 21st of December, 1860, there was a general demonstration at Hew Orleans over the secession of South Carolina. One hundred
guns were fired, and the pelican flag unfurled. The Southern Marseillaise was sung as the flag4 was raised, amid reiterated and prolonged cheers for South Carolina and Louisiana.
A month later, on the 21st of January, the legislature of Louisiana convened at Baton Rouge, when a flag with fifteen stars, representing the number of the slave States, was raised over the dome of the capitol. The convention met at the same place two days later (23d), and on the 26th adopted the ordinance of secession by a vote of 113 ayes to 17 noes. When the result was made known, President Mouton arose, with great solemnity of manner, and said: “ In virtue of the vote just announced, I now declare the connection between the State of Louisiana and the Federal Union dissolved, and that she is a free, sovereign, and independent power.’’ Then Governor Moore entered the hall with a military officer bearing a pelican flag. This was placed in the hands of President Mouton, while the spectators and delegates, swayed with excitement,
THE PELICAN FLAG
1 Boston Journal, July 12, 1861.
3 Newspaper statement.
2 Lossing’s Civil War ; New York Herald. 4 National Intelligencer, December 25.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
499
cheered vehemently. When all became quiet, a solemn prayer was offered, and the flag was blessed according to the rites of the Eoman Catholic Church, by Father Hubert.1
A committee of the convention having in charge the subject of a State flag did not approve of the pelican as the symbol of Louisiana, and reported the pelican as a bird “ in form unsightly, in habits filthy, in nature cowardly;55 and also that they learned, to their amazement, from Audubon “ that the story of the pelican feeding its young with its own blood is gammon.” They therefore did not recommend this waterfowl as a fit subject for their flag, but rather one of loathing and contumely.
Subsequently the convention adopted as the flag of Louisiana a flag of thirteen stripes,—four blue, six white, and three red, commencing at the top with the colors as written. The union was red, with its sides equal to the width of seven stripes; in its centre was a single, pale yellow, five-pointed star.2
This was the flag which was hoisted on the city hall at Hew Orleans when Farragut appeared before that city, April 25, 1862.
Two days after the pelican flag was raised at Hew Orleans, on the 22d of December, 1860, a secession flag-pole, one hundred feet high, was raised at Petersburg, Va., amid the cheers of the people, and a palmetto flag hoisted on it. An unknown Union patriot, however, during the night sawed down the pole and carried off the flag.3 A week later, viz. December 28, the palmetto flag was raised over the custom-house and post-office at Charleston, S. C., and upon Forts Moultrie and Pinckney; and on the 1st of January, 1861, the Palmetto Guard held possession of the United States arsenal under the palmetto flag. Captain McGowan, reporting the firing upon his vessel, the Star of the West, on the 9th of January, by a masked battery on Morris’s Island, believed to be the first instance in the history of our flag of its having been so insulted by our own people, mentions that a red palmetto flag was flying over the battery when it opened its fire. These palmetto flags were of various shape, color, and material. There is now in the Museum of the Haval Library and Institute at the Boston Havy Yard a large white flag, made of bunting, which seems to have seen some service. In the centre of the field there is a blue palmetto-
1	Journal of the Convention.
2	General Beauregard’s letter to G. H. P., Feb. 3, 1872. The significance of the devices of this flag are not apparent, and in beauty it was far inferior to the old national ensign.
3	New York Daily News, December 24.500
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tree, among the leaves of which are two white crescents or half-moons. Surrounding this device is a blue ring, three or four inches in width, on which is wrought, in white silk, a star and the legend, “ South Carolina.” The history of this flag is unknown.
In the flag museum of the War Department at Washington there is displayed the first flag that waved over Charleston in 1861, and, in fact, the first secession flag raised in the confederacy. It is a perfect caricature. The material is of dirty white bunting, with a very poor representation of a palmetto-tree sewed in the centre. It has eight branches, but no leaves, and looks more like a huge spider than any thing else. It is surrounded by eleven red stars and a red moon just rising. It was used at Forts Sumter and Moultrie, and in the fortifications around Charleston.
t
On the passage of the Alabama ordinance of secession, December, 1860, an immense mass meeting was held in front of the capitol at Montgomery, and a secession flag, presented by the women of Montgomery, was raised on the State House; salutes were fired, and in the evening the town was illuminated. At Mobile, on the reception of the news, a crowd assembled at the secession pole at the foot of Government Street, to witness the spreading of the Southern flag, and it was run up amid the shouts of the multitude and the thunder of cannon. The crowd then repaired in procession to the United States customhouse with a band of music playing the Southern Marseillaise, and a lone star flag was waved amid enthusiastic shouts. In the fireworks and illuminations the ensuing evening the Southern Cross gleamed in lines of fire, and competed with the oft-repeated Lone Star.
The constellation of the Southern Cross cannot be seen anywhere within the boundaries of the Southern States. An Alabama State flag^ originally white, having on one side the State arms and motto, and on the other a scroll, inscribed, “ Our Homes, Our Plights, we entrust to your Keeping, brave Sons of Alabama,” surmounted by seven stars linked together, is preserved in the war museum at Washington.
In the Yirginia convention an ordinance was passed that the flag of the Commonwealth of Yirginia should hereafter be bunting, “ which shall be a deep blue field with a circle of white in the centre, upon which shall be painted or embroidered, to show both sides alike, the coat of arms of the State as described by the convention of 1776, for one side of the seal of the State, viz. f Virtus, the genius of the Commonwealth, dressed like an Amazon, resting upon a spear with one hand, and holding a sword in the other, and treading on Tyranny, represented by a man prostrate, a crown fallen from his head, a brokenFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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chain in his left hand, and a scourge in his right. In the exergue, the word VIRGINIA over the head of Virtus,, and underneath the words Sic Semper Tyrannis.’ ”
The flag thrown to the breeze from the flag-staff of the State cap-itol of Georgia, when an artillery salute announced that the ordinance of secession was adopted, bore the coat of arms of the State, viz. the arch of the constitution, supported by the three pillars of Wisdom, Justice, and Modeeation, on a white field. The flags used by the State troops during the civil war bore the same device, with the name of the regiment on the reverse. These were the State flags before as well as during the war. No State secession flag was adopted by Georgia.1 In the Washington Museum there is a f stars and bars5 flag, with the coat of arms of Georgia in the centre of the union surrounded by silver stars, and beneath a scroll, inscribed on one side, “ Presented f>y the ladies of Henry;” on the other, “Lackey Rangers. Victory or Death.”
The flag adopted by the convention of North Carolina, May 26, 1861, consisted of a perpendicular red bar next the staff, in width one-third the length of the flag, the fly of the flag being divided equally in two horizontal bars, white and blue, the white in chief. The centre of the red bar was charged with a large, five-pointed white star, and above and beneath it, in white letters, the inscriptions, “ May 20, 1775,” “May 20, 1861,” the dates of the Mechlenburg declaration of independence and of the State ordinance of secession.
A flag of this description captured from the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Volunteers is in the Washington Museum. After the naval battle at Hatteras Inlet, July 30, 1861, Lieutenant Bankhead, of the United States ship Susquehanna, brought off from the forts two flags as trophies. One was a color standard made of heavy twilled silk, fringed with gold: the colors red and white, the union blue, having a gilt star on each side. On one side was inscribed, “ Presented by the ladies of Shiloh, Camden County, to the North Carolina defenders.” Over the star was “ May 20,1775,” underneath, “ May 20,1861.” The letters and star were gold gilt, and beautifully executed. The other flag bore this inscription, “Independent Greys, August 1,1859 ;” its union had nine stars.2
Early in February, 1861, a convention of six of the seceding States, viz. South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
1	Manuscript letter of William T. Thompson, editor of the Savannah Daily Morning News.
2	Barton’s Cruise of the United States Steamer Susquehanna, 1860-63.502
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Florida, assembled at Montgomery, Ala. These States were represented by forty-two delegates. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was elected President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President, of these confederated States of America for the current year.
While a committee had the matter of a permanent government under consideration, the convention discussed the subject of a national flag. Various devices were presented. The designers, in many instances, were patriotic ladies, and many of these designs were but modifications of the grand old stars and stripes.
On the 9 th of February, Mr. Memminger presented to the convention a flag sent by the young ladies of Charleston, S. C., as a model flag for the Confederate States ; the device was a blue cross on a red field, with six white five-pointed stars or mullets blazoned on the cross. At the same time he presented another, from a gentleman, which had fifteen stars within a cross,1 but the cross upon a different ground.
On presenting these flags, Mr. Memminger said : —
“ Mr. President, the idea of union, no doubt, was suggested to the imagination of the young ladies by the beauteous constellation of the Southern Cross, which the great Creator has placed in the southern heavens, by way of compensation for the glorious constellation at the north pole. The imagination of the young ladies was, no doubt, inspired by the genius of Dante and the scientific skill of Humboldt. But, sir, I have no doubt that there was another idea associated with it in the minds of the young ladies, — a religious one, — and although we have not seen in the heavens the ‘In hoc signo vinces,’ written upon the laburnum of Constantine, yet the same sign has been manifested to us upon the tablets of the earth ; for we all know that it has been by the aid of revealed religion that we have achieved over fanaticism the victory which we this day witness ; and it is becoming, on this occasion, that the debt of the South to the cross should be thus rec^ ognized. I have also, Mr. President, a commission from a gentleman of taste and skill in the city of Charleston, who offers another model, which embraces the same idea of a cross, but upon a different ground. The gentleman who offers this model appears to be more hopeful than
1 The ‘New York Herald’ about this time published a rude representation of what purported to be the flag of the Southern confederacy, wdiich was probably the flag above referred to. This flag had a red field charged with a blue Latin cross. The cross blazoned with fifteen white stars, the centre star for South Carolina being larger than the rest; a white palmetto-tree and white crescent were in the upper canton of the flag next the staff.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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the young ladies. They offer one with seven stars, — six for the States already represented in this Congress, and the seventh for Texas, whose deputies we hope will soon be on their way to join us. He offers a flag which embraces the whole "fifteen States. God grant that his hope may soon be realized, and that we may soon welcome their stars to the glorious constellation of Southern confederacy.”
These remarks were applauded, and a committee of one delegate from each State was appointed to report a device for a national flag and seal. Mr. Brooke, of Mississippi, offered a resolution to instruct the committee to report a design for a flag as similar as possible to that of the United States, making only such changes as should give them distinction. In his speech he spoke of the associations which clustered around the old ensign, — associations which could never be effaced. “ Sir,” he said, “ let us preserve it as far as we can; let us continue to hallow it in our memory, and still pray that
1 Long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ 77
His eulogy of the old flag was so full of Union sentiment that it was regarded as treasonable, and Brooke was severely rebuked. William Porcher Miles, of South Carolina, the chairman of the committee, protested against the resolution and the utterance of the mover. He gloried more, a thousand times, in the palmetto flag of his State. He had regarded, “ from his youth, the stars and stripes as the emblem of oppression and tyranny.” He was so warmly applauded that Brooke, at the suggestion of a friend, withdrew his motion.
W. W. Boyce, of South Carolina, who had been a member of the United States Congress seven years, presented a model for a flag which he had received, with a letter, from Mrs. C. Ladd, of Winnsboro’, who described it as “ tricolored, with a red union, seven stars, and the crescent moon.” She offered her three boys to her country, and suggested “Washington Republic” as a name for the new nation. In presenting the flag, Boyce said: “ I will take the liberty of reading her letter to the Congress. It is full of authentic fire. It is worthy of Rome in her best days, and might well have been read in the Roman Senate on that disastrous day when the victorious banner of the great Carthaginian was visible from Mont Aventine. And I may add, sir, that as long as our women are impelled by these sublime sentiments, and our mountains yield the metals out of which weapons are forged, the lustrous stars of our unyielding confederacy will never pale their glorious fires, though baffled oppression may504
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threaten with its impotent sword, or, more dangerous still, seek to beguile with the siren song of conciliation.”
Chilton, Tombs, Stephens, and others presented devices for flags. They were sent in daily from the cotton-growing States, a great many of them showing attachment to the old banner, yet accompanied by the most fervid expressions of sympathy with the Southern cause.
Two young women, Rebecca C. Ferguson and Mollie A. D. Sinclair, in the art department of the Tuscogee Female College, sent in seven designs. In their letter they said that “ amidst all their efforts at originality, there ever danced before them visions of the star-gemmed flag, with its party-colored stripes, that floated so proudly over the late United States. Let us snatch from the eagle of the cliff our idea of independence, and cull from the earth diamonds, and gems from the heavens, to deck the flag of the Southern confederacy. With cotton for king, there are seven States bound by a chain of sisterly love that will strengthen by time, as onward, right onward, they move up the glorious path of Southern independence.”
In the seven devices offered, the principal members were an eagle, stars, and a cotton-bale. These devices were presented by Mr. Chilton, of Alabama.
A public man notes in his diary, under date “ Washington, March 6,
1861. At Montgomery,--------found the women much more violent and
disposed to mischief than the men, many of the ladies almost openly expressing their wish to see the f Confederate flag ’ planted at Washington. It appears, too, that of this same Confederate flag a number of
models have been furnished by ladies. Copies of some of these------•
had brought on, and he exhibited them to me. Nothing can be imagined more childish and grotesque than most of them were. The abler men at Montgomery, he tells me, are urgent that the seceded States should claim the flag of the United States as their own, — a proposition which I should suppose would be quite agreeable to Mr. Sumner and others who have not yet got over their disposition to denounce the Union as a f covenant with death and an agreement with hell.’ ”1
On motion of Mr. Miles, of South Carolina, the subject of a flag for the confederacy was referred to a committee of six members, one from each State represented in the convention; viz., Messrs. Miles, of South Carolina; Morton, of Florida; Shorter, of Alabama; Barton, of Georgia; Sparrow, of Louisiana; and Harris, of Mississippi; and
1 Diary of a Public Man, Part IV. North American Review for November, 1879, p. 486. See note, p. 401.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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on the 5th of March Mr. Miles, the chairman of the committee to whom the subject was referred, submitted the following report: —
“ The committee appointed to select a proper flag for the Confederate States of America beg leave to report that they have given this subject due consideration, and carefully inspected the designs submitted to them. The number of these has been immense, but they all may be divided into two great classes. First, those which copy and preserve the principal features of the United States flag, with slight and unimportant modifications. Secondly, those which are very elaborate, complicated, or fantastical. The objection to the first class is that none of them, at any considerable distance, could readily be distinguished from the one which they imitate. Whatever attachment may be felt, from association, for the stars and stripes (an attachment which your committee may be permitted to say they do not all share), it is manifest that, in inaugurating a new government, we cannot retain the flag of the government from which we have withdrawn, with any propriety, or without encountering very obvious practical difficulties. There is no propriety in retaining the ensign of a government which, in the opinion of the States composing this confederacy, had become so oppressive and injurious to their interests, as to require their separation from it. It is idle to talk of keeping the flag of the United States, when we have voluntarily seceded from them. It is superfluous to dwell upon the practical difficulties which would flow from the fact of two distinct, and probably hostile, governments, both employing the same, or very similar flags. It would be a political and military solecism. It would lead to perpetual disputes. As to the glories of the old flag, we must bear in mind that the battles of the Eevolution, about which our fondest and proudest memories cluster, were not fought beneath its folds; and although in more recent times, in the war of 1812, and in the war with Mexico, the South did win her fair share of glory, and shed her full measure of blood under its guidance and in its defence, we think the impartial pages of history will preserve and commemorate the fact more imperishably than a mere piece of striped bunting. When the colonies achieved their independence of the mother country (which, up to the last, they fondly called her), they did not desire to retain the British flag, or any thing at all similar to it. Yet under that flag they had fought in their infancy for their very existence, against more than one determined foe. Under it they had repelled and driven back the relentless savage, and carried it farther and farther into the decreasing wilderness as the standard of civilization and religion. Under it youthful Washington won506
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his spurs in the memorable and unfortunate expedition of Braddock, and Americans helped to plant it on the Plains of Abraham when the immortal Wolfe fell, covered with glory, in the arms of victory. But our forefathers, when they separated themselves from Great Britain, — a separation not on account of their hatred of the English Constitution or of English institutions, but in consequence of the tyrannical and unconstitutional rule of Lord North’s administration, and because their destiny beckoned them on to independent expansion and achievement, — cast no lingering, regretful looks behind: They were proud of their heritage in the glories and genius and language of Old England, but they“ wTere influenced by the spirit of the North, of the great Hampden, Vestigia nulla retrorsum,. They were determined to build up a new power among the nations of the world. They therefore did not attempt to keep the old flags. We think it good to imitate them in this comparatively little matter, as well as emulate them in greater and more important ones. The committee, on examining the representations of the flags of all countries, found that Liberia and the Sandwich Islands had flags so similar to that of the United States that it seemed to them an additional, if not a conclusive, reason why we should not keep, copy, or imitate it. They feel no inclination to borrow at second hand what had been pilfered and appropriated by a free negro community and a race of savages. It must be admitted, however, that something was conceded by the committee to what seemed so strong and earnest a desire to retain at least a suggestion of the old stars and stripes. So much for the mass of models or designs more or less copied from, or assimilated to, the United States flag. With reference to the second class of designs, those of an elaborate and complicated character (but many of them showing considerable artistic skill and taste), the committee will merely remark that, however pretty they may be when made up by the cunning skill of a fair lady’s fingers, in silk, satin, and embroidery, they are not appropriate as flags. A fMg should be simple, readily made, and, above all, capable of being made up in bunting ; it should be different from the flag of any other country, place, or people; it should be significant; it should be readily distinguishable at a distance ; the colors should be well contrasted and durable ; and, lastly, and not the least important point, it should be effective and handsome.
“ The committee humbly think that the flag which they submit combines these requisites. It is very easy to make. It is entirely different from any national flag. The three colors of which it is composed, red, white, and blue, are the true republican colors. InFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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heraldry, they are emblematic of the three great virtues, — of valor, purity, and truth. Naval men assure us that it can be recognized at a great distance. The colors contrast admirably, and are lasting. In effect and appearance it must speak for itself.
“ Your committee therefore recommended that The Flag of the Confedekate States of America shall consist of a reel field, with a white space extending horizontally through the centre, and equal in width to one-third the width of the flag; the red spaces above and below to be of the same width as the white. The union blue, extending down through the ivhite space, and stopping at the lower red space ; in the centre of the union, a circle of white stars, corresponding in number with the States of the confederacy.
“ If adopted, long may it wave over a brave, a free, and a virtuous people. May the career of the confederacy, whose duty it will then be to support and defend it, be such as to endear it to our children’s children, as the flag of a loved, because a just and benign government, and the cherished symbol of its valor, purity, and truth.” 1
The report was adopted, and, on motion of Mr. Withers, of South Carolina, the whole report was entered upon the journal of the day previous, thus making the birth of the ‘ stars and bars,’ as the flag soon came to be called, the symbol of the new empire, simultaneous with the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States at Washington.2
This flag with seven stars in its union was first displayed in public on the 4th of March, 1861, when it was unfurled over the State House at Montgomery, Ala.
Coming, as this report did, from a committee whose chairman had said in debate, “ he had always looked, even from the cradle, upon the stars and stripes as an emblem of tyranny and oppression,” it is conclusive that there still existed a strong yearning in the popular heart for our old flag, and all the memories and battle-fields on which it had
1	Mr. Miles, in a letter to General Beauregard, Aug. 27, 1861, says: “Although. I was chairman of the flag committee who reported the present flag, it was not my individual choice.” After describing, by means of a rough drawing, a flag like the battle-flag afterwards adopted as his preference, he continues : “ But I am boring you with my pet hobby on the matter of the flag. I wish sincerely that Congress would change the present one ; but I fear it is just as hard now as it was at Montgomery to tear people away entirely from the desire to appropriate some reminiscence of the old flag.”
2	We protest, says the ‘Montgomery Mail,’ against the word ‘stripes,’ as applied to the broad bars of the flag of our confederacy. The word is quite appropriate, as applied to the Yankee ensigns or a barber’s pole, but it does not correctly describe the red and white divisions of the flag of the Confederate States. The word is ‘ bars,’ we have removed from under the stripes.—New York World, April 2, 1861.508
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been consecrated. It is reasonable to hope that, with time, its restoration will be as popular to the Southern sentiment as its abandonment was distasteful.1
The Confederate general, William C. Wickham, in a letter written after the war, said: “ I have often said to those with whom I was on terms of friendship that I never saw the United States flag, even when approaching me in battle, that I did not feel arising those emotions of regard for it that it had been wont to inspire. I have, in like manner, said that one of the most painful sights I had ever seen was on the night of the first battle of Manassas, when I saw an officer trailing the flag in the dust before a regiment of the line.”
Many incidents show that the old flag was not surrendered in the people’s heart without a struggle,2 Even Admiral Semmes, the captain of the Alabama, confessed his regret that the stars and stripes had to be abandoned. A little child, who, in other days, had learned to revere the stars and stripes, upon being told that he must in future say ‘ stars and bars,’ wanted to know whether the bars were to bar the Yankees out?
The editor of the ‘ Savannah Morning News ’4 says : “ I was present in Montgomery at the organization of the provisional government of the Confederate States, and during the session of the first provisional congress. My friend and townsman, General E. S. Barlow, was chairman of the committee on the flag and seal, and being much in his room, I had an opportunity of seeing the numerous
1	A vessel from a Florida port arrived at Havana with the Confederate flag flying. The boat of the captain-general immediately went alongside, and required it should he at once lowered, as it represented no known nation. The master, who had an American ensign at hand, hoisted it in its place. He then went to the United States consul, Mr. Savage, and presented a register from the Confederate States, which the consul would not recognize ; hut on the master’s representing that he had taken command at the last moment, and the register was taken out in the name of his predecessor in command, and on his taking oath that the vessel was wholly owned hy citizens of the United States, the consul granted him a sea-letter to enable him to return to the United States, hut retained the Confederate register, and forwarded it to Washington.
The case was anomalous. The owners might he really loyal citizens, hut forced, in the absence of United States officers, to take out Confederate State papers ; and the consul was unwilling to refuse having any thing to do with her, after she had hoisted the United States flag. —New York Express, April 27, 1861.
Aug. 31, 1861. The Captain-General of Cuba ordered the ports of that island to admit vessels with the flag of the confederation of the South, for the purpose of legitimate trade, and to he protected in the said ports. — Rebellion Record.
2	The ‘Savannah Republican’ called upon the Confederate Congress to re-erect the stars and stripes as their national flag, and resume upon the Southern lyre those glorious old tunes, ‘ Hail Columbia ’ and the ‘ Star-Spangled Banner.’
3	Mobile Evening News.
4	Letter of William T. Thompson to G. H. P., Dec. 25, 1871.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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designs for a flag which were sent from all parts of the South, and often discussed with him and other members of the committee their respective merits.” There was a very general desire to depart as little as possible from the old flag, and yet the necessity for distinction was felt by all. The difficulty was to preserve the liberty colors, and yet to have a flag that did not too much resemble that of some other nation. Many very elaborate and quaint designs modelled in silk, and painted on paper or canvas, most of which could not have been made of bunting, were submitted and rejected. The session was on the eve of closing, when, as a last resort, the stars and bars, with which you are no doubt familiar, were adopted. This flag was used, and, by its resemblance to the stars and stripes, caused some confusion at the first battle of Manassas, in which General Barlow fell.
In 1867, Semmes, in the name of the ladies of a Baptist fair at Memphis, presented to the captain of the steamer Continental a set of colors, consisting of four flags, —-the stars and stripes for the stern, the boat-flag for the jaekstaff, and two blue flags for the wheel-houses. He accompanied the presentation with the following address : “ Captain, at the late fair which was held at the Baptist tabernacle in this city, a set of colors was voted to the most popular steamboat plying upon our Southern waters. The choice has fallen upon the gallant little Continental, of which you are captain; and the ladies of the tabernacle have done me the honor to request that I should present them to you. I assure you, Captain, that this is a real pleasure, both because it gives me the opportunity of serving the ladies, of whom I am always the humble knight and servitor, and of meeting some of my professional friends on a social occasion. I do not know whether the thought has struck others as oddly as it has struck myself, that I should be standing here, amid this gay throng, about to present the stars and stripes to one of the enrolled vessels of the United States; to restore, as it were, the star-spangled banner to the masthead of the merchant ship, from which, in times gone by, I have so often caused it to descend. But such are some of the revolutions of history. To the unthinking multitude, I have indeed been a great sinner and a great rebel; but to the more thoughtful, I have been only a patriot. Paradoxical as the statement may appear to some of my hearers, I have never warred against the institutions of my country. I have always cherished an affection for the principles of the old Constitution and the old flag; and it was only when the old flag became a new flag, and ceased to represent those principles, that I consented to war against it One of the first acts performed by the Provisional Congress that510
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
met at Montgomery was to adopt the old Constitution as the Constitution of the Confederate States ; and, but for the confusion which would have arisen from the use of the same by the contending armies, that Congress would, no doubt, have claimed and adopted the old hag also. The two — the Constitution and the hag — had always been united in the mind and heart of every American, and it was difficult to separate them. As, then, our war was one for the old Constitution, it follows, logically, that we were arrayed against the old hag, because it had ceased to represent that constitution. The stars and stripes that I hold in my hand were no longer, in our judgment, the stars and stripes of the revolution of 1776, or of the war of 1812 ; and when we hred upon them, we fired upon what we conceived to be a new and strange emblem, that had been unknown to our fathers. But the strife is now ended.
“ We were beaten in the war, and the hag of the conqueror became our hag. Take, then, these colors; Captain ; they are the colors of our common country, whatever may be their present signification. We can all feel an honest pride in their more ancient history, as I trust we shall be enabled to do in their future history. With regard to what I may call their especial history, — that is, the history which covers four years of our internecine war, — it is our duty, both as Christians and brethren, to forget it. Let us of the South do our part by closing them with a tender and gentle hand, so that no scars may remain to remind us of the conflict. And let us endeavor also to convert this new flag into the old flag again, that we may love it as of yore. Then truly may we exclaim with the author of our national anthem, —
‘ The star-spangled banner, oh, long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ ”
A Charleston correspondent to the ' Richmond Examiner ’ wrote : “Let us never surrender to the North the noble song, the 'Star-Spangled Banner.' It is Southern in its origin, in sentiments, poetry, and song ; in its associations with chivalrous deeds, it is ours ; and the time, I trust, is not remote when the broad stripes and brilliant stars of the Confederate flag of the South will wave triumphantly over our capitol, Fortress Monroe, and every fort within our borders.”1 This was within a month after the stars and bars had been adopted.
Soon after the adoption of the ' stars and bars,' the burial of the ' stars and stripes ’ was publicly celebrated at Memphis, Tenn. A pit
1 Eichmond Examiner, April 4, 1861.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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was dug by the side of the statue of General Jackson, in the public square of that city. Then a procession of five hundred citizens, escorting eight men carrying a coffin in which was an American flag, slowly approached the spot, headed by a band of music playing the ‘ Dead March/ The coffin was placed in the grave, the words, “ ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” were sacrilegiously pronounced, and the grave filled up.
The same month, the Hon. A. H. Stephens was escorted by a large procession through Savannah, which carried a painted representation of the American flag, torn and suspended from a broken staff. Underneath was a grave, with the words, Receive me. This outrage upon the flag aroused deep disgust and indignation among the still loyal portions of the citizens, and the venerable pastor of the Seamen’s Bethel openly denounced the proceedings, declaring Savannah had been the first to dishonor the glorious banner of the Union. On being threatened with violence, he told the mob that, though he was an old man, he would defend himself, and some of them would bite the dust if they laid hands on him.
The flag adopted by the Confederate Congress on the 5th day of March, 1861, did not meet with general approval, and numerous devices, considered by their authors more appropriate, continued to be presented. The stars and bars did not satisfy those who wished to retain the old flag, and was too nearly allied to the old flag in its devices to suit those who wished to tear away from it altogether. In use on the battle-field, its resemblance to the stars and stripes led to confusion and mistakes.
At the first battle of Bull Bun, July 21, 1861, called by the Confederates "the battle of Manassas/ the opposing regimental colors were so alike, that each accused the other party of displaying its colors. On that account, General Joseph E. Johnston attempted to substitute State colors for those of the confederacy, but being unable to obtain them, except for the Virginia regiments, designs were called for. Most of the designs were by Louisianians, and presented by General Beauregard; the one selected had a red ground, with a blue diagonal cross emblazoned with white stars, one for each State, and when first submitted was oblong in shape. General Johnston changed this oblong to a square flag, the infantry colors being four, artillery three, and the cavalry standards two and a half feet. They were furnished to the army of Virginia by the quartermaster’s department, and adopted by all the troops that served east of the Mississippi.1
The stars and bars continued to be flown as the ensign of the con-
1 Letter of Colonel E. C. Anderson, of Savannah.512
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federacy on flag-staffs and by the shipping. In the field it was almost entirely superseded by General Beauregard’s battle-flag.1
No other flag was used by the Confederates in the field after it was adopted and furnished to the troops in Virginia, October, 1861.2
The full history of this flag is contained in the following letter from General Beauregard. The original design, prepared by Mr. E. C. Hancock, of New Orleans, April, 1861, and presented by Colonel J. B. Walton for adoption, September, 1861, is in the possession of the Southern Historical Society of New Orleans.
“Office New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Company,
“New Orleans, Jan. 24, 1872.
“Dear Sir, — In answer to the inquiries contained in your letter of the 3d inst., relative to the origin of the Confederate battle-flag and the devices of the Louisiana State flag, flying on the City Hall of New Orleans when Commodore Farragut appeared before this city in April, 1862, I give you, with pleasure, the following information : —
“ At the battle of Manassas, on the 21st of July, 1861,1 found it difficult to distinguish our then Confederate flag from the United States flag (the two being so much alike), especially when General Jubal A. Early made the flank movement which decided the fate of the day; and I then resolved to have ours changed, if practicable, or to adopt for my command a battle-flag which would be entirely different from any State or Federal flag! After the battle, it was found that many persons in both armies firmly believed that each side had used, as a stratagem, the flags of his opponent. General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Confederate States forces, determined to have the troops furnished with their State flags, and I entered into correspondence with Colonel William Porcher Miles, the chairman of the House Military Committee, to have our national flag changed. But that was found to be impracticable at the time, and none of the States except Virginia having furnished flags to their troops, General Johnston, on consultation at Fairfax Court House, Virginia, with General G. W. Smith, commanding the army of the Shenandoah" (2d corps), and myself, commanding the army of the Potomac (1st corps), decided to adopt a battle-flag for our forces. Many designs were presented, and we gave the preference to one of those offered by Colonel J. B. Walton, commanding the Louisiana Washington artillery? which corresponded closely to the one recommended to Congress by Colonel Miles, as our first national flag. Both were oblong; the field was red, the bars blue, and the stars white; but Colonel Walton’s had the Latin cross, and Colonel Miles’s the St. Andrew’s, which removed the objection that many of our soldiers might have to fight under the former symbol. General John-
1	Letter of William T. Thompson, editor of the ‘Savannah News.’
2	General Johnston.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
513
ston preferred a square flag, to render it more convenient to carry; and we finally adopted, in September, 1861, the well-known battle-flag of the army of the Potomac (as it was first called), to which our soldiers became so devoted.
Its field was red or crimson, its bars were blue, and, running diagonally across from one corner to the other, formed the Greek cross; the stars on the bars were white or gold, their number being equal to the number of States in the confederacy; the blue bars were separated from the red field by a small white fillet. The size of the flag, for infantry, was fixed at 4 x 4 feet, for artillery, at 3 x 3 feet, and for cavalry, at 2| x 2^ feet. It had the merit of being small and light, and of being very distinct at great distances. But it was not accepted by the Confederate government until it had been consecrated by many a hard-fought battle, when it became the union of our second and third Confederate national flags.1
“ When I assumed command of the troops in Western Tennessee, February, 1862, I found that General Polk had adopted for his forces a flag nearly similar to the one I had designed for the army of the Potomac, i. e. a blue field with a white St. Andrew’s cross, and blue or gold stars. General Hardee had for his division a blue field with a full white circle in its centre. I gave orders to have them replaced as soon as practicable by the battle-flag of the army of the Potomac. In September, 1862, when I returned to Charleston, I substituted the same banner for the State flags, then principally used in the department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It became thus in our armies the emblem of Southern valor and patriotism; and should we ever be compelled to have a foreign war, I trust that this standard will be adopted as our national battle-flag, to which Southern soldiers will always gladly rally in a just cause.2
“ The State flag referred to by you was adopted by the secession convention, and contained thirteen stripes, — four blue, six white, and three red, commencing at top with the colors as written. The union was red, with its sides equal to the width of seven stripes; in its centre was a single pale yellow star with five points.
“ I remain, yours truly,
“G. T. Beauregard.”
On the 3d of February, 1872, General Beauregard transmitted to the Southern Historical Society of New Orleans, for preservation in its archives, a copy of this letter, together with the following corre-
1	This paragraph, from “ Its field,” &c., was added by General Beauregard in another letter to me, dated Jan. 29, 1872. — G. H. P.
2	Should, unfortunately, our country engage in another war, foreign or domestic, it is to be hoped that our dear old flag, the star-spangled banner of “the Union,” will be soul-inspiring to the soldiers of the common country, whether Northern, Southern, Eastern, or Western, and that all sectional emblems will be subservient beneath its folds.— G. H. P. See note, p. 532.514
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
spondence accompanying the original flag design, prepared, at the request of Colonel J. B. Walton, by Mr. Edward C. Hancock : —
“ Richmond, Aug. 27, 1861.
“ General G. T. Beauregard, Fairfax Court House, Ya. :
“ Dear General, — I received your letter concerning the flag yesterday, and cordially concur in all that you say. Although I was chairman of the flag committee who reported the present flag, it was not my individual choice. I urged upon the committee a flag of this sort: [.Design sketched.]
“ This is very rough, — the proportions are had. [Design of Confederate battle-flag as it ¿s.]
“ The above is better. The ground red, the cross blue (edged with white), stars white.
“ This was my favorite. The three colors of red, white, and blue were preserved in it. It avoided the religious objection about the cross (from the Jews and many Protestant sects), because it did not stand out so conspicuously as if the cross had been placed upright, thus : [Design sketched.]
“ Besides, in the form I proposed, the cross was more heraldric than ecclesiastical, it being the saltire of heraldry, and significant of strength and progress (from the Latin salto, to leap). The stars ought always to be white, or argent, because they are then blazoned, proper (or natural color). Stars, too, show better on an azure field than any other. Blue stars on a white field would not be handsome or appropriate. The white edge (as I term it) to the blue is partly a necessity to prevent what is called false blazoning, or a solecism in heraldry, viz. blazoning color on color, or metal on metal. It would not do to put a blue cross, therefore, on a red field. Hence the white, being metal argent, is put on the red, and the blue put on the white. The introduction of the white between the blue and red adds also much to the brilliancy of the colors, and brings them out in strong relief.
“ But I am boring you with my pet hobby in the matter of the flag. I wish sincerely that Congress would change the present one. Your reasons are conclusive in my mind. But I fear it is just as hard now as it was at Montgomery to tear the people away entirely from the desire to appropriate some reminiscence of the old flag. We are now so close to the end of the session, that even if we could command votes (upon a fair hearing), I greatly fear we cannot get such hearing. Some think the Provisional Congress ought to leave the matter to the permanent. This might, then, be but a provisional flag. Yet, as you truly say, after a few more victories, association will come to the aid of the present flag, and then it will be more difficult than ever to effect a change. I fear nothing can be done; but I will try. I will, so soon as I can, urge the matter of the badges. The President is too sick to be seen at present by any one.
“ Yery respectfully yours,
“WM. PORCHER MlLES.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
515
“New Orleans, Jan. 30, 1872.
“Dear Sir, — The flag design referred to by yon in your communication to Captain Preble, U. S. N., as having been submitted for adoption at the consultation held at Fairfax Court House, Ya., subsequent to the battle of Manassas, was, at my request, designed and executed by Mr. Edward C. Hancock (now associate editor of the ‘ New Orleans Times ’) some time during the month of April, 1861. On leaving New Orleans with my command for Pichmond, in May, 1861, I carried with me the design to that city, where it was freely exhibited and generally approved. Among others, it was shown to Colonel Porcher Miles, member of the flag committee.
“ In regard to its adoption by the conference of officers, and subsequent modification to correspond with Colonel Miles’s draft, I beg leave to confirm the statement made by yourself to Captain Geo. H. Preble, U. S. N.
“ The original design remained in my possession until about a year ago, when, recognizing its probable historic value, I returned it to Mr. Hancock, who now transmits it to your care.
“ In conclusion, I have only to state that there can be no doubt in regard to the design forwarded having been the original of the Confederate battle-flag, and as such is entitled to careful preservation.
“ I am, General, very respectfully yours,
“J. B. Walton.
“To General G. T. Beauregard, New Orleans.”
“New Orleans, Feb. 1, 1872.
“ General G. T. Beauregard :
“ Dear Sir, — In response to your expressed wishes, I herewith transmit for donation to the Historical Society the original flag design prepared by me in the month of April, 1861, at the request of Colonel J. B. Walton.
“ Colonel W. returned the document to me about one year ago, advising its careful preservation as an historical memento. Believing that this end can be best achieved in the manner proposed, I cheerfully intrust it to your care.
“ With the highest considerations of esteem, I remain, General, respectfully yours,
“Edw. C. Hancock.”
This correspondence, published in the fNew Orleans Times/ was the occasion of the following letters from General Beauregard and Colonel Miles, which contain additional information on the subject: —
“Office New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Co.,
“New Orleans, June 24, 1872.
“My dear Sir, — Enclosed please find the printed copy of a letter from Colonel William Porcher Miles, formerly of South Carolina, but now of Virginia, in which he gives additional information relative to origin of the Con-516
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
federate battle-flag. Hoping it may not reach you too late to be published in your book, with the other communications on the same subject I had the pleasure of sending you in February last,
“ I remain, yours very truly,
“G. T. Beauregard.
4‘Captain George H. Preble, U. S. N.,
“ Charlestown, Massachusetts.”
“Oak Ridge, Nelson Co., Ya., May 14, 1872. “ General G. T. Beauregard, New Orleans, La. :
“ My dear General, — A friend has shown me an article, copied from the ‘ New Orleans Times/ containing letters from yourself and Colonel Walton, touching the origin of the Confederate battle-flag. It is certainly not worth while for us vanquished Confederates to contend among ourselves for the honor (if there be any honor in it) of having designed it, and cheerfully would I yield my own pretensions to any merit whatever in the matter to the gallant Colonel, who, with his noble battalion, so bravely upheld it until the overwhelming hosts of our invaders compelled us to furl it in sorrow but not in shame.
“ But as I have many times said to many persons that the battle-flag was my design, and that I had been instrumental in its adoption, and never until now supposed that the fact had ever been called in question, I feel some sensitiveness, since Colonel Walton’s letter and yours have been published, lest my reputation for veracity may suffer somewhat. And although I hope that those who know me well will not believe that from any petty motive of vanity I would falsify facts, still there may be others who will think that, like the jackdaw in iEsop, I have had a borrowed feather plucked from me by the publication aforesaid. Let me beg, therefore, that you will do me the favor of giving the same publicity to my statement that Colonel Walton’s has received.
“ At the Provisional Congress which met in Montgomery I was chairman of the committee on devising a flag. We had hundreds of designs submitted to us from all parts of the country. Not one of them in the least resembled the battle-flag. The committee could not agree upon a flag. They finally determined to submit four designs to Congress, from which they should by vote select one. One of the four was the flag that was adopted, the first flag of the confederacy; a field of three horizontal bars or stripes, red, white, and red, with blue union and stars. Another of the four was a red field with a blue ring or circle in the centre. Another was composed of a number of horizontal stripes (I forget how many), of red and blue (none white), with blue union and stars like the first. The fourth was a saltire, as it is called in heraldry, the same as a St. Andrew’s cross of blue, with white margin, or border, on a red field with white stars, equal to the number of States, on the cross. This was my design, and urged upon the Congress earnestly by me.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
517
Now the only difference between this and the Confederate battle-flag is that the latter was made square, for greater lightness and portability, while the one submitted to Congress was, of course, of the usual proportions of a flag, i.e. oblong. Models of considerable size, of the four flags submitted, were made of colored cambric, and hung up in the hall where Congress sat; and they were afterwards long in my possession, as was also the first Confederate flag (made of merino, there being no bunting at hand), that within an hour or two of its adoption (thanks to fair and nimble fingers !) floated over the State capitol of Alabama where Congress held its sessions. Unfortunately, they were all lost or destroyed during the war. If they could be produced, they would settle the question as to the origin of the Confederate battle-flag. But there must be many members of the Provisional Congress who remember and can testify to the correctness of the above statements. Now, all this happened before you captured Fort Sumter, —before April, 1861, some time during which month, Colonel Walton says, Mr. Hancock, at his request, designed his flag.
“ Excuse me, dear General, this long epistle, which possibly may suggest montes parturiunt, &c. But if Colonel Walton is right in supposing that his design is worthy of careful preservation as a historical memento, and as in your letter to Dr. Palmer, President of the Southern Historical Society, you say that information concerning the flag in question ‘ might be of historical interest hereafter,’ and enclose him a copy of your letter to Captain Preble for preservation in the archives of the Society, I hope my vindication of the truth of history, even in a matter so unimportant in itself, may be considered worthy of publication in the 6 Times,’ and of being filed away also with your and Colonel Walton’s letter, in the archives of the same society.
“ With sentiments of the highest regard, I am, dear General, very faithfully yours,
“William Porcher Miles.”
The subject of a national flag still continued to be discussed, from time to time, in the Confederate Congress and by the Southern newspaper press, though no decisive action was taken until the spring of 1863.
On the 7th of December, 1861, the ‘Richmond Dispatch’ held the following language respecting the first Confederate flag of the stars and bars: —
“ The adoption of our present flag was a natural, but most pernicious blunder. As the old flag itself was not the author of our wrongs, we tore off a piece of the dear old rag and set it up as a standard. We took it for granted a flag was a divisible thing, and proceeded to set off our proportion.1 So we took, at a rough calculation,
1 Such was also Professor Morse’s opinion. See ante, p. 403.518
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
our share of the stars and our fraction of the stripes, and put them together, and called them the ‘ Confederate flag/ Even as Aaron of old put the gold into the fire, and then came out this calf, so certain stars and stripes went into committee, and then came out this flag. All this was honest and fair to a fault. We were clearly entitled to from seven to eleven of the stars, and three or four of the stripes.
* " Indeed, as we were maintaining the principles it was intended to represent, and the North had abandoned them, we were honestly entitled to the whole flag. Had we kept it, and fought for it and under it, and conquered it from the North, it would have been no robbery, but all right and fair. And we should either have done this, i.e. kept the flag as a whole, or else we should have abandoned it as a whole and adopted another. But if we did not choose to assert our title to the whole, was it politic or judicious to split the flag and claim one of the fractions ? We had an equal right, also, to ‘ Hail Columbia ’ and ' Yankee Doodle/ We might have adopted a part of ‘ Yankee Doodle’ (say every third stanza), or else 'Yankee Doodle’ with variations, as our national air. In the choice of an air we were not guilty of this absurdity, but we have perpetrated one exactly parallel to it in the choice of a national flag. There is no exaggeration in the illustration. It seems supremely ridiculous, yet it scarcely does our folly justice.
“ There is but one feature essential to a flag, and that is distinctness. Beauty, appropriateness, good taste, are all desirable; but the only thing indispensable is distinctness, — wide, plain, unmistakable distinction from other flags. Unfortunately, this indispensable thing is just the thing which the Confederate flag lacks ; and failing in this, it is a lamentable and total failure, absolute and irredeemable.
“ The failure is in a matter of essence. It is as complete as that of writing which cannot be read, of a gun which cannot be shot, of a coat which cannot be worn. It is the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. A° flag which does not distinguish may be a very nice piece of bunting; it may be handsomely executed, tasteful, expressive, and a thousand other things, but it has no title at all to bear the name of ' flag/
"We knew the flag we had to fight; yet, instead of getting as far from it, we were guilty of the huge mistake of getting as near to it as possible. We sought similarity, adopting a principle diametrically wrong, we made a flag as nearly like theirs as could only under favorable circumstances, be distinguished from it. Under unfavorable circumstances (such as constantly occur in practice), the two flags are indistinguishable. In the wars of the Roses in Great Britain, one sideFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
519
adopted the white and the other the red rose. Suppose that one side had adopted milk white and the other flesh white, or one a deep pink and the other a lighter shade of pink, would there have been any end to the confusion ?
“ When a body of men is approaching in time of war, it is rather an important matter to ascertain, if practicable, whether they are friends or foes. Certainly no question could well be more radical in its influence upon our actions, plans, and movements. To solve this important question is the object of a flag. When they get near us, there may be other means of information; but to distinguish friends from enemies at a distance is the specific purpose of a flag. Human ingenuity is great, and may conceive some other small purposes, presentations, toasts, speeches, &c.: but that this is the great end of a flag will not be denied; and it is in this that the Confederate flag fails.
“ There is no case in history in which broad distinction in the symbols of the combatants was more necessary than it has been in the present war. Our enemies are of the same race with ourselves, of the same color and even shade of complexion; they speak the same language, wear like clothing, and are of like form and stature. (The more shame that they should make war upon us !)
“ Our general appearance being the same, we must rely solely upon symbols for distinction. The danger of mistake is great, after all possible precautions have been taken; sufficient attention has never been paid to this important matter, involving life or death, victory or defeat. Our badges, uniforms, flags, should be perfectly distinguishable from those of the enemy. Our first and distant information is dependent solely on the flag.”
A Eichmond correspondent wrote the ‘ Charleston Mercury/ Jan. 2, 1862: —
“ Quite a number of new-fangled flags are exhibited in the windows of the ‘ Dispatch ’ office at Eichmond. The latest, which is gotten up with great care and neatness, represents, in tricolors, three equal horizontal bars; lower black, middle purple, upper white with stars in it. The black bar is designed to notify mankind that the confederacy sprung from black republicanism. Hah ! how would a buzzard sitting on a cotton-bale with a chew of tobacco in his mouth, a little nigger in one claw, and a palmetto-tree, answer ? Nothing could be more thoroughly and comprehensively Southern.”1
Jan. 17, 1862. During the night a Confederate flag, which had been flying from the yard of a Mr. Griffin, at Lyuchburg, Va., was
1 Moore’s Rebellion Record, vol. iv.520
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
forcibly tom down by some unknown person, tbe flag-staff broken in two, and the cord by which the flag was hoisted cut up into small fragments. The flag itself was torn into tatters, and when found, from its appearance, would seem to indicate that the guilty party desired particularly to strip the stars from it, as not a vestige of any of them was left.1
Feb. 11, 1862, the ‘Richmond Examiner’ published the following communication, arguing that the proper national emblem for the South should be a single star.2 The editor disapproved of the idea as not original, and suggested a sable horse as a more appropriate symbol.
“ A national emblem should symbolize the national government in its history, nature, office, and fundamental principles.
“ The lion of England ascribes the royal character and undisputed supremacy of the king of beasts to that noble government.
“Various nations, as Austria, Russia, &c., have assumed the free eagle, as typical of the characteristics of their governments.
“ It is believed to be susceptible of proof that the single star is our proper national emblem.
“ Inasmuch as there are various orders and classes of stars, it is proper that a question be first raised in that connection. In this view we should not think of our star as one of the so-called fixed stars, which are, to human sight, in their order, almost too small to be assigned, — mere twinkling points, without apparent career, having, as far as men have yet discovered, no influence in creation, unless we accept the conjecture of astronomers, that they are suns, the centres of other systems than ours; in which case, though these reasons dis-
1 Lynchburg Republican, Jan. 18, 1862.
A Southern poet wrote: —
“Row that Northern treachery attempts our rights to mar,
We hoist on high the bonnie blue flag that bears a single star.
First, gallant South Carolina nobly made the stand;
Then came Alabama, who took her by the hand;
Next, quickly, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida
All raised the flag, the bonnie blue flag that bears a single star.”
The poet then urged Texas and fair Louisiana to join them in the fight, and trusted Virginia, the Old Dominion, would be impelled by example to link her fate with the young confederacy, and adds: —
“ Cheer, boys, cheer, raise the joyous shout,
For Arkansas and North Carolina now have both gone out;
And let another rousing cheer for Tennessee be given,
The single star of the bonnie blue flag has proved to be eleven."
The Bonnie Blue Flag.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
521
appear, a yet stronger one arises in the fact that, as suns, they would shine by inherent rather than borrowed light, which idea will be found inapplicable. But rather should we think of it as a planet, a world in itself, shining steadily, having an .evident career, bright and marked, unchangeable, complete, of almighty design, an essential chord in the universal harmony, of which a single false note, the slightest irregularity, would destroy that harmony and upturn the universe.
“Now for the points of the analogy : —
“ 1. Our government hath foundations well laid and sure. The star is created, placed in its relative position, and held there, coursing on through space by an almighty hand. We ask no more. Though all the firmament were studded thick as the silver dust that sprinkled the gorgeous milky way, and every star were as thickly inhabited, the universe combined could not affect one tittle in its integrity, nor move one jot from its course, the single star so created, so placed, and, so held. The almighty hand we do not defy: human hands we do. The star, then, well symbolizes the fact that our government is durably founded.
“ 2. The Confederate government, as the prominent idea of its constitution, possesses no powers of its own, but simply reflects such as it receives, and so symbolizes the nature of our government.
“ 3. Inasmuch as the star borrows its light from a source possessing inherent light,—the sun; as the emblem of the Confederate government would indicate that the source from which that government derives its power possesses itself inherent powers —in other words, that the States are independent sovereigns; and as this fact is a fundamental principle of our government, — the star is eminently appropriate as indicative thereof.
“ 4. This State sovereignty is no new principle, but equally original and eternal; and as the very right of secession was based upon the fact that this principle was original to the old contract, this fact should be indicated by retaining, as our emblem, that which originally symbolized this relation ; to wit, the single star.
“ 5. As we are not an unrecorded people, new-sprung from the womb of time, but have a history peculiarly our own, gloriously illustrated by the deeds which our great Southern sires have done, it is fit that, as Southerners, we retain some suitable connection with the past; and the single star, as the symbol of that grand principle (lost by the abomination of despotism, and our peculiar property), which was the source of all that is to be remembered in the system of that past, furnishes that suitable connection.522
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“6. We stand pre-eminent, bordered on either side by nations steeped in political darkness. The stars in their courses, lifted on high, shine amid surrounding darkness, and so illustrate our position and functions. Accordingly, as the star was selected to guide the wise men to the source of human blessedness, so the star of our confederacy shall be a beacon to the nations, to guide them to that utmost of political blessings, pure republican liberty.
“ So much for the single star of itself. Now to view it comparatively : —
“ The sun and moon are both set by the Almighty ; but, —
“ 1. The star is a better emblem than the sun, because the sun shines by a light inherent in itself, not borrowed and reflected, like the light of the star, or the powers of our government. Moreover, the sun puts out of view all other lights within the compass of its power. No State’s right man will agree that such an idea shall be expressed, even remotely, by the emblem of the Confederate government.
“ 2. The star is better than the queen of night, because she, to human sight, is ever changing, waxing, or waning, and one no less than the other; the only course of change for us must be onward.
“ 3. The single star is better than a number of stars, proportioned to the number of States; for if such a number of stars be the emblem of the nation, any change in the number of the States would necessitate a change in the emblem, and this involves the idea that the character, or rather the completeness, of the nationality depends upon the number of States composing it, — the very idea which proved so pernicious under the late Union, and which, entirely opposed as it is to our whole system, we should most carefully avoid. This number of stars, each for a State, is further objectionable, because the States possess inherent powers, — are suns, — while a star simply reflects.
“ To the Southern Cross, besides what has just been said, an objection is found in the fact that, however far-sighted our statesmen, none of them can make that constellation from even the southernmost point of the confederacy.
“ It is not ours : we are not quite far enough from the North, however painful the fact; and for us, a people fighting for own rights, to assume it, would be exceedingly unbecoming, as a clear violation of the rights of the dwellers in Terra del Fuego, a people weaker than ourselves.
“ The objection to the cross itself, as the prominent feature of our flag, may be found on inspecting a chart of the flags of other nations,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
523
where it will be found, in every variety of shape and color, endlessly repeated.
“ It is right, and certainly desired by every thoughtful man in the nation, that some thankful acknowledgment of the Deity he a feature of our banner; but the prominent feature of the national banner should be the national emblem, and that emblem for us a single star.”
To the suggestions of his correspondent, the editor of the ‘ Bich-mond Examiner ’ remarks : “ Before we get our national emblem, we must get rid of stars and stripes in all their variations. So, too, of all arrangements of red, white, and blue. Nothing can be gotten from either but plagiarisms, poor imitations, feeble fancies. Our coat of arms must be not only in accord with the higher law of heraldry, but, above all, original, our own, and not another’s.
"Not one of the thousand writers on this topic has yet presented an original or appropriate idea. Yet there is a thought which starts to the mind’s eye.
“ The national emblem of the equestrian South is the horse. Its colors are black and white; its shield is the sable horse of Manassas, on a silver field; its flag is the white flag with the black horse. Both colors are already united to make the gray of the Confederate uniform; and emblem and colors are alike suggestive of the country and its history, and neither belong to any other nation of Christians.”
March 6, 1862. A correspondent of the ‘ Charleston (South Carolina) Mercury, proposed a white flag, divided diagonally by a black bar running from the lower part next the staff to the upper point of the flag, and argued: “ It is unlike the ensign of any other nation, and especially unlike that of the Yankee nation. Those that imagine a flag should be symbolical will find in the colors of this one — white and black — an obvious significance. Such a standard would typify our faith in the peculiar institution, and be an enduring mark of our resolve to retain that institution while we exist as a free and independent people. For maritime uses, this proposed flag, although it discards the everlasting Yankee stars, and the worn-out combinations of red, white, and blue, would be distinguishable at as great a distance as any other that can be devised.”1
Another proposed device was a phoenix, rising from a bed of flame, with the motto, “We rise again,” typical of the death of the old and
1 The correspondent was "William H. Trapier, a talented but eccentric citizen. It was made of long cloth, and was hoisted on a flag-staff on Broad Street, and created great merriment, as it was described ‘‘as the nigger in the middle.” — Letter, Hon. William A. Courtenay, February, 1880.524
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
the resurrection of the new union. Another proposed flag had a red field charged with a white St. Andrew’s cross, supporting in its centre a blue shield blazoned with a single yellow star. Still another was formed of three horizontal bars, red, white, red, having a double blue square or an eight-pointed star in the centre, extending halfway across the red bars, blazoned with eight white stars, arranged in a circle. Another suggested flag was half blue and white, diagonally divided next the luff, and the outer half, or fly, a red perpendicular bar. It is not known who were the designers of these flags.
In 1863, Mrs. Breckenridge, wife of General John C. Breckenridge, before the war the Vice-President of the United States, but then a major-general in the Confederate army, constructed a stand of colors from her wedding-dress, which her husband, in her name, presented to the most gallant and brave regiment of his division, the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment, known as the Battle Regiment.1
In April, 1863, while the subject was under discussion before the Confederate Congress at Richmond, the editor of the f Savannah Morning News ’ suggested a white flag, with the Southern Cross or battle-flag for its union, as a national ensign for the confederacy, and, to demonstrate the beauty of the design, got Captain William Ross Postell, formerly of the United States and Texas navies, to make a colored drawing of his proposed flag. His editorial, published in the ‘ News,’ April 23, which follows, was republished with approval by the Richmond papers, about the time the vote was taken in the House on the flag, but after the Senate had adopted a white flag with a broad blue bar in its centre. On motion of Hon. Julian Hartridge, chairman of the House committee on the flag, the Senate bill was amended, and the battle-flag on a plain white field adopted. There was another proposition before the House, to substitute for the broad blue bar in the middle of the flag a broad blue border on the fly or end opposite the union.2
Mr. Thompson says in his editorial: —
“ The Confederate Congress has at length adopted a great seal, which we think is both appropriate and in good taste. f An equestrian portrait of Washington (after the statue which surmounts his monument in the Capitol Square at Richmond), surrounded with a wreath composed of the principal agricultural products of the South (cotton,
1	Jackson Crisis, Feb. 25, 1863. In 1876, Bishop Quintard presented the battle-flag of the First Tennessee Confederate Regiment, of which he was the chaplain during the civil war, to the Tennessee Historical Society. — Record of the year, October, 1876.
2	Letter, William T. Thompson, editor of the ‘News,’ to G. H. P.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
525
tobacco, sugar-cane, com, wheat, and rice), having around its margin, “ The Confederate States of America,” with the motto, “ Deo
Vindice ” (“ With God for our leader we will conquer ”), and under the feet of the horseman the date, “Feb. 22, 1862”’1
“This device and motto will be approved by the good taste and moral sentiment of our people, and now it only remains for Congress to adopt an appropriate flag for the confederacy, in order that we may present to the world the confederate states seal. symbols as well as the power and substance of a great and glorious nationality. During the first session of the Provisional Congress, the subject of a flag occupied much of the attention of that body. Designs were invited, and numerous model flags were received from all portions of the confederacy, and submitted to the committee on the flag and seal; but for various reasons the committee was unable to adopt any of the designs presented, and Congress was on the eve of adjourning without a Confederate flag, when necessity compelled them, almost impromptu, to adopt our present flag [the stars and bars]. Since then the subject has been frequently discussed in Congress and by the press, but neither have been able to agree upon a substitute for the present flag, to which all object on account of its resemblance to that of the abolition despotism against which we are fighting.	To avoid the evil consequences growing
out of a confusion of flags on the battle-field, General Beauregard adopted the Southern Cross or battle-flag, which has so grown in favor with the army as to be universally substituted in the field for the stars and bars. This battle-flag has been consecrated by the best blood of the nation, it is hallowed by the memories of glorious victories, it is sanctified by the symbol of our religious faith, and illuminated by the constellated emblems of our Confederate States,
rr
but it is in some important respects unsuited for a national ensign.
1 The Senate’s design was an armed youth in classic costume, standing ; beneath a woman is clinging. The whole surrounded by a margin of rice, cotton, tobacco, and sugar-cane. Motto : Pro Aris et Focis.
According to the ‘Richmond Whig’ of Sept. 25, 1862, a design that passed the Senate represented in the foreground a Confederate soldier, in position to charge bayonet ; in the middle distance, a woman with a child in front of a church, both with hands uplifted in the attitude of prayer; for a background, a homestead in the plain, with mountains in the distance beneath the meridian sun ; the whole surrounded by a wreath composed of the stalks of sugar-cane, the rice, the cotton and the tobacco plants, the margin inscribed with the words ‘ Seal of the Confederate States of America ’ above, and ‘ Our Homes and Constitutions ’ beneath. This seal was never used.526
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Extended to the proper dimensions, the symmetry of its design would be destroyed, and, having no reverse (no union down), it cannot be used as a signal-flag of distress. The objects to be attained in the adoption of a flag are simplicity, distinctness, significancy, and beauty. To combine the liberty colors, — red, white, and blue, — so as to accomplish these ends, and yet to avoid too great resemblance to the flag of some other nation, is the difficulty to be overcome. By a very simple arrangement all these ends may be attained, and, to our taste, a very appropriate and beautiful flag formed. Our idea is simply to combine the present battle-flag with a pure white standard sheet; our Southern Cross, blue on a red field, to take the place on the white flag that is occupied by the blue union in the old United States flag, or the St. George’s cross in the British flag. As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause. Upon a red field would stand forth our Southern Cross, gemmed with the stars of our confederation, all combined, preserving in beautiful contrast the red, white, and blue. Such a flag would be chaste, beautiful, and significant, while it would be easily made of silk or bunting, and would be readily distinguished from the flags of other niations.
“ It may be objected that a flag in which white prevails might be mistaken for a flag of truce, that it could not be as distinctly seen as red or blue, that it would be easily soiled, &c. The first objection is not good, for the reason that the red field and blue cross would be a prominent feature of the flag, and from its position at the top against the staff could not be hidden by the folds of the flag. In the smoke of battle, or at sea against the blue sky, the white would stand as vividly as either the stars or stripes of abolitiondom, the tricolor of France, or the red flag of England;1 as for the other objections, we have always observed that the white stripes have stood the battle and the breeze as well and looked as fresh and Bright as the red.”
After this was in type, the editor of the f Hews ’ received a despatch announcing that the Senate had adopted the flag he had suggested, with the addition of a blue stripe to the centre of the white field. He states his objections to this flag in the following article, which was published in the ‘ Hews ’ of the 28th of April: —
“ It appears the House of Representatives have yet to act upon the
1 After this flag was adopted, it was found, in use, to resemble, and was often mistaken for, a flag of truce. To obviate that defect, a broad, red, perpendicular stripe was added to the fly or order extremity of the flag.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
527
new flag adopted by the Senate, and we learn from the Richmond papers that it is probable that the House will amend it by striking out the blue bar in the centre of the white field. It is to be hoped that they will do so, as the bar is objectionable on several accounts, and is a deformity to what would otherwise be a most beautiful, significant, and appropriate flag. Let any one make a drawing of the flag in colors, on paper, and they will at once discover that the blue bar running up the centre of the white field and joining with the right lower arm of the blue cross is in bad taste, and utterly destructive of the symmetry and harmony of the design. The broad, horizontal blue bar, forming on the end of the smaller blue bar, belonging to the cross, and which extends up to the upper corner of the red union at an angle of about forty-five degrees, presents to the eye a dis-proportioned, awkward, and unmeaning figure, not unlike a blue-handled jack-knife or razor with the blade not quite opened to the full extent. Another objection is the disproportion which the lower white bar, extending the full length of the flag, bears to the shorter blue and white bars above. And still another objection is, that the large blue bar detracts from the conspicuousness of the blue cross. Still another objection is the resemblance which the bars will still have to the Yankee flag. If for no other reason than this, we should discard the bars, and every thing that resembles or is suggestive of the old stripes. While we consider the flag which has been adopted by the Senate as a very decided improvement of the old United States flag, we still think the battle-flag on a pure white field would be more appropriate and handsome. Such a flag would be a suitable emblem of our young confederacy, and, sustained by the brave hearts and strong arms of the South, it would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAH’S FLAG.”
The first Confederate States flag, legally established, was the well-known “stars and bars” adopted by the convention at Montgomery, Ala., on the 4th of March, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated President of the United States, at Washington. This flag proving unacceptable to the Southern people, from its general similarity in appearance, at a distance, to the old stars and stripes, and creating confusion in the field, especially at the battle of Manassas or Bull Run, it was thought some change should be made; and, at the suggestion of General Beauregard,1 a flag, known as the ‘ Southern Cross,’ or the ‘ battle-flag,’ was adopted for field service, and
1 See letter, ante.528
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
continued thence to be the only flag in general use in the field throughout the war. From not being adapted to the sea service, as it could not be reversed as a signal of distress, it was never legalized; and the stars and bars continued to be worn by fortresses and hoisted on vessels as the national ensign of the confederacy.
A change of flag, however, continued to be the subject of attention, and in May, 1863, the Confederate Congress at Richmond established by the following law as the national ensign for the confederacy a plain white flag, having for its union the Southern Cross or battle-flag of the army : —
“IV. Flag.
“ 393. Described and established.
“ 393. That the flag of the Confederate States shall be as follows: The field to be ivhite, the length double the width of the flag, with the union (now used as the battle-flag) to be a square of two-thirds the width of the flag, having the ground red; therein a broad saltire of blue, bordered with white and emblazoned uith white mullets or five-pointed stars, corresponding in number to that of the Confederate States.” 1
The editor of the ‘ Savannah News ’ writes, on the 4th of May, 1863 : “We are pleased to learn by our despatch from Richmond that Congress has had the good taste to adopt for the flag of the confederacy the battle-flag on a plain white field, in lieu of the blue and white bars proposed by the Senate. The flag, as adopted, is precisely the same as that suggested by us a short time since, and is, in our opinion, much more beautiful and appropriate than either the red and white bars, or the white field and blue bar as first adopted by the Senate. As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, — the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism. [?] Another merit in the new flag is, that it bears no resemblance to the now infamous banner of the Yankee vandals.”
May 19th, in the continuation of the subject, he says: “We are pleased to observe that the new Confederate States standard, wherever it has been given to the breeze, elicits the admiration of the press and people.” Noticing its display from the capitol at Richmond, the ‘ Examiner ’ says : “ It met the approving gaze of thousands.” The ‘ Dispatch ’ says: “ The new flag which was displayed from the capitol on Thursday, it is gratifying to say, gives universal satisfaction.
1 May 1,1863, chap. 18, p. 131. Digest of the Military and Naval Laws of the Confederate States.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
529
Almost any sort of flag, to take the place of the detested parody upon the stars and stripes, for so long the lawful ensign of the confederacy, would have been hailed with pleasure; but the one we now have is not only acceptable on this ground, but on account of its own appropriateness ; and more than this, again, because in it is preserved that immortal banner, the battle-flag, which has been consecrated on so many battle-fields, and has been followed by our soldiers to so many glorious victories. We had not anticipated, from the action of Congress upon the subject, a result so sensible, so generally satisfactory. The council of many on such a topic rarely produces any thing but abortions, such as the stars and bars, for instance. Let us have no more of that, but hereafter know only that appropriate and beautiful banner hallowed by our victories, and now established by law.”
The ‘ Charleston Mercury ’ says: “ The new Confederate flag was yesterday (May 17, 1863) thrown to the breeze from the ramparts of Fort Sumter, and was admired by crowds on the battery.”
On the 20th of May, a correspondent wrote to the‘ Savannah News “Mr. Editor, you are one of the admirers of the new flag, and you copied into yesterday’s ‘ News ’ a very enthusiastic panegyric of it from the ‘Richmond Examiner;’ but I doubt if either you or the editor of the ‘ Examiner ’ has yet seen the flag which was established by law. The picture in your office (which is very beautiful) is not correct, nor have I seen one, of the several which are now in use in and around this city, which is proportioned according to the law. If there was such a one, it would be an absurdity. The law (as published in the ‘ Savannah Republican ’) makes the flag fwice as long as it is wide. Well, if the flag is three feet wide, it must be six feet long. In this the union would be two feet square, and would occupy two-thirds of the width and one-third of the length. This would leave a very large field of white, and give good ground for the objection urged against the flag, that it looks like a flag of truce. I think the large white field wTas the result of an accident. The Senate placed through the middle of the white a horizontal bar of blue, and the flag was made long, in order to exhibit this blue bar to advantage. When the blue bar was stricken out, the flag should have been shortened; but, in the haste consequent upon the near approach of the close of the session, it was overlooked. All we can do under the circumstances is to make our flags in the proper proportion (like the one in your picture), and trust to the next Congress either to restore the blue bar or curtail the quantity of white.”
The editor of the ‘News ’ remarks, the objections to the proportions
34530
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE
to the new flag are well founded, but thinks the intention of the law was not so much to prescribe the dimensions as to determine the combinations of the new flag. The design of Congress was to establish by law, as the Confederate ensign, the battle-flag on a white field ; and the proportion of the union to the width of the flag was very properly defined, but the length, like that of any other flag, would be determined by good taste. He then adds, “ The new flag has been displayed by Captain Cercopoly on the steamer Beauregard for several days,” and asks his correspondent to take a look at that well-proportioned flag, when he thinks he will ground at once all his objections to the new ensign, which is as tasteful as it is unique and simple.
General Beauregard presented Captain Cercopoly with a handsome union jack or battle-flag in acknowledgment of his naming his steamer for him. The editor says he doubts not “that union jack will be borne as proudly and bravely by Captain Cercopoly on his new steamer, as was the first Confederate flag borne by him on the little steamer Ida, in defiance of the shot and shell of the Yankees.”
The rebel iron-clad Atlanta was the first vessel of war to hoist the new flag, and it was announced that she was about to achieve the most signal victory of the war, and so properly to christen it. On the 7th of May, 1863, thè people of Savannah assembled en masse upon the wharves to bid her a suitable farewell as she flaunted her new banner and steamed away. She was to go to sea via Warsaw Sound, proceed to Port Royal, and do such destruction as might be permitted her, and then push on to Charleston, where she was to make a foray upon the fleet, and then enter the city. Her progress down the bay was slow, for causes it is" unnecessary here to explain. “ The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley,” as was proved in this instance. On the 17th of June, the anniversary of Bunker Hill, the Atlanta was met in Warsaw Sound by the United States monitors Weehawken and Nahant, and getting aground was, after an engagement of fifteen minutes with the former, in such a helpless condition that she hauled down her new rebel colors, and tearing off a piece of the white of her flag, hoisted it in token of surrender.
This, the second national flag of the confederacy, at a distance bore a close resemblance to the English white ensign, and was also objected to as resembling a flag of truce. These objections ultimately proved so valid, that a broad transverse strip of red was added to the end, or fly, of the flag. This, the third and last national ensign of the short-lived confederacy, was adopted by the rebel senate, Feb. 4, 1865, and was thus officially described :—FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
531
“ The width, two-thirds of its length ; with the union, — now used as a battle-flag, — to be in width three-fifths of the width of the flag> and so proportioned as to leave the length of the field on the side of the union twice the width below it; to have a ground of red, and broad blue saltire thereon, bordered with white and emblazoned with mullets or five-pointed stars, corresponding in number to that of the Confederate States. The field to be white, except the outer half from the union, which shall be a red bar, extending the width of the flag.”1
Specimens of each of these ensigns were captured, and are preserved in the flag museum of the United States War Department.
General Tom Harrison s Texas Brigade, composed of two Texas, one Tennessee, and one Arkansas regiment, was probably the last brigade under fire during the war, as it was engaged with Northern troops between Ealeigh and Salisbury, N. C., just 0above Chapel Hill, on April 14, 1865, the day that the armistice was declared. The« flag carried on that day by one of the Texan regiments (the Eleventh Texas Volunteers) is now in the possession of John Halford, of Denison, Texas, who was a member of that regiment at the time, and who concealed it and brought it home with him in the back of his jacket. This is probably the last Southern flag fired at by United States troops. It is a small silk Confederate flag, and still in good condition, there being only one small tear in it, and that was done the last day it was under fire.
1 Army and Navy Journal, Feb. 11, 1865.
In Texas, the people still cling to the “lost cause,” and young ladies manifest their feelings by their style of dress. A Texas paper thus describes the ball dress of a young lady at Marshall: “This dress represented the first flag of the confederacy. O11 her arm she bore the flag adopted by the Confederate National Congress. On the lower skirt were stars for the States, with the name and seal of each State in the centre ; photographs of Confederate generals were on the upper skirt, with pictures of the Alabama and Sumter ; on her shoulders were streamers, with the successful battles ; manacles and chains were on her arms ; a coronet of the seceded States was on her head, and rising above them was a black veil, representing the gloom thrown over them. This was fastened with the dagger of oppression. — Texas paper, 1876.
At a recent meeting of the Southern Historical Society, in Louisiana, an apron made in the semblance of a Confederate flag was shown, and its history told. In the spring of 1863, the Eleventh Virginia Cavalry passed through Hagerstown, weary, discouraged, and pursued by Federal troops. A young girl stood in a doorway, wearing this apron. The soldiers cheered enthusiastically, and the colonel asked her to give him a piece of it for a memento. “You may have it all,” she said, and it was carried with the regimental colors into a battle on the following day. The youthful soldier who bore it was mortally wounded, but he saved the apron from capture by hiding it in his bosom. — Newspaper report, 1880..532
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
Note to page 449. —Robert Stewart Davis, in his ‘ Three Months around Charleston Bar, or The Great Siege/ as we saw it published in the ‘ United Service Magazine,’ May, 1864, — writing of the August preceding, — says : “The garrison of Sumter anticipate us with their morning salute ; and, although the sun has but half arisen from his ocean bed, three flags — the old and new Confederate flags, and the State flag of South Carolina — defiantly float over the brown walls of the threatened fort.”
Note to page 513.—Carton McCarty, in the Southern Historical Society papers for January, 1881, sketches the origin of the Confederate battle-flag, deriving his facts from a speech of General Beauregard, and which differs only in some details from that I have given under General Beauregard’s own hand. He adds, however, the first three flags received were made from ladies’ dresses, by the Misses Carey, of Alexandria and Baltimore, at their residences and the residences of friends, as soon as they could get a description of the design adopted. One of the Misses Carey sent the flag she made to General Beauregard. Her sister sent hers to General Yan Dorn, who was then •at Fairfax Court House. Miss Constance Carey, of Alexandria, sent hers to General Joseph E. Johnston. General Beauregard sent the flag he received at once to New Orleans for safe keeping. After the fall of New Orleans, Mrs. Beauregard sent the flag, by a Spanish man-of-war then lying in the river opposite New Orleans, to Cuba, where it remained till the close of the war, when it was returned to General Beauregard, who presented it, for safe keeping* to the Washington Artillery of New Orleans.Page 533
PL YE
THE BOYS IN BLUE.
Tteturriing the Stale Flags to the Governor of Pennsylvania Independence Square, Philadelphia,
JULY AV 1866.PART VI.
A.D. 1865-1880.
THE END OF THE WAR AGAINST THE UNION AND THE
FLAG.
THE RETURN OF THE FLAGS OF THE VOLUNTEER REGIMENTS TO THEIR STATES.
THE DISPOSITION OF THE TROPHY FLAGS OF THE WAR.
ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS.
STATE FLAGS AND COLORS.“ Now silent are the forests old, amid whose cool retreats Great armies met, and from the shore have passed the hostile fleets.
We hear no more the trumpet’s bray or bugle’s stirring call,
And full of dents, in quiet sheathed, the swords hang on the wall.
“ O’er frowning ramparts, where once shone the sentry’s gleaming steel,
In swift and widely circling flight the purple swallows wheel;
Beside the Rappahannock’s tide the robins wake their song,
And where the flashing sabres clashed, brown-coated sparrows throng.
“ The wealth of beauty that falls out from God’s o’erflowing hand Clothes with a fragrant garment the fields by death made grand.
In the deep silence of the earth war’s relics slowly rust,
And tattered flags hang motionless, and dim with peaceful dust.
“The past is past; the wild flowers bloom where charging squadrons met;
And though we keep war’s memories green, why not the cause forget,
And have, while battle-stains fade out ’neath Heaven’s pitying tears,
One land, one flag, one brotherhood, through all the coming years ? ”
Thomas 8. Collier, 1879.PART VI.
"■+— - -
THE END OF THE WAR AGAINST THE UNION AND THE FLAG.
u Thank God! the bloody days are past;
Our patient hopes are crowned at last;
And sounds of bugle, drum, and fife But lead our heroes home from strife!
u Thank God! there beams o’er land and sea Our blazing star of victory ;
And everywhere, from main to main,
The old fiag flies and rules again! ”
George H. Boker, July 4, 1865.
On the 3d of April, 1865, the national ensign, which had been gradually restored to one after another of its stolen fortresses, again waved over the rebel capitol at Richmond. Tidings of its fall spread with lightning speed over the loyal North, and public demonstrations and delight were visible everywhere. At Washington, the public offices were closed, and all business suspended. “ In New York, there was an immense spontaneous gathering of men in Wall Street, to hear the news as it was flashed over the wires, to listen to the voices of orators and to the joyful chimes of Trinity. A deep, religious feeling, born of joy and gratitude, because of the deliverance of the republic from a great peril, prevailed, and was remarkably manifested when thousands of voices broke out spontaneously in singing the Christian doxology to the grand air of Old Hundred.”1
The occupation of the rebel capital on the 3d of April, with the surrender of General Lee and his army to General Grant on the 9th of April, 1865, may be considered to have virtually ended the civil war. There were other rebel armies in the field, but the great rebellion had collapsed, exhausted, and, as a matter of course, those armies were soon surrendered or disbanded. On the 11th of April, Washington City was brilliantly illuminated and ablaze with bonfires at the prospect of peace and reunion. On the 12th, the War Department issued an order directing a discontinuance of all drafting and recruiting for the army, or purchase of munitions of war; and declaring that the number of general and staff officers would be speedily reduced, and all military restrictions on trade and commerce be removed
1 Lossing’s Civil War, vol. iii.536
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
forthwith. This virtual proclamation of the end of the war went over the land on the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter, and while General Anderson was replacing the old flag over the ruins of that fortress. Preparations for a national thanksgiving were being made, when the national joy was palsied by the assassination of f the President/ the first martyr in our history, who had piloted the nation through its great war to the end. There is no need to repeat the story of that dastardly deed. It did not disturb the prospects of peace, and, while it gave an unenviable immortality to his theatrical assassin, it crowned President Lincoln with a martyr’s glory.
The honor of raising the colors of the United States over the capital at Richmond, on its occupation by the Union forces, was sought for by many gallant men. One young man proposed to do so long before the opportunity was really presented. Nearly a week before the surrender of the city, Lieutenant de Peyster wrote to a young friend: —
“ My clear Lew: To-morrow a battle is expected, — the battle of the war. I cannot tell you any of the facts, for they are contraband; but we are all ready and packed. Anyway, I expect to date my letter soon, if I escape, ‘ Richmond, March 29th.’
“ I have promised to carry out a bet made by my general, if we take Richmond, to put a certain flag he has on the house of Jeff. Davis, or on the rebel capitol, or perish in the attempt.”
The writer of this letter, then in the eighteenth year of his age, was a member of one of the oldest families of colonial New York, and allied with nearly every family of consequence in that State. He entered the army to seek glory, and doubtless felt that the honor of a long line of ancestors was placed in his especial keeping.
Six days after the date of his letter, the city of Richmond was occupied by the Federal troops; and among the first to enter it was Lieutenant Johnston Livingston de Peyster. On the pommel of his saddle was strapped a folded flag, the “ colors of the United States.” This flag had formerly belonged to the Twelfth Regiment of Maine Volunteers, of which General George F. Shepley, his chief, had been the colonel. It had seen active service in New Orleans, when General Shepley was the military governor of that city; and, some time before the movement on Richmond, the General, in his fondness for the flag, made a wager that some day or other it should wave over the capitol of the confederacy. Lieutenant de Peyster carried this storm-flag thus secured, not far behind the advance guard of the army when the city was occupied by the Federal troops.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
537
General Shepley had intrusted it to him on his promise to take care of it, and “ to raise it on the flag-staff of the capitol.” The following letter to his mother shows how he redeemed that promise: —
“ Head-quarters, Army of the James, “Richmond, April 3, 1865.
“ My dearest Mother, — This morning, about four o’clock, I was got up, just one hour after I retired, with the information that at six we were going to Richmond. At six we started. The rebs. had gone at three, along a road strewn with all the munitions of war. Richmond was reached, but the barbarous South had consigned it to flames. The roar of the bursting shells was terrific.
“ Arriving at the capitol, I sprang from my horse, first unbuckling the stars and stripes, a large flag I had on the front of my saddle. With Captain Langdon, chief of artillery, I rushed up to the roof. Together we hoisted the first large flag over Richmond, and on the peak of the roof drank to its success. . . .
“ In the capitol I found four flags, — three rebel, one ours. I presented them all, as the conqueror, to General Weitzel. I have fulfilled my bet, and put the first large flag over Richmond. I found two small guidons, took them down, and returned them to the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, where they belonged. I write from Jeff. Davis’s private room. . . .
“ I remain ever your affectionate son,
“ Johnston.”
Two small guidons, belonging to the Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Cavalry, were found on the roof of the capitol, by Lieutenant de Peyster and Captain Langdon, which had been placed there by Major Stevens and Major Graves, members of the military staff of General Weitzel, who had accompanied the party of cavalry which was sent forward in pursuit of the fugitive enemy. By an unauthorized detour they raised the guidons of their party on the roof of the abandoned capitol. The hoisting of these guidons failed to secure the grateful service, as it was styled in Mexico by General Scott, of a formal possession of the capitol at Richmond, and as was reserved to General Quitman, in the former case, the honor of formal occupation, by “ hoisting the colors of the United States on the national palace,”1 so to Lieutenant de Peyster and Captain Langdon rightfully belongs the honor of hoisting the colors of the United States over the capitol of the Confederate States, and the formal occupation of that edifice.
1 The ensign raised by General Quitman is, by resolution of the United States Senate, preserved in the War Department. The colors of the South Carolina Palmetto Regiment were the first to enter the gates of Mexico.538
OEIGIN AND PEOGEESS OF THE
Two days after the event (April 5), General Weitzel wrote to the father of De Peyster: —
“ Your son, Lieutenant J. de Peyster, and Captain Langdon, my chief of artillery, raised the first real American flag over the capitol in Eichmond. It was a flag formerly belonging to the Twelfth Maine Volunteers. Two cavalry guidons had, however, been placed over the building previously by two of my staff officers; these were replaced by the flag that De Peyster and Langdon raised.
“ Yours truly,
“G. Weitzel, Maj.-Gen”
April 22, General Shepley wrote his father: “Your son, Lieutenant de Peyster, raised the first flag in Eichmond, replacing two small cavalry guidons on the capitol. The flag is in the possession of Major-General Weitzel; I enclose a small piece of the flag. The history of the affair is this: I brought with me from Norfolk an old storm-flag, which I had used in New Orleans, remarking sportively that it would do to float over the capitol in Eichmond, where I hoped to see it. De Peyster, who heard the remark, said, ‘ General, will you let me raise it ? ’ I said, f Yes, if you will bring it with you, and take care of it, you shall raise it in Eichmond.’ As we left our lines to advance towards Eichmond, Lieutenant de Peyster said, ‘ General, do you remember your promise about the flag ? ’ I said, ‘ Yes; go to my tent and get the flag, and carry it on your saddle, and I will serid you to raise it/ The result you know.”
On the 1st of May, 1865, the governor of the State of New York honored Lieutenant de Peyster with a brevet lieutenant-colonel’s commission, “for gallant and meritorous conduct, and for hoisting the first American flag over Eichmond, Va., after its capture by the Union forces, April 3, 1865, and as a testimonial of the zeal, fidelity, and courage with which he had maintained the honor of the State of New York in her efforts to enforce the laws of the United States, the supremacy of the constitution, and a republican form of government.”
On Christmas day, 1865, the city of New York, by a formal vote, tendered to him the thanks of the city for giving to New York this historic honor. The United States Senate subsequently confirmed his nomination as a brevet lieutenant-colonel of United States volunteers, for the same service.
^he surrender of Lee’s army followed close upon the occupation of the rebel capital. On the 9th of April, Colonel A. C. Whittier, commanding the Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, andFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
539
assistant adjutant-general on the staff of Major-General Humphries, was sent about noon, by Major-General Meade, under a flag of truce, with a note to General Lee, and, though he carried a large white flag, the rebel pickets fired upon him. Colonel Whittier claims that this was the last hostile shot fired by the army of Northern Virginia. He dismounted, and was met by Lieutenant Lamar, of Georgia, who, to his indignant protest at having been fired upon, replied, “ I have no instructions not to fire upon flags of truce.” 1
The same day, General Grant received a note from ^General Lee requesting an interview. The memorable interview which followed took place at a little after two p.m., April 9,1865, in the town of Appomattox Court House. The town boasts of five buildings, besides the court house, all arranged on one long street, one end of which is boarded up to keep out the cattle. The best house in the street, belonging to William McClean, was loaned for the occasion by its owner. It was an old-fashioned, square, brick dwelling, with a veranda along its front, and a flight of steps leading up to its entrance. The front yard was smiling with roses, violets, and daffodils.
While the conditions of the surrender were being discussed by the generals, the impatience of the troops grew to a fever heat. They deemed the delay a Confederate stratagem to throw them off their guard, and that, under the color of treating, Lee intended to play another Antietam trick. “Let us finish up the matter,” they cried, before night comes on again. If they do not intend to surrender, let us go in at once.”
Our troops were about to advance, when they were halted by authority of General Grant. At once a tempest of hurrahs shivered the air along the front, and the cry went up, “ Lee has surrendered! ” Without having actually distinguished the words, the Union army comprehended their import, and the wildest acclamations rolled over the field, through the woods, and along the road, and were caught up, echoed, re-echoed, and prolonged among the trains following the army. Hats and caps filled the air. The flags waved and saluted, unfurling their tattered fragments to the caresses of the breeze, glorious attestations and relics of nearly four years of battle, and of over a hundred first-class stricken fields. All the bands at the same time poured forth to heaven their accompaniments of rejoicing, either in the lively notes of * Yankee Doodle ’ or the majestic strains of ‘ Hail Columbia.’ The very horses seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion, and
1 Colonel Whittier’s letter, published in ‘ La Koyale.’ See ante, p. 531, for account of the last engagement of the war, April 14, 1865.540
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
pranced proudly. Hats, haversacks, and canteens were raised on muskets, or thrown along the route of General Meade and his staff. Trees and fences were climbed along his route; while on horseback officers were seen embracing each other in a delirium of joy. These demonstrations did not decrease in intensity until the General had passed through the whole line, and gone to his camp, when they became less concentrated, hut continued to pervade the whole army, and were only lost in the darkness of the night.1
Another officer 2 says : “ About four o’clock, General Meade and staff came in from the front. His chief of staff, General Webb, preceded him, and announced to the troops lining the road on either side that General Lee and his army had surrendered.
“ The very ground seemed to shake with the cheers and yells of triumph that burst forth. A thousand hats went up at once. The men were wild with joy. General Meade and staff rode through the dense mass, and imagination would tell me he was obscured from sight with the shouts of a thousand mouths, and the waving and hurling of as many hats.
“ Officers and men grasped hands in wild delight. The war-worn and battle-stained colors seemed to wave expressions of joy. Our men gathered around General McAllister, who spoke to them amid continuous cheers. Americans never saw such a scene before, and I never expect to witness such another. That day the fate of the Rebellion was sealed, and the soldiers knew and felt that the shot and shell from that army would never again sweep a comrade from their side. All who were there were proud of it, and rejoiced that they had been participators in the grand closing scene.”
The arrangements for the surrender of Lee’s army were completed on the 11th. The terms prescribed by Grant were extraordinary for their leniency and magnanimity. The}^ simply required Lee and his men to give their paroles of honor they would not take up arms against the government until regularly exchanged; gave to officers their side-arms, baggage, and private horses, and pledged the faith of the government that they should not be punished for their treason and rebellion, so long as they respected that parole and were obedient to law. On the 12th of April, the men and officers were at liberty to proceed to their homes, or wherever they chose. The number paroled was 27,805.3
1	Colonel William H. Paine’s Diary.
2	Lieutenant-Colonel Schoonover, Eleventh New Jersey Volunteers, in General de Peyster’s 4 La Royale. ’
3	Report of the Secretary of War; Draper’s Civil War; Harper’s History of the Rehellion.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
541
By a happy coincidence, the surrender took place on Palm Sunday, the commencement of Holy Week, and anniversary of the day when the Prince of Peace made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, multitudes strewing his pathway with palm branches. How appropriate was the day for this surrender, when a chosen people entered through the gates of victory into the possession of a peace they had purchased with half a million lives and an expenditure of money appalling in its aggregate of public outlay and private munificence.1
Before the next national anniversary (July 4), the soldiers of the Grand Army of the Bepublic, whose patriotism, valor, and fortitude had saved it, were making their way homeward, where they were received everywhere with the warmest demonstrations of gratitude and affection. During two memorable days in May, the armies which confronted Johnston and Lee passed in grand review before the President, his cabinet, and other high officials at Washington, and were marched off to their homes and disbanded.
On the 2d of June, the general-in-chief issued the following address:
“ Soldiers of the Armies of the United States :
“ By your patriotic devotion to your country in the hour of danger and alarm, your magnificent fighting, bravery, and endurance, you have maintained the supremacy of the Union and the Constitution, overthrown all armed opposition to the enforcement of the laws, and of the proclamation forever abolishing slavery, the cause and pretext of the Rebellion, and opened the way to the rightful authorities to restore order, and inaugurate peace on a permanent and enduring basis on every foot of American soil. Your marches, sieges, and battles, in distance, duration, resolution, and brilliancy of results, dims the lustre of the world’s past military achievements, and will be the patriot’s precedent in defence of liberty and right in all time to come. In obedience to your country’s call you left your homes and families, and volunteered in her defence. Victory has crowned your valor, and secured the purpose of your patriotic hearts; and with the gratitude of your countrymen, and the highest honors a great and free nation can accord, you will soon be permitted to return to your homes and families, conscious of having discharged the highest duties of American citizens. To achieve these glorious triumphs, and secure to yourselves, your fellow-countrymen, and posterity the blessings of free institutions, tens of thousands of your gallant comrades have fallen, and sealed the priceless legacy with their blood. The graves of these a grateful nation bedews with tears, honors their memories, and will ever cherish and support their stricken families.”
By the middle of autumn nearly 786,000 officers and men were mustered out of the service, and had resumed the peaceful occupations
1 General de Peyster’s La Eoyale.542
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
they had laid down at the call of the country. The number of men called under arms by the government of the United States between April, 1862, and April, 1865, amounted to 2,759,049, of whom 2,653,053 were actually embodied in the armies. If to these be added the 1,500,000 men embodied by the Southern States, the total armed forces reaches the enormous amount of nearly 4,000,000, drawn from a population of only 32,000,000, — figures before which the uprising of the French nation in 1793, or the efforts of France and Germany in the war of 1870-71, sink into insignificance. And within three years the vast forces were peacefully disbanded, and the army had sunk to a normal strength of only 30,000. Never before in the world’s history had such a vast military force been dissolved so rapidly, without disorders of any kind.
Whatever may be said of democratic institutions, they can no longer be called feeble or unstable. All that can test the strength of a political system was brought to bear upon the government of the American Union. It entered the war almost without an army or a navy, under the direction of a vacillating administration. Its enemies had been preparing beforehand for months, and had on their side many of the ablest men and officers. The government going out made no effort to stop the sedition. Some of the cabinet officers aided the insurgents with United States resources. Even the general of the army recommended that the erring should be let go in peace. Did ever rebellion start under more favorable auspices ? In spite* of all this, the Unionists, with marvellous perseverance, fought on, through defeat and disaster, till at length they achieved the final victory. The spirit in which the people of the Southern States have accepted and recognized the decision of the sword affords convincing evidence that, slavery being abolished, they will advance hand in hand with their late foe-men, increasing in prosperity and securing the liberties of their country, and thus give the world an additional assurance that—’
“ Government of the people, for the people, and by the
PEOPLE, SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
543
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ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE
THE RETURN OE THE ELAGS OF THE VOLUNTEER REGIMENTS TO THEIR STATES.
“ Aye, bring back the banners and fold them in rest!
They have wrought their high mission, their holy behest!
Stained with blood, scorched with flame, hanging tattered and torn,
Yet dearer, by far, than when bright they were borne By brave hearts to glory !
“As we gaze at their tatters, what battle-fields rise,
Fields flashing in deeds of sublimest emprise !
When earth rocked with thunder, the sky glared with fire,
And Havoc’s red pinion dashed onward in ire !
Deeds deathless in glory !
“Press the stars to the lips, clasp the stripes to the heart!
Let us swear their grand memories shall never depart!
They have waved in this contest of freedom and right,
And our eagle shall waft them, wride streaming in light,
To our summit of glory !
“There — hope darting beacons, starred shrines, shall they glow,
Lighting liberty’s way to the breast of the foe;
Till her spear smites with splendor the gloom, and our sun,
One broad central orb, shall again brighten one Mighty nation of glory ! ”
Alfred B. Street.
On the conclusion of our great civil strife, after the volunteers from the several States of the Union had returned to their homes, the banners they had so valiantly and loyally borne, and which had been brought back in safety and honor, were, by an order of the War Department, issued May 15,1865, restored to the custody of the States under whose authority the regiments, batteries, &c., had been mustered into the service of the Union. These banners were received by the governors with appropriate ceremony, and are carefully preserved as evidences of loyalty and patriotism.
Massachusetts. —The ceremonies upon the formal reception of the battle-scarred and weather-beaten flags of the Massachusetts regiments by the State, when deposited in the Doric Hall of the State House, have been graphically described by General William Schouler.1
“ The Massachusetts regiments and batteries had all come home;
1 History of Massachusetts in tlie Civil War.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
545
some of their battle-flags had been returned to the State authorities, and were tastefully displayed on the columns of the Doric Hall in the State House, and others were held by the United States mustering officer, who had orders to forward them to Washington; but subsequently authority was given to place them in the hands of the Governor, to be preserved in the archives of the Commonwealth. It was then determined by Governor Andrew to have these colors received with all the honors which the cause they symbolized, and the battlefields over which they had waved, made proper; and he selected the twenty-second day of December, the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, as the day on which the ceremony should take place. Major-General Couch was selected to command, Brevet Major-General Hinks was appointed chief of his staff, and the following was the order issued: —
“ ‘ Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
“ * Head-quarters, Boston, Dec. 13, 1865.
“ 1 General Order, No. 18.
“ ‘ By General Order No. 94 of the War Department, issued May 15, 1865, volunteer regiments and batteries, on their return to their respective States, when mustered out and discharged, were to deposit their colors with the United States mustering officers, to be by them transferred to the governors of the States.
“ ‘ Since that time, the following Massachusetts regiments and batteries, having faithfully served their country to the end of the Rebellion, returned home and been discharged, their colors have been received by Brevet Colonel F. N. Clarke, U. S. A., chief mustering officer; viz., 2d, 11th, 17th, 19th, 21st, 23d, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 31st, 33d, 34th, 35th, 36th, 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 54th, 55th, 56th, 57th, 58th, 59th, 61st regiments of infantry; 1st battalion frontier cavalry; 3d, 4th, 5th regiments of cavalry; 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 15th, 16th batteries light artillery; 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th regiments of heavy artillery.
“ ‘ On Friday, 22d instant (Forefathers’ Day), the colors will be escorted from Colonel Clarke’s head-quarters, No. 2 Bulfinch Street, to the State House, where they will be formally received by his Excellency the Governor, and placed in the public archives of the Commonwealth, to be sacredly preserved forever, as grand emblems of the heroic services and patriotic devotion to liberty and union of one hundred and forty thousand of her dead and living sons.
“ 6 The escort will be performed by the first company of Cadets, Lieutenant-Colonel Holmes commanding, who will report to Brevet Colonel Clarke, at his head-quarters, at eleven o’clock, a.m., when the line of march will be taken up.
35546
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“ ‘ All general, regimental, and company officers, and past general, regimental, and company officers, of Massachusetts, and especially all officers and past officers, and all non-commissioned officers and privates of the several organizations named above, are invited to take part in the ceremony and join in the procession. The officers will, as far as practicable, detail a color guard for the colors of their respective late commands. The original date of muster-in of each command will govern its place in the procession. Officers and enlisted men, as far as practicable, will appear in uniform.
“ ‘ For further orders and information, apply to the Adjutant-General of the Commonwealth.
‘ ‘ By order of his Excellency John A. Andrew, Governor and Commander-in-chief.
William Schouler, Adjutant-General*
“The day was a common, New England, wintry day, and the ground was covered with snow to the depth of about six inches. Early in the morning of the 22d, the veteran officers and men of our gallant commanders assembled in Boston, and formed in military order. All were represented, and when placed in column of march, with their old uniforms, each command carrying its tattered flags, — some of which had waved over fifty battle-fields, in the valleys of Virginia, and on the mountains of Tennessee; had followed the fortunes of Butler and Banks in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas; and had been unfurled where Burnside and Sherman had led in the Carolinas and in Georgia, — a sight was presented which awakened the most patriotic and sublime thoughts in the heart of every loyal person.
“ As the procession moved through the different streets, business was suspended, the sidewalks were crowded with spectators, banners were displayed from almost every house, and everywhere cheers went up of welcome and of gratitude; a salute was fired by a detachment of light artillery; bands of music played inspiring airs. The whole scene was one which will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
“ The procession reached the State House about one o’clock in the afternoon. The color-bearers of each command were stationed upon the steps leading to the capitol; and when all were in position, holding aloft the war-worn banners, they presented a spectacle at once imposing and picturesque. The arrangements being completed, Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop, D.D., made an impressive and fervent prayer, at the conclusion of which General Couch stepped forward, and thus addressed Governor Andrew : —
“4 May it please your Excellency: We have come here to-day as theFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
547
representatives of the army of volunteers furnished by Massachusetts for the suppression of the Rebellion, bringing these colors, in order to return them to the State which intrusted them to our keeping. You must, however, pardon us if we give them up with profound regret; for these tattered shreds forcibly remind us of long and fatiguing marches, cold bivouacs, and many hard-fought battles. The rents in their folds, the battle-stains on their escutcheons, the blood of our comrades which has sanctified the soil of a hundred fields, attest the sacrifices that have been made, and the courage and constancy shown, that the nation might live. It is, sir, a peculiar satisfaction and pleasure to us, that you who have been an honor to the State and nation, from your marked patriotism and fidelity throughout the war,, and have been identified with every organization before you, are now here to receive back, as the State custodian of her precious relics, these emblems of the devotion of her sons. May it please your Excellency, the colors of the Massachusetts Volunteers are returned to the State.'
“ The Governor replied in the following beautiful and eloquent address: —
“ ‘ General: This pageant, so full of pathos and of glory, forms the concluding scene in the long series of visible actions and events in which Massachusetts has borne a part for the overthrow of the Rebellion and the vindication of the Union.
“ ‘ These banners are returned to the government of the Commonwealth through welcome hands. Borne one by one out of this capitol during more than four years of civil war, as the symbols of the nation and the Commonwealth, under which the battalions of Massachusetts departed to the fields, they come back again, borne hither by surviving representatives of the same heroic regiments and companies to which they were intrusted.
“ ‘ At the hands, General, of yourself, the ranking officer of the volunteers of the Commonwealth (one of the earliest who accepted a regimental command under the appointment of the Governor of Massachusetts), and of this grand column of scarred and heroic veterans who guard them home, they are returned with honors becoming relics so venerable, soldiers so brave, and citizens so beloved.
“ ‘ Proud memories of many fields; sweet memories alike of valor and friendship ; sad memories of fraternal strife; tender memories of our fallen brothers and sons, who, with dying eyes, looked last upon their flaming folds; grand memories of heroic virtues, sublime by grief; exultant memories of the great and final victories of our coun-548
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
try, our union, and the righteous cause; thankful memories of a deliverance wrought out for human nature itself, unexampled by any former achievement of arms; immortal memories with immortal honors blended, — twine around these splintered staves, weave themselves along the warp and woof of these familiar flags, war-worn, begrimed, and baptized with blood.
“f Let the “ brave heart, the trusty heart, the deep, unfathomable heart,” in words of more than mortal eloquence uttered, though unexpressed, speak the emotions of grateful veneration, for which these lips of mine are alike too feeble and unworthy.
“ ‘ General, I accept these relics in behalf of the people and the Commonwealth. They will be preserved and cherished, amid all vicissitudes of the future, as mementos of brave men and noble actions/ ”
The pageant then dissolved, and the colors were placed in the Doric Hall of the Capitol, where they will remain to testify to future generations of the courage and endurance manifested by the soldiers of Massachusetts during four of the most eventful years of its history.
After the services the Governor presented to the Adjutant-General the manuscript of his address, on which was the following indorsement, in his handwriting : —
“ Half-past two o’clock p.m., Dec. 22, 1868. This is the original manuscript used by me in reply to Major-General Couch, by whose hand the flag of the Nineteenth Regiment was delivered to me, he acting as the commander for the day of the volunteer column. I present it as an autograph to Adjutant-General Schouler, by whose happy thought Forefathers’ Day was named for the reception of the battle-flags, and whose industry and care helped largely to give a brilliant success to the ceremonies of the day.
“ With faithful regards of
“John A. Andrew.”
This interesting occasion was also admirably illustrated in a short poem which Brigadier-General Horace Binney Sargent addressed to Governor Andrew.
During the debate in the Massachusetts Legislature, Dec. 18, 1872, on the resolution condemning the proposition to erase from the Army Register and the regimental flags of the United States army the names of the battles in which they were engaged during the Rebellion, General S. M. Quincy thus alluded to two flags, one of which is preserved at the State House : —
“ At one time during the war I was colonel of the Seventy-third United States Colored Infantry, a regiment which, under a previousFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
549
commander, had highly distinguished itself in the first bloody repulse at Port Hudson. It lost heavily. It was mentioned with high praise by the commanding general; and yet, when a year later a department order was issued specifying the regiments entitled to inscribe ‘ Port Hudson ’ on their colors, the two negro regiments were quietly ignored. I addressed a petition at once to the Secretary of War at Washington, reciting the facts, and closing, I remember, with the statement, that whatever might be the action taken on the application, yet that the colors of my regiment bore one honorable mark which would never be effaced, — the broad, deep stain of the life-blood of the first color-sergeant, who fell in the unsuccessful charge, and relinquished his flag only with his life. I received, in consequence, direct authority from the Adjutant-General, at Washington, to inscribe f Port Hudson ’ on the blood-stained colors of the Seventy-third.
“ Downstairs, in the Doric Hall, is to be seen the splintered lance, in two pieces, of the colors of the Second Massachusetts Infantry. I saw the shot strike which splintered that staff and brought down the flag over the head and eyes of its bearer, and I admired his coolness as he cleared the folds from his face and raised once more the shortened lance, with a smile. In the next battle, when that flag went down, it was raised by another hand, for this time the bullet struck the man, and Sergeant Sadler died doing his duty, as became him. Now, sir, that stick is but a piece of ash, which would make a good broomstick, or excellent kindling wood; but yet the State of Massachusetts, not ashamed of the deeds of her soldiers who carried it, preserves it in a glass case, for the eyes of posterity.”1
Maine. — The tattered battle-flags of the Maine regiments have been set up in the rotunda of the State capitol at Augusta, in a heavy, black-walnut case, eighteen feet high, sixteen and one-half feet wide, ten inches deep, and heavily trimmed. It has a front of the best German plate-glass.2 No ceremonies accompanied their transfer.
The following lines, by Moses Owen, a native poet, tell the spirit with which these flags are preserved: —
u Nothing but flags ! but simple flags,
Tattered and torn, and hanging in rags;
And we walk beneath them with careless tread,
Nor think of the hosts of the mighty dead
Who have marched beneath them in days gone by,
With a burning cheek and a kindling eye,
1 Boston Transcript, Dec. 18, 1872.
2 Augusta, Maine, newspaper.550
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
And have bathed their folds with their young life’s tide,
And dying, blessed them, and blessing, died.
u Nothing but flags! yet, methinks, at night They tell each other their tales of fright!
And dim spectres come, and their thin arms twine Round each standard torn as they stand in line.
As the word is given — they charge! they form!
And the dim hall rings with the battle’s storm !
And once again, through the smoke and strife,
Those colors lead to a Nation’s life.
u Nothing but flags! yet they ’re bathed with tears;
They tell of triumphs, of hopes, of fears;
Of a mother’s prayers, of a boy away,
Of a serpent crushed, of the coming day.
Silent they speak, and the tear will start,
As we stand beneath them with throbbing heart,
And think of those who are ne’er forgot —
Their flags come home — why come they not ?
u Nothing but flags! yet we hold our breath,
And gaze with awe at those types of death !
Nothing but flags! yet the thought will come,
The heart must pray, though the lips be dumb.
They are sacred, pure, and we see no stain On those dear-loved flags come home again;
Baptized in blood, our purest, best,
Tattered and torn, they ’re now at rest.”
New Hampshire. — In New Hampshire, as fast as the regiments arrived home they were received by General Natt. Head, the adjutant» general, and, when received, their flags were turned over to the State, with appropriate ceremonies, and placed on exhibition in the adjutant-general’s office, where they remained until 1866, when they were suspended around the pillars of the Doric Hall of the State House at Concord. In June, 1867, the Adjutant-General was instructed to place them in proper and suitable cases for their better preservation, and not allow them to be removed except to preserve them from destruction.
These flags, numbering about one hundred, including guidons, were then placed in glass cases on three sides of Doric Hall, adding much to its appearance, and telling an eloquently sad story.
They are annually visited by the members of the Veteran Union of New Hampshire, and on one occasion, Jan. 8, 1867, Governor Har-riman, on being presented to the Union in Doric Hall, said: —FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
551
“ Gentlemen: I am happy to be thus presented to you, but I shall make no speech. Silence best becomes us in this presence. Those [pointing to the old flags] are the eloquent though speechless orators. Braver men never smiled at danger than those who fought under those banners, and whenever Death spread his banquet, New Hampshire furnished many guests. Your annual pilgrimage to these halls is creditable to the silent promptings of your nature. God bless forever ! the living and the dead, who under these flags marched to glory or the grave.” 1
Vermont. — The battle-flags of Vermont, consisting of twenty-four State flags, forty-one United States flags, and two brigade flags, making sixty-seven in number, borne by soldiers of Vermont in the war for the suppression of the Rebellion, have been tastefully arranged in cases in the hall of the House of Representatives, each with a tablet of silver, upon which is engraven the names of the engagements and battles in which the organizations bearing them participated.2
Rhode Island. — In Rhode Island there were no public ceremonies attendant upon the return of the battle-flags of the regiments, but they were informally received by the adjutant-general of the State, and deposited by him in the State House. The General Assembly in 1868, —
“ Resolved, That the Secretary of State be directed to procure a glass case, to be placed in the State House in Providence, in which shall be placed the several flags of the Rhode Island Volunteers, used in the late war, and now deposited in the secretary’s office.
“ Resolved, That the sum of one hundred and fifty dollars be appropriated for defraying the cost of said case.”
Connecticut. — The flags of the Connecticut regiments, after being deposited in the comptroller’s office, were, by direction of Charles J. Hoadley, Esq., hung up in the Senate chamber; his object in having them hung there was that the General Assembly might take some proper action for their preservation. They were soon after removed, without any public ceremony, to the State arsenal, in accordance with the following act of the Assembly, approved June 22,1865, “ Providing for the Safe-keeping of the Flags borne by the Volunteer Regiments during the late War.”
1	Letter of John M. Haines, adjutant-general of New Hampshire, May 2, 1872.
2	Vermont Legislative Directory, 1872-73.552
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
“Resolved, by this Assembly, That the flags which have been borne by the regiments of this State daring the late war shall be kept and preserved from injury with the utmost care by the officers who shall have, from time to time, official custody of the same; that they shall not be used at any time for the decoration of any hall occupied by either House of the General Assembly without the express direction of the General Assembly (or of the Governor when the General Assembly is not in session), and they shall not be used for the purposes of any parade, celebration, or other public display or exhibition, except upon occasions of unusual and greater solemnity, and then only by express direction of the Governor, and under responsible guarantee for their safety, which he shall approve as sufficient.
“Resolved, That the Quartermaster-General be, and he is hereby, directed to remove at his earliest convenience the flags and trophies now hanging in the State House, and preserve the same in accordance with the foregoing resolution.”
By another act, approved March 11, 1879, it was —
“Resolved, That the Comptroller, Adjutant-General, and Quartermaster-General shall be a board to have charge of the battle-flags of the State, now stored in the State arsenal, and that they cause suitable cases to be erected in the capitol, and the flags placed therein.”
It was proposed to make the transfer, with appropriate ceremonies, on Decoration Day; but the cases were not ready in season, and the transfer was deferred. The suggestion that the veterans of the State should participate in the removal ceremonies was made by Colonel Dexter R. Wright, Speaker of the House of Representatives, at a meeting of the Legislative Army and Navy Club, soon after the resolution was passed. That was the germ of the grand popular celebration for the consummation of which the citizens of Hartford labored with munificent energy.
The plan for the removal of the flags was gradually developed, and on the 10th of July the following circular was issued by the committee having the transfer in charge: —
“ Hartford, July 10, 1879.
“ The General Assembly of 1879 having ordered the transfer of the battle-flags from the State arsenal to the new capitol, and having directed the undersigned to make such transfer, it is decided that the removal take place on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 1879. All soldiers and sailors serving in the late war are invited to be present and escort the old colors. The programme for the day will be announced hereafter.
“ It is suggested that each regiment and battery serving in the late warFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
553
from this State appoint a member to represent the organization in any matters pertaining to arrangements for the parade, and that the name of the member be communicated to the Adjutant-General before August 1st, if possible.
“ Chauncey Howard, Comptroller,
“ Edward Harland, Adjutant-General.
“Leverett W. Wessells, Quartermaster-General?
General Joseph E. Hawley was unanimously selected as the most proper person to act as grand marshal, — a duty he cheerfully accepted.
The next step was the calling of a meeting of the citizens of Hartford to consider what part the city should take in observing the memorial occasion now begun, to be called “ Battle-Flag Day.” Mayor Sumner presided at the meeting, and in the charming address which he delivered advanced the following sentiment: —
“ It is neither ungenerous nor unwise, it is rather most wholesome and just, to remember the war as an appeal to the highest court known to man for the settlement of a vital question as to the character of our government, — an appeal honestly and conscientiously brought on the one side, most honorably and, skilfully tried on both sides, — an appeal which resulted in a final and inevitable decision that forever stamps upon this government the character of a nation.
“ Eegarded not as the triumphs of a section, but as the triumphs of the national idea, the memory of the war should be most jealously, most sacredly cherished. To celebrate the victory which finally crowned the arms of the North, in this spirit, without malice and without vaunting, is to honor the memory of the brave men who died under the stars and stripes, without insult to the memory of the brave men who died under the stars and bars.”
The assembly of veterans from all parts of the State was one of the most imposing sights ever seen in Hartford. ’ Fully ten thousand men were in the line, of whom considerably over eight thousand were old soldiers. The railroads centring at Hartford brought in over forty thousand visitors during the day, and numbers arrived Tuesday, swelling the mass of visitors to fifty-five thousand or more. The military organizations and guests were reported as follows: —
Veterans...................................................8,346
Military escort............................................1,012
Bands and drum corps........................................ 548
In carriages................................................ 350
Total..............................................10,256
The decorations were many and profuse.554
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
In the ceremony, the representatives of thirty regiments appeared, besides the State militia, and the entire force of the State anthorities. It was one o’clock before the procession was in line, and at that hour a national salute began; and as the first gun sounded, the First Division marched out of the park into High Street. This comprised the militia of the State, and veterans of the war belonging to other States, who had fought in Connecticut regiments. In this division were Governor Andrew and his private secretary in a carriage, followed by his staff, mounted. The Governor kept his head bared during the entire march, and he was greeted by rousing cheers from the thousands who lined the sidewalks along the line. The Second Division, under the command of Colonel Jacob L. Greene, formerly of the Sixth Michigan Cavalry, comprised the Union Battalion, and the prominent guests in carriages. Among the latter were Major-General J. M. Schofield, U. S. A., General Burnside, of Rhode Island, ex-Governors Jewell, Hubbard, and Cleveland, of Connecticut, General Smith and staff, the judges of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, the Mayor of Hartford, and the members of the city government. The fourth and last division was the great feature of the day. It was composed entirely of the veteran soldiers of Connecticut, and embraced fully eight thousand men, representatives from all the regiments, from the First to the Thirty-sixth. This division was headed by Major-General Joseph R. Hawley, the chief marshal of the day, and his staff. The men were dressed in citizens’ clothing, but many wore the hats of the Grand Army of the Republic, and all wore badges or medals; some were lame, some had lost an arm, and two men hobbled along on wooden legs. Carriages were provided for the veterans who could not walk.
Some of the old flags were nearly whole; others were so far gone that they had been caught with ribbons to the staff at frequent intervals, lest the slight breeze should make them float in shreds to the pavement. Some of them have histories that are known to the Connecticut folk; and when they were borne along the cheering became a hoarse roar, and all hands fluttered handkerchiefs or waved hats.
The stoops and lawns in front of the private houses were thronged with people, and in many cases little girls and boys were found representing patriotic characters. On the balcony of one house in High Street were two small boys, one dressed as a midshipman, and sitting on a coil of rope, and the other as a soldier, standing guard. At South Green, a pyramid of two hundred girls, ranging in age from four to twelve years, all dressed in white, and wearing red, white, and blue sashes, greeted the veterans with waving handkerchiefs and fans. AtFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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the base of the pyramid was a cordon of boys, dressed as soldiers, and carrying muskets, standing on guard. This was the great feature of the display. The capitol was reached at four o’clock, and here the ceremony of transferring the flags was performed.
In the evening, the Capitol, the City Hall, the Stamped Envelope Works, the City Hall and the Bulkeley arches, were illuminated till midnight, the two first mentioned being by electric lights.
When the column was formed on the park, it proceeded through Ford, High, and Main Streets to the arsenal. As the veterans passed the arsenal, the color-bearers received the colors. The column proceeded down Main and other streets to the capitol, where Chief-Marshal General Hawley addressed the Governor on delivering the flags : —
“ Your Excellency : We are more than ten thousand citizens, who were soldiers from Connecticut in the late war for union and liberty. We come, in obedience to an invitation of our beloved Commonwealth, to bring these eighty flags from their temporary resting-place to their final home in this new and beautiful capitol. For the grand honor and pleasure of the day, we are grateful to the General Assembly, to you, the chief magistrate, and to the great concourse of citizens, who have testified their extreme good-will in many ways. We shall make many pilgrimages to the shrine where these standards are to rest. We shall often recall, as we do to-day, the comrades who dared to die in following these emblems of duty and glory, and shall revive the innumerable memories of four years of marvellous national exaltation.
“ But it is quite certain that we shall never again be summoned as battalions, with trumpet and drum, banner and cannon, for even a noble holiday like this. Let the flags rest. In a few years these men will no longer be able to bear arms for the land they love, but these weather-worn and battle-torn folds shall remain through the centuries, testifying that Connecticut was true to free government, and pledging her future fidelity. It can never again be doubted that the great republic can find millions of defenders in a day of trouble, and millions of blessed women to sustain them. These poor shreds and humble staves, to be glorified in the eyes of future generations, have witnessed the dedication of a continent to justice, equal rights, union, and liberty. We bid them good-by.	Thanks be to God — abundant and
exultant thanks to the Almighty Father — that we lived in those days, and were permitted to do something toward seeing that the government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Governor Andrew said, in reply: —
“ General Hawley, and Veterans of Connecticut: In the name and556
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
on behalf of the State I accept these flags from the hands of the men who carried them in war. For more than four years of conflict, where-ever the camp was the hardest, wherever the siege was the fiercest, wherever the march was the longest, wherever the fight was the sorest, they were always to be seen, — through all the blasting winds, through summer and winter and the alternating seasons they were at all times unfurled. They come back riddled by shot, tattered and torn, blackened and grimed with the smoke and powder of battle, but they bring us no word of flight or dishonor.
“ They speak to us of the many displays of heroic virtue which have illustrated the character of the sons of Connecticut. With a pathos at which every heart softens, and every eye grows dim, they tell us of the many thousand soldiers from our State, who, counting not their lives dear, willingly laid them down for the honor of their country.
“ That sacred and mysterious sympathy, which goes out from almost every fireside to the battle-fields of the Rebellion, finds in these ragged ensigns its dearest and its intensest expression.
“ Lovingly, then, and tenderly, let us lay them away in the motherly arms of the State, whose trophies they now become, that they may teach these lessons of patriotism and of duty to all future generations. ^
As the color-guard of each regiment advanced with the colors, they were saluted by the firing of cannon, and the flags were then deposited in their permanent abiding-place.1
1 The following is the condition of the flags, as reported by the committee appointed for that purpose : —
Cavalry. — One red State flag in good order; one State flag and one national flag in had order, can he unfurled as looped ; two guidons in fair order.
First Battery. — One national flag, very had, can’t he unfurled ; one State flag, half gone, hut the rest in good order ; one small battery flag ; one fancy guidon.
Second Battery, — Two national battery flags in fair order.
Third Battery. — One national flag, good order.
First Heavy Artillery. — One yellow silk State flag in fine order ; one State flag badly damaged, to he carried as looped ; one State flag in fair order ; one national flag, presented by “ Sons of Connecticut in California,” hitdly gone, half furled; one national flag in fair order ; six guidons in good shape.
Second Heavy Artillery. — Two national and one State flag in fair order. (The last named was presented by Mrs. William Curtis Noyes, of Litchfield.)
Three Months' Men. — The First and Second Connecticut Volunteers have both flags in good order ; the Third has a State flag, hut no national.
Fifth Connecticut Volunteers. — One national and one State flag, both in had shape, and to he carried as looped.
Sixth Connecticut Volunteers. — One national and one State flag in had condition, looped ; one State flag, with staff shot in two, had order, looped.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
557
A committee of ladies prepared the flags so as to enable them to bear transportation. If the veterans of the war could have seen the loving care with which the old flags were inspected and repaired by the ladies selected, they would prize them still more highly. The committee consisted of ladies who had warm personal interest in their work, and brought sad memories of dear friends who had followed them. To one it was a brother who received his death-wound while
Seventh. — One State flag, nearly all gone, furled ; one State and one national in bad condition, but, as looped by Mrs. Hawley, can be carried.
Eighth. — One national flag, hopeless ; two State flags and one national in poor condition, but can be carried as fixed. (One State flag was presented by the “Sons of Connecticut in New York.”)
Ninth. — One State flag in good order; two national and one State flag in poor order, and looped.
Tenth. — Two State flags and one national in bad shape, looped ; one national flag in fair order. (The first national flag was presented by the “ Sons of Connecticut in New York.”)
Eleventh. — One national flag, very bad condition, staff broken by shot, to be carried as looped ; one national and one State flag in good order ; one State flag half gone, looped.
Twelfth. — Two national and one State flag in fair order ; one State flag bad, furled ; one national bad, looped. (One national flag was presented by Mrs. Colonel Deming.)
Thirteenth. — Two national and two State flags, all in bad order, and to be carried furled or looped.
Fourteenth. — One national and two State flags in various degrees of badness ; two can be partially unfurled.
Fifteenth. — One State flag half gone, the remainder in good shape ; one national flag bad, looped.
Sixteenth. — One State flag, new. The regiment will also carry its new flag of white silk, the central device on which is composed of pieces of the national flag torn up to prevent capture, and carried through Andersonville by the survivors.
Seventeenth. — One national, poor, looped ; one State, very bad, can’t be unfurled.
Eighteenth. — One State flag, in fair order, on a guidon staff ; one national, poor.
Twentieth. — One national, fair ; one State, badly torn, looped.
Twenty-first. — One State and one national, good ; one State and one national, bad, looped.
Twenty-second. — Both colors are in fair order.
Twenty-third. — No colors at the arsenal. To be brought by Colonel Holmes, who has retained them since the war.
Twenty-fourth. — One State in fair order ; one national to be brought from Middle^ town, having been in keeping of Mrs. General Mansfield since the war.
Twenty-fifth. — Both colors badly crippled, but can be carried, as looped by Mis$ Bissell.
Twenty-sixth. — One national, fair ; one State, poor, looped.
Twenty-seventh. — One national, good ; one State, poor, looped.
Twenty-eighth. — Both colors and two guidons in good condition.
Twenty-ninth. — One State, badly gone, carried as fixed ; two national, in fail shape.
Thirtieth. — One national, fair but faded.558
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
bearing the flag of his regiment; others were reminded of husbands and fathers; and one found the old flag which she had repeatedly patched and mended while with her husband in the field. It was a pleasing duty, but a sad one, to bind up the tattered shreds so that at least some part of the flag could be seen.
The most dramatic event of the day was the passing in of the colors by their bearers to be deposited in the elegant cases prepared to receive them in the capitol. It was a grand and affecting scene. The bearers of each regiment came forward separately, carrying the torn, storm-beaten flags, and as each set of colors was presented, the regiment which had defended them waved hats and cheered over them. The scene went home to the heart, and there was a solemnity deeper than found expression, and a picturesqueness that aroused enthusiasm and patriotism.
After the disposition of the flags, the vast concourse called for the generals on the platform, and several were introduced by General Hawley, and received with hearty cheers.
General Burnside, after the applause had subsided, made a short speech appropriate to the occasion.
General Schofield bowed his thanks and retired, followed by applause.
General Franklin was greeted with cheers, and said, in substance, that it was thirty-three years since he began to go to war; and when he thought of the past and all its great events, he felt that his time had nearly come to be laid away with the worn, old flags. But yet, when he saw the mass of veteran soldiers before him, he was as young as any of them, and he knew from the demonstration of to-day that, if necessity arose, they were able to fight another war, to as successful an issue.
General Warren bowed. General Benham said a few hasty words; and General Carrington, General Harland, and General Birge acknowledged the cheering of the assembly. In conclusion, General Hawley, in dismissing the veterans, said: —
“ Comrades: No word that any man can say can add to the pathos and true grandeur of what we have done to-day, if our work be rightly understood. Certainly at this time I cannot think of addressing you any further. I know you are weary by your long march, and
> _________________________________________________________
though you clamor for speeches, I must send you to dinner. Try to
go to the tables in the order of march that brought you here. Hartford has provided an abundance, and I know you will be a little patient with each other.”FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The removal of the flags to the new State capitol seemed a fitting occasion for recovering as full records as possible of these priceless memorials of the war.
The First Connecticut Heavy Artillery left the State as the Fourth Infantry Regiment. The original colors were presented to the regiment in front of the old State House on the day of its departure for the seat of war, June 10, 1861. One of the colors given by ladies interested in the Putnam Phalanx was presented by Colonel H. L. Miller, then a member of that command. The other flag was from the State, Lieutenant-Governor Douglas making the presentation address. Colonel Woodhouse responded, pledging the honor of his command that the flag should never be disgraced. Subsequently, the Fourth received an elegant United States color, presented by Connecticut citizens residing in California, and valued at eight hundred dollars. The eagle surmounting the staff was of gold, and the flag in all respects elaborately finished. It was sent by sons of Connecticut from California for the first three years’ regiment from Connecticut, and fell to the Fourth. It reached the command at Hagerstown, Md., and was guarded throughout the war with sacred fidelity. It is so tattered from service that it could not be unfurled at this parade; but from the soldier’s view this is the highest of honors.
The Second Heavy Artillery was organized originally as the Nineteenth Connecticut. The State color of this regiment was the gift of Mrs. William Curtis Noyes, of New York. The presentation was made on Litchfield Hill early in September, 1862, by Mr. Noyes, in behalf of his wife. The coat of arms of the State is elegantly embroidered in silk, with the Kensington stitch, and the flag was one of the handsomest carried from Connecticut. The first color-bearer, 0. R. Fyler, received the colors at Camp Dutton, and held charge of them until the regiment was transferred to the heavy artillery. Sergeant D. E. Soule carried the colors at the battle of Cold Harbor. There the head of the flag-staff was shot off. Soule was commissioned, and succeeded by Sergeant C. L. Davis. The latter gallantly carried his trust at Winchester, Sept. 19, 1864, but was wounded. After his recovery, he again received the custody of the flag. He was with it at Hatcher’s Run, Feb. 6, 1865; in the charge in front of Fort Fisher, March 25 ; and also at the charges on Petersburg and Sailor’s Creek. At Petersburg, the Second had the honor of first carrying the colors into the city, but a Michigan command planted the flag on the court-house. Sergeant C. P. Travers received the flag after Davis was wounded at Winchester, and carried it through the560
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
engagement. Two or three days later, he was wounded in the wrist at Fisher’s Hill; and his successor, Sergeant H. S. Wheeler, was mortally wounded at Cedar Creek, Oct. 19, 1864, the colors then falling to H. L. Bushnell. He held them only a few moments, when he was also shot down, a missile passing through his neck. As soon as Bushnell fell, the colors were caught by H. A. Warner, who carried them through the remainder of the battle.
The colors of the Fifth Regiment were the first to enter Winchester after the Union forces crossed the Potomac in March, 1862, and received their first fire in the victorious battle fought March 22, 1862. March 25, their colors were again bravely defended at Winchester. Aug. 9, 1862, at Cedar Mountain, the color-guard, with one exception, were either killed or wounded. Sergeant E. B. Jones, who had carried the flag from the start, was the first to fall, carrying down with him the national color, which was captured and taken to Richmond, and is now in Washington. Sergeant James Hewison, another valiant soldier, while bearing the regimental color was severely wounded, both legs being shot, and left for dead on the field. In this struggle Color-Corporal Sherman D. Taylor lost his life. Captain George W. Corliss grasped the regimental color, tore it from the staff, and it was finally borne off the field by Sergeant William P. Smith. Corporal Daniel L. Smith was also killed in this desperate encounter, and Major Edward F. Blake was shot dead while bearing the colors. Lieutenant H. M. Dutton and Lieutenant Heber Smith were killed early in the action. The colors of the regiment were afterwards borne at Antietam, Chantilly, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Resaca, Dallas, siege of Atlanta, through the march to the sea, and at Averysboro’ and Bentonville, 1ST. C. They were carried in the review at Washington, and brought to Hartford by Sergeant J. M. Cahill.
The colors of the Sixth Regiment are in ruins, more or less; one of the State flags being without the customary staff, and the other being badly tattered. The Sixth brought home a fine rebel artillery color, captured at Morris Island, July 10,1863. The charge on the Confederate battery was made by the Sixth alone, the command carrying the position by sheer pluck and bravery. One of the rebel artillerymen attempted to escape with the flag, but Colonel Chatfield ordered him to halt twice. Ignoring the order, he was fired upon, and fell forward upon the flag, mortally wounded. The brave fellow’s blood-stains can still be traced on the color. It was presented by the ladies of Pocota-ligo, Oct. 22. 1862, to the rebel battery, and was gallantly defended to the last.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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The national colors of the Seventh Regiment are torn to shreds, and were carried furled along the line of march. At the arsenal is a Confederate flag, captured by the Seventh at Fort Pulaski. The flag was surrendered to General Hunter, April 11, 1862,'the first anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter, and bestowed upon the Seventh, its captors.
The original colors of the Eighth Regiment were received from “the Sons of Connecticut” in Hew York. William H. Cone was the first color-bearer; after his promotion, Henry E. Strickland was intrusted with the flag, and at the battle of Newbern was the first to plant his colors on the entrenchments. At the battle of Antietam he fell, mortally wounded, and the flag was seized by Lieutenant-Colonel Appleman, and held in the face of the enemy until Sergeant Walker took Strickland’s place in the ranks. Color-Sergeant Thomas J. Hubbard carried the national color until the battle of Walthall, Va., May 1, 1864, where his right elbow was shattered by a Minie-ball. Although the arm was completely crushed, Hubbard still clung to his colors, advancing with the line of battle. Finally he was relieved by Sergeant Orlow J. Root, who carried the flag through the remainder of the engagement, and came home with it, depositing it at the State arsenal, when the regiment was mustered out of service.
The two national colors of the Ninth, the gallant Irish regiment, passed through a score of engagements, and are so tattered that they could not be unfurled. The Confederate national flag at the arsenal, captured at Pass Christian from the Fourth Mississippi, April 4,1862, was taken by Captain Wright of the Ninth. It was made by the ladies of Pass Christian, and the figure in the centre was of a magnolia. In its day this flag was a superb piece of work. It is in shreds, and can only be preserved with the utmost care. Both the color-sergeants were disabled at Cedar Creek, and in the charge in the afternoon Colonel Healy carried the colors. They were the first upon the retaken works.
The colors of the Tenth Regiment show the inscriptions of twenty-four battles, including Kinston, Dec. 14, 1862 ; Whitehall, two days later, Dec. 16, and Goldsboro’ the 17th, making three engagements in four days. Through a score of hard-fought battles the Tenth won its way to honor and distinction.
The interests clustering about the national color of the Eleventh Regiment are too sacred to be lost. The proudest hour of the Eleventh was when the regiment charged the “ Stone Bridge ” across Antietam Creek, part of the command fording the stream in order to
36562
OEIGIN AND PEOGEESS OF THE
dislodge the enemy, and the remainder receiving the fierce rebel fire without flinching, when Captain John D. Griswold, of Lyme, fell mortally wounded. The Eleventh, at the Sharpsburg bridge, by its brilliant charge, was of infinite value in changing the destiny of Burnside’s left. It matters but little that their old flag cannot be unfurled again.
The original color of the Twelfth Begiment was presented by the ladies of Hartford. It also received two stands each of the State and national colors during its service, two new flags reaching the regiment just before the campaign of the Shenandoah Yalley. Sergeant Edwards, the color-bearer at Georgia Landing, was shot through the mouth, a Minie-ball shattering his jaw; but, despite the shock and pain from the wound, Edwards clung to the flag, holding it aloft until Captain L. A. Dickinson of the color company could receive it from him, and intrust it to some one else. During the siege of Fort Hudson, the flags of the Twelfth were set out on the line of battle every day. In the Shenandoah they were followed with alacrity, and were brought back to Connecticut without the enemy ever having laid a finger upon one of them.
The Thirteenth was mustered in Nov. 25,1861, and remained in tho field, or under control of the government, until May 4, 1866. It was at New Orleans in 1862; Irish Bend and Port Hudson in 1863 ; Winchester and Cedar Creek in 1864; and at Augusta, Ga., in 1865, besides other important battles. The color-bearer, Sergeant Englebert Sauter, was wounded at Winchester with the flag in his hands, in front of the battle. The regiment received two sets of colors, besides a special flag that was presented by the ladies of New Orleans, while they were engaged on duty in that city. The New Orleans color was an elegant one, and an elaborate piece of needle-work. The stars and fringe were both silver, and the material of the finest quality of silk. The inscription was —
“ UNION.
13TH REGrT. CONN. VOLS.,
NEW ORLEANS,
1862.
This flag was deposited with the regular regimental colors. The Thirteenth also have a rebel flag at the arsenal, taken at Irish Bend, April 14, 1863. It was presented by the ladies of Franklin to the “ St. Mary’s Cannoneers.”
Among the most remarkable of the Connecticut regiments is theFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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“ gallant old Fourteenth/’ whose tattered battle-flags have been borne through the storms of thirty-four battles. This regiment was actually engaged in a greater number of battles, had more men killed in battle, captured a greater number of cannon, colors, and prisoners from the enemy, than any other Connecticut regiment, and yet it never lost a color. Sergeant Thomas J. Mills, the first color-sergeant, was killed at Antietam, and Color-Sergeant Armory Allen was killed at Morton’s Ford. Color-Corporal George C. Boomer, who was wounded at Morton’s Ford, came on from Maine to attend the battle-flag ceremonies, and was in the parade.
The colors of the Fifteenth Regiment were concealed from the Confederates at the time of that command’s capture at Kinston, N. C., but were afterwards recovered by the men. The national color has inscribed upon it the names of Antietam, siege of Suffolk and Kinston, being the engagements in which it participated. The State or regimental color is badly torn, one-half having entirely disappeared. The rend is through the shield, but what remains is of immeasurable value to the members of the command. The State or regimental color of the Fifteenth was presented by the ladies of Meriden, the address being delivered by Miss Helen Bradley. After the war, Miss Bradley married Mr. G. C. Merriam, one of the officers of the command. At the battle of Kinston the color-bearer of the regiment was shot, and this color was carried off the field by Color-Corporal James B. Marvin.
The colors of the Sixteenth Regiment were torn from their standards at the fall of Plymouth, N. C., April 20, 1864, and in part distributed among the officers and men, while the remaining portions were burned, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the rebels. The pieces that were saved were carried through the military prisons at the South, and, finally, on the release of the members who survived, were brought home. These few shreds of the old colors have been kept as sacred souvenirs by their possessors. A few months ago the executive committee of the regiment determined on getting together as many of these fragments as possible, and have them restored, that they might be deposited with the battle-flags at the capitol. The ground-work is of white silk, and the color, as preserved, is in the form of a shield. Fortunately, the eagle’s head of the original color was preserved, and this surmounts the shield, with streamers made from bits of the flag extending from its beak. The rescue of the colors involved carrying them across an open tract from four to five rods in width, under the enemy’s fire. A bunch of a hundred564
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
men or more surrounded it. Within a few feet stood two light artillery guns, one of which had been spiked during a charge from the rebels on the position. The dead and wounded were grouped here, and the enemy had opened on the spot with grape and canister. From the State color, which was carried by Sergeant William E. Bidwell, the silver ornaments surmounting the standard had been cut away by a fragment of shell, and had fallen at his feet. Sergeant Francis Latimer, of Hartford, carried the national color, which he had gallantly borne off the field at Antietam, and from which he had ever afterwards been inseparable. During this crisis, the most memorable moment in the battle of Plymouth, the flags were called for by the officers of the regiment, who were directing the contest at the right of the line. An hour later, the Union forces at Plymouth were in the hands of the rebels; but the colors were either burned or existing in shreds and precious bits here and there among the men. The restored flag of the Sixteenth is made up from these invaluable remnants. Sergeant-Major Robert H. Kellogg, of the Sixteenth, has published an interesting sketch of the siege of Plymouth, and the rescue of the Sixteenth colors, from which the following extract is taken : —
“ After the last flag of truce from the enemy had returned, bearing a refusal to surrender, a tremendous fire of musketry and artillery was opened on the Union line, and the rebels, with their characteristic yells, were now swarming through the streets of the town, pouring into the camps and pressing every advantage, with the confidence of victory near at hand.
“ At this juncture, the color guard of the Sixteenth, at the extreme right of the line, sheltered from the enemy’s fire behind an artillery platform, shouted to Lieutenant-Colonel Burnham to know what should be done with the colors. The reply canie, ‘ Strip them from the staff and bring them here.’ To tear each flag from its staff was the work of a moment; but who should carry them through that pelting hail of bullets ? It required brave men, and they were not wanting. Color-Sergeant Francis Latimer took the national color, and Color-Corporal Ira E. Forbes the State flag, and, crossing the most exposed part of the field under a heavy fire, safely delivered them to Colonel Burnham. It was a brave deed, gallantly done. Corporal Forbes returned, and safely brought back the flag of the One Hundred and First Pennsylvania Regiment.”
The national color of the Seventeenth has the name of the command and the constellation of States elegantly embroidered in silk, and so, in part, is well preserved. But, mainly, the flag is in tatters.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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It has seen hard service in the field, and sustains an honorable record in the history of the war.
The State color of the Eighteenth Regiment was presented by the ladies of Norwich. This flag was saved by the gallantry of Color-Sergeant George E. Torry, on the morning of June 15, 1863, near Winchester, Ya. The Eighteenth found itself in an almost hand-to-hand contest with Johnston’s division in front, and intercepted on the flank by Stonewall Jackson’s old brigade, on the Martinsburg road. Escape in a body was impossible. Color-Sergeant Torry was ordered to destroy his flag; and while the Confederates were intent on the capture of the main body of the regiment, Sergeant Torry cut his color from its staff, wound it around his body beneath his uniform, and by hard travelling and good luck brought it safe into the Union lines.
The Twentieth Regiment captured no colors, but they brought theirs back. At the battle of Peach Tree Creek, Color-Sergeant David Thorn-croft was shot down with the colors in his hands. After Thorncroft fell, Sergeant Prior received the colors, and carried them through the rest of the battle. John H. Pratt was wounded, with the colors, at Bentonville, and Atwater, of the color guard, at Chancellorsville. Corporal Keefe was with the colors from the time they left the State until their return. Sergeant Prior was the national color-bearer when the regiment was mustered out, being the last member of the command to have it in custody.
The national flag of the Twenty-first is in ruins, having passed through three years of hard and persistent service, and remained furled along the march from the arsenal to the capitol.
The colors of the Twenty-second were carried by Sergeants A. J. Carrier and Joseph Wilson. The Twenty-second was the first nine months’ regiment from the State, but was not brought very actively into the scenes of the war. It was present at the siege of Suffolk, and in line of battle at the Nansemond.
The State color of the Twenty-third Regiment was presented to Colonel Holms by his cousin, Colonel Samuel Holms, of New York. It was made by Tiffany & Company. On the transverse side from the State coat of arms was a sketch of General Putnam riding down the stone steps at Greenwich. The national color was presented by a member of the regiment. The Twenty-third was stationed in the Gulf department, and participated in the closing scenes of the war. At Boeuf, the State flag was destroyed, to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy. The national color was saved by Colonel Holms, and has been in his possession since the war.566
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
The / Twenty-fourth Regiment was organized in September, 1862. Before leaving Middletown, the ladies of that city decided to present the command with a regimental flag, but were unable to complete it before its departure for the front. The flag was a national one, and the ladies met daily until they had finished it. It was of silk ribbon, heavily fringed, and a beautiful specimen of art and taste. Two guidons were made to accompany it. After the flag was finished, Rev. Dr. Joseph Cummings, William S. Camp, and Samuel C. Hubbard were appointed a committee to proceed to Camp Buckingham and present the color on behalf of the ladies, Dr. Cummings making the presentation speech, and Colonel Mansfield the response. In May, 1863, the regiment marched to the rear of Port Hudson. The regimental State flag was left under guard, but the flag presented by the ladies of Middle-town was taken to the front, and was carried as the regimental color during its service. At the second assault on Port Hudson, June 14, 1863, the flag and staff received thirty-eight bullet-holes. The regimental flag was surrendered to the State, and placed in the arsenal in Hartford. The flag presented by the ladies was returned to Middle-town, and was placed in the custody of Mrs. General Mansfield, where it has since remained. It was brought to Hartford for the parade, and to be placed in the State capitol.
The colors of the Twenty-fifth were at Irish Bend, Baton Rouge, and Port Hudson, and saw hard service in the field. Israel C. Peck, the color-bearer at Irish Bend, had his belt shot away during the engagement. He was but slightly wounded, and in the charges on Port Hudson, May 27 and June 14, was at his post as usual. He was in service during the Mexican war, and is now past sixty years of age. Out of deference to his service, arrangements were made for him to ride in the procession. M. A. Shearer, color-sergeant of the Twenty-fifth, carried the State flag during the war.
The national color of the Twenty-sixth is fairly preserved, but the State color is badly tattered. Its service was principally at Port Hudson, where it was engaged with the enemy, May 27, and also June 13 and 14, 1863. Fifteen men were killed in action, and thirty died from wounds.
The colors of the Twenty-seventh were carried through Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, Sergeant Brand being the national standard-bearer. At Chancellorsville, eight companies of the regiment were captured, and incarcerated in rebel prisons. Fortunately the colors, which at Fredericksburg had been pushed to the advance line of battle, were saved, being with the two com-FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
567
panies on picket duty at the time the bulk of the command was captured.
The colors of the Twenty-eighth Regiment are in a good state of preservation.
The colors of the Twenty-ninth Regiment were presented by Fred. Douglass, in an able and sensible speech in behalf of the colored women of New Haven, just before the command left the front. When Richmond fell, the Twenty-ninth was with the first infantry that entered the city.1
New York.— No State has taken so much pains to preserve the history of its regiments, and the flags borne by them, as New York. On the 21st of January, 1863, Adjutant-General Sjirague issued a circular in which he said: “ It is desired that all regimental colors worn out in service, and of consolidated regiments, be forwarded to these head-quarters, as well as captured flags, banners, &c., that they may be deposited in the archives of the State in an appropriate manner, as a record of the fortitude of her sons.” A minute history of the flags is important, and a detailed statement of the services of the regiments will be appropriate. The first flags that had been borne in battle, returned to a State, were seven belonging to the volunteer regiments of the State of New York.
On the 23d of April, 1863, the New York Assembly passed the following —
Resolution, “ Whereas there are now in the possession of the Adjutant-General of this State a number of national and regimental flags
1 The whole number of troops furnished by Connecticut during the war was: —
Three months’ men.................. 2,340
Nine months’ men................... 5,602
One year men......................... 529
Two years’ men........................ 25
Three years’ men................... 44,556
Four years’ men ....................... 26
Not known........................... 1,804
54,882
The casualties to the Connecticut troops during the war, given in the * Military and Civil History of Connecticut during the Recent War,’ was: —
Officers.		Men.		Officers.	Men.
Killed in action		97	1,094	Resigned		481	
Died of wounds				48	663	Transferred to veteran reserve		
Died of disease		63	3,246	corps		16	1,488
Missing		21	389	Executed		...	27
Honorably discharged prior to			Deserted		2	6,281
muster out of organization	385	5,451	Drowned		1	35
Discharged for disability		51	4,361	Taken by civil authority		• * .	19
Dishonorably discharged		51	49	Dropped from rolls		7	56
Cashiered		9				568
OKIGrIN AND PEOGIEESS OF THE
which have been gallantly borne by our brave volunteer regiments* until, blood-dyed and torn, they are no longer of use in the field, therefore, —
“ Resolved, That a respectful message be sent to the Honorable the Senate, inviting them to a joint meeting with this House, to be held in the Assembly chamber, on Friday the 24th inst., at twelve o’clock, noon, his Excellency the Governor presiding, when the Adjutant-General will present these flags to the State for preservation.”
In accordance with this resolve, the two Houses met in the Assembly chamber the next day. The Assembly rose to receive the senators, who took seats in front of the Speaker’s desk. The Governor took the chair, with the Lieutenant-Governor on his right and the Speaker of the Assembly on his left. Adjutant-General Sprague then advanced to the Speaker’s desk, followed by seven flags borne by members of his staff, amidst the enthusiastic applause of the audience. After the convention had been called to order by Governor Seymour, — the flags being arranged in front of the Speaker’s desk, — Adjutant-General Sprague presented them, with a patriotic speech, too long to be given in full, closing as follows: —
“ My task is done. I now commit to you, sir, as the Commander-in-chief of the State of New York, these banners, in compliance with the request of the officers mentioned, knowing that they will be cherished by the State, as all others will be now in the field. When you and I, sir, shall have passed away, when this vast assemblage now heaving with emotion shall be mingled with the dust, these mementos will live; history will claim its triumphs when the integrity and sacrifices of our countrymen will be appreciated, understood, and rewarded!
“ Let there be selected by this united body a suitable depository; there let them hang, so that in time to come, when our country is restored to its original purity and greatness, when rebellion shall be crushed, our children’s children shall gather under the folds, and with pride and enthusiasm narrate the deeds of their fathers, and glory in the sacrifices and sorrows which achieved the restitution of our country.”
General Sprague then designated the respective colors, each being waved as he mentioned them. One of these, the colors of the Thirtieth Eegiment, at the second battle of Bull Eun, fell into the hands of ten different soldiers shot dead on the field. The stars and stripes were pierced by thirty-six balls, and the staff was shot to splinters. Four of the color guard of the Sixtieth Eegiment were shot downFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
569
while carrying its banner. The color-bearer with four of the color guard of the Sixty-first was killed at Fair Oaks. The other flags had no particular history, but had been through many battles.
After the presentation, Senator Smith offered a Resolve, “ That these flags which had been so gallantly borne should be accepted, and placed among the archives of the State in the Bureau of Military Statistics, to be preserved as memorials of that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty; and that a copy of the resolutions and proceedings be transmitted by the Governor to the commandant of each regiment, &c., in the service of the United States.”
After remarks by Senator Folger (who seconded the resolutions) and others, and the reading of a poem by Alfred B. Street,1 Governor Seymour rose and said: “ I can add by no words of mine to this impressive and solemn scene. You have heard from a representative of the Senate, and a member of the Assembly; you have listened to the earnest words of one who, himself a soldier, can with so much truth and eloquence depict the dangers and heroism of a soldier’s life you have heard, too, the beautiful language of the poet; but, above all, you have seen the banners which but a short time since were carried forth in their brightness and their beauty, borne by stalwart men who went out from their happy homes to fight the battles of their country, brought back to us, blood-stained and torn, and telling us, more eloquently than can any language, of the heroism and. devotion of their defenders.
“ I will not weaken the effect of this touching and impressive ceremony by any further remarks. May God Almighty in his goodness grant that the heavy sacrifices we have made may not be in vain; but that, with patriotism quickened and elevated by the trials we have undergone, we may be taught to better appreciate and more faithfully discharge the duties of American citizens; and may He who holds all nations in the hollow of his hand, pardoning our many sins, restore to us our glorious and beloved Union, so that we may again enjoy the blessings of peace, beneath a government reinvigorated and strengthened by the deep sorrows and the fierce struggle through which it has passed.”
The resolutions were then adopted by a unanimous vote, and Governor Seymour declared the joint convention dissolved.
Subsequent to these impressive ceremonies, during the year 1863, and in the early months of 1864, many flags were added to the collection in the Bureau of Military Statistics, and of these, fifty, that had
1 The poem is entitled “ Our Union.”570
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
been borne by regiments and batteries in the field, were presented by the Governor to the Legislature convened for this purpose in the chamber of the Assembly, on the evening of April 20, 1864.
The Assembly met at the appointed hour, and, being called to order, committees were appointed to wait upon the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Adjutant-General, and Senate, to notify them they were in readiness to receive them. The Senate, having arrived, were seated in front of the Speaker’s chair, and, the Governor presiding, the flags were brought in,—each being borne by a young gentleman volunteer, and arranged in a double line along the middle aisle of the Assembly. A large number of citizens and ladies were present, and a band of music was in attendance. After the convention had been called to order, Adjutant-General Sprague rose and addressed it in an eloquent speech, in the course of which he said: “ The shifting scenes of the drama have passed before us, and these banners have returned to narrate, with graphic power, tales of sorrow and trials, as well as of fidelity, patriotism, and renown.” “ This State has sent to the field two hundred and ninety-three thousand men. These banners come back to us without reproach. There are now in the field upwards of one hundred and thirty thousand men from this State. Should occasion require, more are ready to go. From the records which I shall read, there is enough to cause every citizen to be proud of his native State, and to cause a feeling of gratitude and pride that f Excelsior' can be inscribed upon her flags without reproach. As your representative, and in behalf of these brave men now in the field, and in the presence of both Houses of the Legislature, I deposit these colors in the statistical bureau of this State.” The flags were then brought forward by regiments in their numerical order, and the history of each was read by the Adjutant-General.
The color of the Tenth Regiment presented by the city of New York was the first American flag raised over the custom-house at Norfolk, Va., after its recovery by the Union troops. At Fredricks-burg it was shot from the hands of its bearer, and several of the color guard were killed under it. The colors of the Fourteenth, soiled and tattered, evidence the proud boast that the regiment never had its pickets driven in, and never turned its back on the enemy in battle. The flags of the Sixteenth have been borne in eighteen battles. At Gaines Mill, the color-bearers were three times shot down, and every one of the color guard was either killed or wounded, except one. The staff of the regimental flag was struck by a ball while in the hands of the color-bearer, and the ferule so indented it could not be moved onFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
571
the staff. At Crampton Gap, Corporal Conant was killed by a Minie-ball through the head while holding one of these flags, and one of the color guard was shot through the leg. Under the folds of the flag of the Twenty-sixth, five good and true men have fallen, and it bears the marks of bullets and the blood of its defenders. The guidon of the Twenty-eighth has a remarkable history. At Chancellorsville, a soldier was shot dead, when John Otto Swan, a drummer acting as a marker, took the flag from its staff, put it in his pocket, adjusted upon himself the accoutrements of the dead soldier, and fought gallantly in the ranks, until, with sixty-five men and three officers, he was taken prisoner. Concealing the flag under the lining of his coat, he kept it with him when taken to Richmond, and managed to bring it away unobserved when exchanged and sent home. The flag was deposited by the boy’s father, as an honorable memorial of the services of his son. The other flags of this regiment were lost in service. Thirty-three men are said to have been killed defending the colors of the Twenty-ninth. The flag of the Thirty-seventh replaced one that was lost at Chancellorsville. The lost flag was removed from its staff by Lloyd, the bearer, and wrapped around his body, as it was liable to be torn in passing through the tangled brush through which he was obliged to creep. This brave and intelligent soldier was killed, and his body was buried without suspecting that the flag was wrapped around his person, under his coat. Repeated efforts have been made to find his grave, without success.1 At Antietam, seven of the eight color guard of the Thirty-eighth were either killed or wounded, and the remaining one received and brought off the colors of a Pennsylvania regiment. At Gettysburg, the color-bearer and two of the guard of the Sixty-first were severely wounded. The color-bearer of the Seventy-sixth was killed at South Mountain, and at Gettysburg the color-bearer was wounded. The flag of the Seventy-seventh was torn to pieces by a shell at Mayre’s Heights, and one of the color guard killed. At Port Hudson, the national flag of the Ninety-first was torn in two; the portion presented was brought into the hospital by one of the color guard, who was wounded. The part that remained on the lance
1 This was repeating history. A French military author, who served and wrote in the time of Charles XIY., intending to express the importance of preserving the colors to the last, obserted that, on a defeat taking place, the flag should serve the ensign as a shroud ; and instances have occurred of a standard-bearer, who, being mortally wounded, tore the flag from its staff, and died with it wrapped around his body. Such a circumstance is related of Don Sebastian, king of Portugal, at the battle of Alcaza, and of a young officer named Chatelier, at the taking of Taillebourg, during the wars of the Huguenots.572
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
remained with the regiment. One of the hearers of the banner of the One Hundred and Fourth was severely wounded at South Mountain, another at Antietam, and at Gettysburg seven of the color guard were killed or wounded in sustaining it; and the corporal who took the national flag, being in danger of capture, tore the flag from the staff and stamped it into the ground, to conceal it from the enemy’s notice. These are a part only of the deeds of valor done and blood sacrificed to preserve the colors; it is impossible to enumerate them all as narrated.
After the presentation of the flags, the Speaker of the Assembly, Mr. Alvord, with a few fitting words, welcomed them home again, and with prophetic vision said: “ Aye, and I tell you that, out of the remnants and battles here shown you, there will come up a brighter and nobler banner in the future. Our stars will be increased in multitude, our stripes will float over a free and happy people from one end of the country to the other. Each and every one of these flags is a page in the history of the State. I welcome them, because partisan feeling and party sink into insignificance before these banners. The blood of all, without distinction of party, has mingled around them, and I trust they will bind them in the silken chains of concord and unity, until the time shall come when the banner of our country, undimmed of any stars and with no stripes removed from it, shall float far over the land, from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”
He then introduced Governor Seymour, who said: “ With a wise and patriotic liberality, this State has provided that the history of every regiment it has sent to the war shall be preserved, and that there shall be a place where shall be deposited the banners which they have borne in the contest. I am sure that the heart of every man within the sound of my voice has been moved this night, when he has seen these banners brought back again into our State,—so sad and yet so glorious. In their history you have an epitome of the whole war. The banners that have been presented to you this night have been fanned by the breezes of Carolina, have been dampened with the dews that have fallen in the swamps of Virginia, have drooped under the almost tropical sun of Louisiana, have floated high in the heavens in the battles above the clouds at Lookout Mountain, where under their folds we won an honorable victory. It is well that our State on this occasion has shown its ancient fidelity to the flag of our country, to the union of these States, and to the Constitution of our land. It is fit and becoming that this great State, on whose soil this flag of ours was first given to the breezes of heaven, and which was firstFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
573
displayed in defence of the very spot on which we now stand, shall he foremost in its defence. The State of New York has now nearly one hundred and thirty thousand men in the field.1 During the whole contest it has furnished one-fifth of our armies. I believe I may say her sons have been inferior to none in their bravery, their devotion, their courage, or their patriotism. I will not attempt to add to the emotions you have felt upon the display of these flags. I have no eloquence which shall compare with these mute emblems, whose very rags and tatters are made glorious with the memories and history of martial achievements. I receive, in behalf of the great State whose chief magistrate I am, these emblems of the valor and patriotism of her sons. They will be set aside and preserved, monuments of the devotion of our people in the struggle for the success and glory of our common country.”
General Crooke then arose to explain why Long Island had no representative flag was, they felt so proud of their trophies they would not let them be taken from Brooklyn.
The ceremonies were concluded by the reading of a poem by Alfred B. Street.2 The Governor and Senate withdrew, and the Speaker declared the House adjourned,3
In 1867 there were deposited in the fire-proof flag-room of the New York Bureau of Military Statistics no less than eight hundred and four battle-flags, the colors of New York regiments, and twenty-eight rebel ensigns.
Pennsylvania closed her military record in the Bebellion by receiving from the hands of her valiant sons the flags they had carried for thousands of miles, and which had always been borne by them side by side with the foremost in the strife of battle.
The day set apart to receive these glorious memorials of her devotion to the Union was the 4th of July, 1866. There was a great procession of the military and civic bodies to Independence Hall, where the reception was to take place. Addresses were delivered by Governor Curtin, General Meade, General Bussell, and others. The scene in Independence Square was one to be remembered. The old hall was festooned and adorned with the stars and stripes, and the amphitheatre in front of it was crowded with ladies, while officers of the army and navy, in gay and brilliant uniform, mingled with gentlemen
1 April 20, 1864.	2 gee p. 544.
8 Presentation of Regimental Colors to the Legislature, 1862, and Presentation of Trophy Flags to the Legislature, 1864. Albany : Published by order of the Legislature.574
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
in the more sober-colored garments of citizens.1 The remains of over one hundred flags, with inscriptions telling of their battles and victories, were grouped together. In some instances nothing remained of the standard but its staff, and that was ornamented with streamers containing the names of the battles in which the regiments had participated. The severity of the struggles through which these flags had passed is best told in the simple announcement on one of them; viz., “ In forty-one battles and sixty-one skirmishes.” Major-General Meade made1 the presentation, which was replied to by Governor Curtin.
These flags, and others that have been gathered, to the number of three hundred and eighty-one, have been permanently deposited in a room in the capitol of the State at Harrisburg.
The means adopted for grouping the flags is by a series of brackets strung along the blank wall, by enclosed shelves across each window-frame, and two enormous pedestals erected in the centre of the room. The design of the pedestals and brackets is Gothic, carved and ornamented in fine style and exceeding good taste, and stained in imitation of walnut and oak. The flags, unfurled, are arranged in these brackets and pedestals in numerical order, all the colors of each regiment being grouped together, as it frequently happened that a regiment received as high as four flags, all of which are here presented, and some of which are sadly dilapidated specimens of shreds and tatters. In several instances only the flag-staff remains, with the slightest possible shreds attached; while in others a bundle of long strips of silk, powder-stained, soiled with blood, and bullet-riddled, remain to perpetuate the memory of the storms through which they were carried by the braves who are either sleeping their last sleep in Virginia or Tennessee, or have returned home, and are once more engaged in the operations of peace.
The flags displayed number three hundred and eighty-one,2 including those presented by the State, by the United States, and by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. A silver plate, engraved with the number of each regiment, is fastened to the brackets and pedestals. A number of the original flags have been entirely destroyed, and, in order to indicate the battles in which they were carried, streamers are attached and inscribed with the names thereof. In every case where possible, each flag is inscribed with the names of the battles in which its regiment participated.
1	See colored plate.
2	One hundred and ninety-six State flags, ninety-two United States flags, thirty-eight banners and markers, twenty-six cavalry and artillery standards, twenty-two camp colors, seven presentation flags.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
575
The State flags carried by the Pennsylvania regiments in the war all bear the coat of arms of the State, set in a blue field and surrounded by stars. They are the same that were furnished the regiments by the Legislature upon the recommendation of Governor Curtin. Of the two hundred and seventeen State flags that were carried side by side with the stars and stripes by Pennsylvania soldiers, all but two, which were lost, have been in the capitol since the close of the war. Pierced by many a bullet, tattered by storm, and faded and eaten by time, most of the ensigns are in so fragile a condition that it has been necessary to roll them carefully around their staffs, and bind them up like the shattered leg of a soldier. As a collection, thus grouped with excellent taste, they present a spectacle full of grandeur and historic value.
The flag of the Fifteenth Cavalry is interesting, having been identified with Jeff. Davis’s petticoat masquerade. Colonel William Palmer, of Philadelphia, commanded this regiment, which, in May, 1865, conducted the pursuit after Davis, who wTas captured by a Michigan cavalry regiment.
The original flag of the Bucktail Eegiment, commanded by Colonel Thomas L. Kane, occupies one of the brackets on the north side. This regiment, organized in the forests in the northern part of the State, was made up of men accustomed to the use of the rifle of long range as deer and squirrel hunters. It was the first and only rifle regiment organized by the State. The greater portion of the regiment was carried to the city on rafts, and, after completing their engagements in running lumber to market, the men went to Camp Curtin, where Colonel Kane awaited their arrival. Each man had a bucktail in his hat; and attached to the remnant of a flag which belonged to it is also a bucktail. On one occasion, while a bloody and uncertain conflict was being waged, a flag borne by this regiment was buried to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy, and after the engagement it was impossible to find the burial spot. That flag still remains in the soil of the South.
The flags of the Fifty-first (General Hartranft’s regiment) occupy one of the brackets on the north side of the room. On one the following record is inscribed: “ Koanoke Island, Newbern, Camden, Second Bull Eun, South Mountain, Chantilly, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Jackson, Wilderness, Siege of Knoxville, Campbell Station, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Weldon Eailroad, Petersburg, Eeams’s Station, Hatcher’s Eun, and Eichmond.” Both flags exhibit marks of the conflicts in which they were borne, one being greatly faded and576
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
thoroughly riddled, while the other has its staff splintered, and secured by a brass ring.
The flag of the Seventy-third has the following history attached: “ This flag came through Libby Prison, and was preserved by Captain John Kennedy, Company H, by keeping it concealed about his person. It was torn from the flag-staff by Color-bearer Sergeant Charles Wens-ler, of Company G-, at Missionary Ridge, Nov. 28, 1863, and handed to Captain Kennedy when about to be captured.”
The flag of the Ninetieth Regiment (Colonel Peter Lyle) was, no doubt, the object of a personal struggle, as its staff is broken and securely wrapped with the cord belonging to it, strengthened by being overlapped with the suspenders of the color-sergeant. The flag is little more than a collection of shreds, so stained and soiled as to be almost past recognition.
One of the flags of the One Hundredth Regiment, consisting of three fragments of silk, soiled and stained by powder, bears the following inscription: —
“ This relic was saved by Lieutenant R. P. Craven, Company K, during the battle of July 30, before Petersburg, and given to Captain McFeeters for safe-keeping not two minutes before a shell burst and killed the noble officer who saved it. The balance of the flag, which was torn by shot and shell into small pieces, was carried off by the men in the bosoms of their blouses. This relic was given by Captain McFeeters to me, to be placed among the several sacred relics in the State capitol at Harrisburg.
“ Daniel Leasure,
<c Colonel One Hundredth P. V., Roundheads
The flag of the One Hundred and Forty-eighth has only a small portion of the staff remaining, while its colors are badly torn by shot and shell. Colonel Beaver lost a leg while leading his regiment beneath this flag.
The flag of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment has the following letter attached to it: —
“ Washington, D. C., Oct. 25, 1869.
“ SlR, — I am directed by the President to send herewith the flag of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment, P. V., said to have been captured at Gettysburg, and recaptured in the baggage of Jeff. Davis.
“ Very respectfully,
“E. D. Townsend, Adjutant-General.”
The display must be seen to be appreciated. Only by walking beneath the tattered, torn, and blood-stained remnants of these flags,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
577
studying their records and contemplating the spectacle they present, can the glory they combine be appreciated.
The flag that President Lincoln carried at the laying of the cornerstone of the Gettysburg monument is also preserved in this deposi-tory.1
Maryland. — The battle-flags of the loyal Maryland regiments^ torn with bullets, stained with the smoke of battle-fields, and discolored with the rains of many a midnight march, were, after the return of the regiments, hung up in the capitol, and graced one of the public rooms of the State House at Annapolis. In 1872, they were taken down, and packed in an old lumber-room, used for storing old muskets and worn-out military material, according to the newspapers of that State, “ that their display may not keep in memory that fratricidal strife which men of both parties are willing to cast a veil over.” We can well imagine that the soldiers who fought and marched under the folds of these standards would feel the hot glow of indignation and shame mount to their cheeks when informed that they have thus been scornfully put aside to moulder and perish, as things no one cared for. The veterans of the Maryland Brigade should have something to say regarding this desecration and destruction of their colors. Every true man North and South will rejoice to see the wounds resulting from our civil strife healed, and the sooner the cure is effected the better for the nation and the world. But is it well to tear out that leaf of history which tells of the heroism of our fathers and brothers who fought for the Union ? If the Southern people are not in any way to be reminded of the patriotism of the soldiers of the Union armies, then let us cease to decorate the graves of our fallen heroes, tear down from their places the hallowed swords that hang upon the walls of many households, and raze to the dust the monuments which tell their story. It is well to be consistent; and if-the remains of our old war-flags are to be buried out of sight, let us destroy the pages that tell their story.2
1 The following statement exhibits the purchase, issue, return, and shortage of State flags, standards, and guidons, from Sept. 14, 1861, to July 20, 1866: —
37578
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
Delaware. — On the 23cl of April, 1873, the battle-flags of the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Delaware Regiments, also the flags of the Third Brigade, Second Division, Fifth Corps, and the First Division of the Second Ambulance Corps, were presented by the members of the Grand Army posts, in whose custody they had been until then, to the Historical Society of the State. At a reunion of the First Delaware Regiment, it was decided its flags should remain under the control of the regiment, to be enclosed in a glass case, with the names of the battles through which the flags had passed painted upon them, and then deposited with the Historical Society at Wilmington, only to be removed at the annual reunion of the regiment. The presentation ceremonies took place on the spacious stage of the Grand Opera House which had been arranged to give effect to the occasion. At the rear, a row of white tents gleamed out from the foliage of the scenery, while numerous stacks of arms and the floating colors gave the audience the representation of an army camp. Flags were also arranged across the front of the stage. Major-General Hancock, U. S. A., presented the colors to the society, and was the orator of the occasion; and William C. Spruance, Esq., received the colors with a fitting speech. Other speeches were made. Bishop Lee offered the closing prayer, after which the band played the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ as the audience vacated the hall; and as a conclusion to the ceremonies, one hundred and fifty gentlemen sat down to a banquet at the Clayton House, at which several toasts were given, but no liquor was drunk.
General Bingham regretted the Department of State had not taken charge of the flags, but felt assured the Historical Society would treasure them as it did the progress and industry of the State. General Adam King said he was born in Delaware, was now a citizen of Maryland ; but better than that, was a citizen of the United States. In after years, aged fathers would take their little boys by the hand, and, leading them where these flags were kept, would say, “ That means, my son, a land saved, — and more, dedicated to liberty forever.” The Southern soldiers, he said, had fought well, and he recognized them as brethren.1
Illinois. — On the 23d of May, 1878, the flags and trophies of the Illinois regiments, numbering one hundred and fifty-one national, and one hundred and thirty-one regimental colors, and fifty-eight guidons, in all three hundred and forty, were transferred, with appropriate cer-
1 Wilmington Daily Gazette, and the Programme of the Presentation.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
579
emonies, from tire State arsenal to Memorial Hall in the new State House. The flags were delivered to the color-bearers or their representatives, and were carried through the principal streets, under the military escort of a brigade, the battery firing a salute of thirty-eight guns, to the State House, where the flags were presented by the Adjutant-General and received by the Governor, after which addresses were made by distinguished persons present, and a poem delivered, followed by a camp-fire banquet, under the supervision of the ladies of Spring-field and vicinity; the Governor and staff, with invited guests, holding a reception in the executive parlor at the State House, which was followed by a grand promenade in the corridor. Each ex-soldier was requested to register his name, company, and present residence in a book provided for the purpose, which is to be kept in the Adjutant-General’s office as a part of the record of the day’s proceedings.
One of these flags (the national flag of the Thirteenth) was transmitted to the State, with a letter from Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, dated May 10,1865, that it was the first Union flag displayed in Richmond on the day of its capture. It was found in the office of Major Turner, the jailer of Libby Prison, by Private Locke, a Massachusetts soldier, when the city was being evacuated by the rebels, and was raised by him before the Union troops had entered.1
Michigan. — The Michigan regiments were early in the field, and in rapid succession flung their banners to the breeze, until forty-nine regiments, with several independent companies, had gone to the front to battle for the Union, and included, up to the close of the war, over ninety thousand men, fourteen thousand and over of whom are recorded as martyrs for their country on the parchment memorial now in the capitol of the State.
When the war had ended, the regiments returning delivered to the State their colors, “ not one dishonored, neither blot nor stain on their escutcheon, but all distinguished and glorious, bearing record of many battles.”
A general order (94) of the War Department, May 15, 1865, directed that the volunteer regiments returning to their respective States for final discharge should deposit the regimental colors with the chief mustering officer, to be held subject to the order of the Adjutant-General of the army; and on the 13th of June following, the War Department
X Programme of the Proceedings of the 23d of May, 1878, it being the occasion of the transferring the flags and trophies of Illinois regiments from the State arsenal to Memorial Hall in the new State House.580
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
authorized the mustering officer to turn over to the Governor, at his request, all the regimental colors of the Michigan regiments then in his charge, or that might thereafter come into his possession. On the 19th of June, the chief mustering officer delivered the flags to the Adjutant-General of the State, accompanied by a communication, in which he said: “ In turning over these flags to you, I am sensibly reminded that they are the flags under which so many brave and successful deeds have been performed, so many valuable lives given up in the cause of the Union and republican liberty, and such beneficial results obtained. . . . Permit me to congratulate, through you, the people of Michigan for the brilliant and conspicuous part performed by the Michigan regiments in the late war for the Union. I believe there is no blot upon their record, but all is bright, conspicuous, and glorious; whilst an extraordinary number of personal distinctions shine upon the pages.
On the 4th of July, 1866, these colors were formally presented in Detroit, through the Governor, to the State, and were deposited in its archives, to be sacredly kept and carefully preserved. A cordial invitation had been extended by the Governor to all who had served in the war to participate, and a procession was arranged and carried into effect. Major-General 0. B. Wilcox, who was the first colonel who left the State for the field with a Michigan regiment, presented the colors in behalf of the regiments. The divisions, composed by veterans of the respective regiments, carrying their old colors, presented a fine spectacle; and it was remarked with what pride each color-bearer held aloft the banner under which he had served, and with what elasticity of step and erect bearing the whole marched to the strains of the martial music to which they had been so long accustomed. Governor Crapo, in receiving the flags, said: “ I receive, in behalf of the people of Michigan, these honorable memorials of your valor and the nation’s glory; and, on their part, I once more thank you for the noble services you have rendered in defending and preserving the life of the nation at the hazard of your own and at the sacrifice of so many of your comrades. ... To you these flags represent a nationality which you have perilled your lives to maintain, and are emblematic of a liberty which your strong arms and stout hearts have helped to win. To us they are our fathers’ flags : the ensigns of the worthy dead, — your comrades, our relatives and friends, — who for their preservation have given their blood to enrich the battle-fields, and their agonies to hallow the prison-pens of a demoniac enemy. They are your flags and ours. How rich the treasure !FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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They will not he forgotten and tlieir history left unwritten. Their stories will he as household words. They will ever typify the grand results accomplished hy the loyal men of the nation in this great rebellion; and should the flame of patriotism ever wane upon our altar-stone, the halo from these mementos will kindle again the ancient fire that electrified the world. Let us then tenderly deposit them as sacred relics in the archives of our State, there to stand forever, her proudest possession, — a revered incentive to liberty and patriotism, and a constant rebuke and terror to oppression and treason.” . . .
It is anticipated that these flags will be deposited in the new State capitol at Lansing, on its completion. Regimental flags were mostly presented by the people, — some with the State arms on one side, and other devices on the reverse, — and all had full stands of national colors given them by the government. Under the flag of the Third Regiment, infantry, ten color bearers and guards were killed while defending it. The flag of the Seventh Regiment, infantry, was saved from capture in the Wilderness by being taken from its staff and concealed by Colonel Lapoint under his clothing. Three color-bearers were killed defending the flag of the Twenty-second Regiment at Chickamauga, and several wounded. Four color-bearers were killed and three wounded in upholding and saving the flag of the Twenty-fourth Regiment.
To bear these colors aloft was a signal for rebel bullets, often bringing swift and certain death; but they never trailed in the dust, nor lacked a gallant bearer.
u These banners, soiled with dust and smoke,
And rent by shot and shell,
That through the serried phalanx broke, —
What terrors could they tell!
What tales of sudden pain and death In every cannon’s boom !
When e’en the bravest held his breath,
And waited for his doom.” 1
1 The Flags of Michigan. Compiled by Jno. Robertson, Adjutant-General. Lansing, Mich. 1877. pp. 120. 8vo.582
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
THE DISPOSITION OF THE TROPHY FLAGS OF THE WAR.
The flag museum of the War Department occupies two small rooms on the first floor of a house on Seventeenth Street, Washington, opposite the department, and is open to all who may have curiosity to examine its relics. The front room is stored with the Union flags found in the rebel war department at Richmond after its surrender. They were then boxed up, and sent to Washington for preservation. There were histories attached to each flag; but when the boxes were opened, the flags were carelessly shaken out, and the histories which had been rolled up in them were so scattered about, that it was impossible to rearrange them correctly. These flags, according to the register, number two hundred and thirty-six. The windows and doors of this room are shaded by flags fastened at the top, and looped back at the sides, in the manner of window-curtains. The walls are covered with flags, and care and taste is displayed in their arrangement. The best flags are, of course, put forward, and some are remarkably well preserved. An almost new flag, belonging to the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth New York Volunteers, is the handsomest in tho collection. There are three Ohio flags, composed of elegant blue silk, with the gorgeous eagle most elaborately wrought. It has been generally conceded that Ohio had the most beautiful flags in the service, and these do much towards making the room look gay and brilliant. Among other pennants in this room possessing a general interest I noticed specially General Sheridan’s staff flag, and from its torn and shred condition the imagination can readily read its history. This flag was lost in the valley at a time when Sheridan was temporarily absent in Washington. On his return, he found his army had been routed and driven back from its advance position in a demoralized condition. Without stopping to consider a “plan of campaign,” he sprang into his saddle and made the ride now famous in “historic verse.” He reached his army in time to infuse enthusiasm into his men, and the next day led them to the most brilliant victory of the war. Furled close to this ensign is an Ohio banner, the number of its regiment shot away, but its record of forty-five battles is one of which the State may be proud. If it could speak, what a story it would narrate of victory and defeat, glory and death, and all the horrors of those dreadful times. The flag of Berdan’s sharpshooters has inscribed on the few folds left the fact that it was carried aloft in twenty-five engagements, and they the most importantFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
583
of the war. In front of the fireplace is a faded guidon, belonging to the gallant Sixty-ninth Hew York Volunteers, captured in the bloody field where they showed their faith by their works in the country’s ■service. The guidon retains the inscription placed upon it by the rebels : “ Captured at Fredericksburg, Va., from the First Irish Brigade of Yanks.”
Ho. 42 is a United States flag of the Seventeenth Regiment, Michigan Infantry, captured by the rebels, May 12, 1864, at Spottsylvania Court House, Va. Attached is a paper inscribed, —
“ The regiment fought splendidly and suffered dreadfully; they entered the field seven hundred and fifty strong, and that evening their commanding officer could only muster sixty men of the entire battalion.”
“E. D. Kennedy, late Major”
Ho. 231 is a United States flag, made by Mrs. Hetty McEwen, which floated from her house during the time the city of Hashville was in possession of the rebels, and was found still floating there when General Buell’s Union army occupied the city.
I am informed from the War Department at Washington there is no record of any flags or flag having been captured by the rebels from the regiments of the regular army, and it is believed that none were captured by them.1
It is noticeable in this collection that the silk flags ornamented with embroidery are in the best state of preservation. The silk flags with painted devices are already burnt through ' by the paint and oil, and dropping to pieces, and the woollen flags are moth-eaten.
The rear room contains five hundred and forty-three rebel flags, most of which are rolled upon their staffs, or deposited in covered pigeon-holes, there not being space to display to view more than a tithe of the number. The whole collection is much moth-eaten, and bids fair to be soon destroyed, unless better means are taken for its preservation.
Of the five hundred and forty-three rebel flags here collected, sixteen were captured from Alabama regiments, four from Arkansas regiments, six from Florida regiments, twenty-three from Georgia regiments, one from a Kentucky regiment, four from Louisiana regiments, ten from Mississippi regiments, six from Missouri regiments, twenty-six from Horth Carolina regiments, seven from South Carolina regiments, seven from Tennessee regiments, four from Texas regiments, and fifty from Virginia regiments. The history of the three
3 Letter of C. D. Brandt in charge of flag-room, dated July 2, 2872.584
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
hundred and seventy-nine flags not enumerated above is unknown.1 Most of them are decorated with legends and symbols.
Some of the mottoes on these flags are curious, viz. : —
1.	“ Citizen soldiers the best defenders of our homes.”
2.	“We choose our own institutions, we collect our own revenues.” This flag is the ordinary stars and bars; it is composed of coarse bunting, and its union contains thirteen stars.
3.	“ Bulce et decorum est pro jpcdria mori,” and on the other side, “ A crown for the brave.”
4.	“ Presented by the ladies of Bath, Ya., God protect the right.”
5.	“ Our country and our rights.” “ Our homes, our rights, we submit to your keeping, brave sons of Alabama.” These mottoes are on a white silk flag, blazoned with the arms of the State of Alabama.
6.	A white silk banner, worn and mutilated, belonging to an Alabama regiment, bears on its scarred face the declaration that “ We fight for our homes, our wives, and our children.” An enthusiastic Alabamian has offered six hundred dollars for the worn silk.
7.	“ Death or victory. Zachry Rangers; ” on the other side, “ Presented by the ladies of Henry.” This flag is a stars and bars, with the arms of Georgia in the centre of the union, surrounded by the stars in a circle.
8.	A Virginia State flag of blue silk, with a gold fringe, has on one side the State coat of arms, and beneath, the inscription in gilt letters, “ Presented by the ladies of Norfolk to the N. L. A. Blues, organized February 22d, 1830.” On the reverse, a portrait of George Washington, with eleven stars in a semicircle above, and the inscription, “ Our cause it is just, our rights well maintain.”
A South Carolina State flag of white bunting has on it a representation of a palmetto-tree, with red stars, and a red half-moon.
A flag captured from the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Volunteers, made of bunting, has a broad perpendicular bar of red next the staff, with two horizontal bars, blue and white, composing the fly. In the centre of the red bar is a large white star, and above the star in white letters the inscription, “May 20, 1775,” beneath it, “May 20, 1861.”
The excitement in the North will be remembered when it was alleged that the rebels, on several occasion^, had raised the black flag,2
1	A pamphlet catalogue of the rebel flags captured by Union troops since April 19, 1861, deposited in the ordnance museum, War Department (no date), probably the same' as the above, describes five hundred and forty flags. The last on the list is a rebel battle-flag, brought from Richmond by Master Tad. Lincoln, captured near Petersburg, April 20, 1865, the last capture of the war.
2	A black flag was displayed over the depot of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
585
— an omen of dire consequences, inasmuch as the bearers show no quarter to the enemy. That celebrated flag is here, tacked to the wall, in one corner of the room. It is made of black cambric muslin, and is about four feet long, by three feet wide. Sherman solved the mystery of this terrible flag, which was nothing more nor less than a signal-flag. The white star against the black background made it very conspicuous and valuable to the signal corps, and for that reason only was the black flag adopted. The star has the word ' Winchester ’ painted on it, as a token of the services of the rebel signal corps at Winchester. This flag was captured within the rebel lines near South Mountain, Md., Aug. 1, 1864, by a detective.
The Fort Fisher flag in the collection is nearly square. It is like the ordinary battle-flag, and is made of red bunting bound with white, with a blue cross reaching to the four corners. In the cross are the thirteen stars.
In a conspicuous place in the room hangs a palmetto flag, which, it is said, was the first flag that waved over Charleston in 1861, and, in fact, the first secession flag raised in the confederacy. The material is a dull white bunting, with a very lame representation of a palmetto-tree sewed in the centre of the flag. It has eight branches, but no leaves, and looks more like a huge spider than any thing under the sun. It is surrounded by eleven red stars, and a red moon just rising. It was used at Forts Sumter and Moultrie, and in the fortifications around Charleston at the beginning of the Eebellion.
A Confederate battle-flag (Ho. 43) was captured at Sharpsburgh, by Private Isaac Thompson, Company C, Twentieth Regiment Hew York Volunteers, who shot the rebel color-bearer, and ran forward and brought off the colors.
Another Confederate battle-flag (Ho. 72) was captured at Hew Market, Jan. 30, 1863, by Private William Gallagher, who killed the original color-bearer and took prisoner the second, who attempted to raise it.
Still another battle-flag (Ho. 14) was captured in a hand-to-hand fight in the trenches, by Sergeant Otis C. Roberts, of the Sixth Regiment of Maine Volunteers, Hov. 7, 1863. It belonged to the Eighth Louisiana Regiment. This much we learn from the museum register.
Ho attempt was made by the Havy Department to preserve or display the flags taken by our navy. Rear-Admiral Bailey, inquiring for
and the editor of the 4 Lynchburg Republican ’ was for hoisting it throughout the South. He wrould ask no quarter, he said, at the hand of vandal, Yankee invaders, and his motto' would he entire extermination of them. Let it tell of death to each and all.586
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
a flag in which he was interested, was told by Assistant Secretary Fox that he might visit the attic of the department where they were stored and help himself, as there was no desire to preserve these emblems of the victories of our civil strife.
In the gunnery-room of the United States Naval Academy, however, with the trophies of other wars, they have the flag of the rebel iron-clad ram Atlanta, captured June 17, 1863, in Warsaw Sound, Georgia, by the monitor Weehawken, Captain John Eodgers.
The ‘ stars and bars ’ flag hoisted over Camp Lovell, at the quarantine, below New Orleans, April 24, 1862, is’now in the possession of the family of Rear-Admiral Theodorus Bailey. It was surrendered to him; it is made of a very fine woollen material, and has eleven stars in the union, arranged in a circle; there is a hole through it, which was torn by an eleven-inch shot from the gun-boat Cayuga. Admiral Bailey had also the beautiful silk flag (stars and bars) which belonged to the Challamette regiment; this flag, wrapped in an old painted table-cover, was thrown into the swamp back of Camp Lovell by the rebels, where it was found by an engineer of the gun-boat Katahdin, who took it on board that vessel and presented it to me, and I in turn gave it to Captain Bailey, at his request.
In 1869, Hon. G. V. Fox, who was Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the war, under Mr. Welles, presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society eight of the rebel flags which had been captured by our naval forces, and they are now in the archives of that society ; viz.: —
1.	The flag of Fort Walker, Hilton Head, Port Royal, S. C., captured by the naval forces under Rear-Admiral S. F. Dupont, Nov. 7, 1861.
2.	A flag found amongst the abandoned property after the above action, supposed to be the State flag of South Carolina.
3.	The flag of Fort Henry, Tennessee River, captured by the naval forces under Rear-Admiral A. H. Foote, Feb. 6, 1862.
4.	The flag of Fort St. Philip, Mississippi River, captured after the forcing of the defences of New Orleans by the navy under Admiral D. G. Farragut, April 24, 1862.
5.	The new flag adopted by the rebels in 1863, captured by a naval force under Commodore John Rodgers, June 17, 1863. It was said this flag was hoisted in action on board the Atlanta in her conflict with the Weehawken, to whom it was surrendered. It was hauled down and replaced by a smaller one, which was a piece of the white field cut from this ensign. Commodore Rodgers says, “When first seen, this white symbol seen through the smoke looked blue, and its character being misunderstood, two more guns were fired/’FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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6.	Flag of the iron-clad Tennessee, captured by a naval force under Admiral D. G. Farragut, on the day of his successful entrance into Mobile Bay, Aug. 5, 1864.
7.	The flag of Admiral Buchanan, who commanded the Tennessee on that occasion.
8.	The flag of Fort Caswell, left flying upon the flag-staff of that fort after its evacuation, consequent upon the capture of the defences of Cape Fear River by the United States forces under the command of Vice-Admiral D. D. Porter and Major-General A. H. Terry. There seems to be a mistake about this flag, as Mr. Eugene S. Martin, who was the ordnance officer and adjutant-general at Fort Caswell, informs me the flag was not left flying, as he personally lowered the flag at sundown on the 16th of January, and that night, when the fort was evacuated, he carefully folded the flag and bore it off to Fort Anderson on the pommel of his saddle.
The flag of the United States steam gun-boat Ottawa, which was hoisted over Fort Clinch, — the first United States fort retaken from the rebels, — was presented by Commander (now Rear-Admiral) T. H. Stevens, U. S. 17., to the State of Connecticut, and is deposited in the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford.
The State flag of Louisiana, taken from the State House by the Thirty-first Massachusetts Regiment when it entered Baton Rouge in 1862, is in the possession of the Berkshire Athenaeum at Pittsfield. It consists of a broad field of blue bunting, with a large white star in the centre, and a pelican feeding its young from its own breast painted upon it. This flag was sent by Captain William W. Rockwell, of the Thirty-first, who died in hospital at Hew Orleans, to Captain I. S. Heller, of the Forty-ninth, who deposited it in the Athenaeum.
Major William L. Clayton, of Hampden, Maine, has the battle-flag which floated over the ramparts of Fort McAllister, made by the ladies of Savannah, and presented to the commander of the fort. It is marked “Emmett Rifles,” in gilt letters, and bears the dates “Feb. 1, 1863,” and “ March 3, 1863,” — the dates when the Union forces were repulsed in attacks upon the fort. The flag is four feet long and three wide, and is trimmed with gold and white fringe. It has thirteen white stars, all trimmed with gold braid, in its blue diagonal cross. When the fort was stormed, Major Clayton was one of the first to mount the ramparts, and then tore down this flag and concealed it under his cloak.
In the basement of the Treasury building at Washington, among curtains, ropes, awnings, &c., are the two flags which festooned the588
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
front of President Lincoln’s box on the night of his assassination. The flags belonged to the Treasury Guards, an association of clerks, and were presented to them by the lady employes of the Treasury. They were loaned to the managers of the theatre to decorate the box on the Good Friday night when the President was to attend. The silk stripes and gold fringe are torn and gashed where the spur of Booth caught as he rushed from the box to the stage to shout “Sic semper tyrannis” and vanished from the scene.
The Kansas Historical Society has the flag which was carried to' that State by a company of South Carolinians in the tumultuous early days of its history, and figured conspicuously in Lawrence during the burning of the Free State Hotel, and the destruction of the press and types of the ‘ Herald of Freedom.’ May 21, 1865, it was captured by Captain James A. Harvey, of Chicago, who commanded the “Free State boys,” in an engagement near Oskaloosa on the 11th of September following. It is a crimson banner of cotton stuff, in size four by six feet, having in the centre and shown on both sides a large white star; and on one side the inscription, “ South Carolina,” and on the other side the words, “ Southern Rights.”
All the regiments of the regular army had two flags, one national and one regimental, as prescribed by army regulations. At the close of the war these regiments retained their flags, and they are kept at the different regimental head-quarters.1
ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS.
One lesson the rubric of conflict has taught her, —
Though parted awhile by waFs earth-rending shock,
The lines that divide us are written in water,
The love that unites us is cut deep as the rock.
0. W. Holmes.
The story of our flag since the war is soon told.
Soon after the close of the war, doubtless inspired by its result,, Jacob Foss, a citizen of Charlestown, Mass., bequeathed to that city several thousand dollars, the interest to be expended in United States flags, in the celebration of the 4th of July, and in perpetuating the name of Andrew Jackson. He also gave to the town of Cornish, N. H., his native place, the sum of one thousand dollars, to be kept at interest, the annual increase thereby to be expended in the purchase and.
1 Letter, C. D. Brandt, July 27, 1872.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
589
erection of flags. No mottoes are to be emblazoned on these flags, nor are they to be used for party purposes; but on all important occasions of a national character they are to be hoisted to the breeze and kept flying.1
One of the flags in the White House has a history with which few are familiar. It hangs over the centre of the largest window of the East Koom, where it can be seen to the best advantage. It is woven of silk, in one heavy piece. There is no seam in it. Amid the gold stars appears on the field, in French, “ Popular subscription to the Eepublic of the United States, offered in memory of Abraham Lincoln. Lyons, 1865.” 2
The Pacific mail steamship Colorado, the first of that line to China, arrived January, 1867, at Hong Kong, via Yokohama, twenty-nine days and a half from San Francisco. This event was of intense interest to our countrymen, and her arrival was greeted by our naval vessels with a salute of twenty-one guns, and their mastheads were dressed with the American ensign.3
July 4,1867, at Geneva, Switzerland, says a correspondent, “it was pleasant to American eyes, sailing across Lake Leman, on the 4th of July, to see f Old Glory ’ floating merrily out. Not one solitary flag, but the buildings far and near flaunted the stars and stripes. One hotel was fairly draped with our banner. f We will follow the flag/ said one of our party; and to the Grand Hotel de la Paix we went, and quite a bit of a 4th of July we have had here among the Alps.
“ The landlord surprised us, on going down to dinner; with a magnificent bouquet. Waiters, decorated with a rosette of red, white, and blue, ushered us into the hall; bouquets and silk American flags, with every star in its place, enlivened the table; and no sooner were we seated than a concealed band of music struck up our national airs. In the evening one would really have thought himself in America. Our hotel and many other buildings were brilliantly illuminated. A Swiss steamer fired national salutes along the quay. The waiters sent up rockets and the boarders fired crackers, to the infinite delight of a legion of youngsters. The streets were alive with everybody Geneva could turn out, and over all the strains of martial music came ‘ sweetly stealing/ In the evening, all our countrymen met in the reading-room of the hotel, and passed resolutions expressive of the gratification of the Americans, casually assembled at the hotel, at their elegant entertainment, and the manner in which the day had been remembered by Mons. Kohter, the landlord.”
1 Boston Herald, 1869.	2 "Washington correspondent of ‘The Hour.’
3 Keport of the Secretary of the Navy.590
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
In 1872, the clay was again appropriately remembered at Geneva by the American residents, and onr flag was flying as freely there as in the United States. In answer to the toast, “the day we celebrate,’' Charles Francis Adams, United States commissioner for the arbitration of the claims between the United States and Great Britain, made an appropriate speech, while his son of the same name was delivering an oration before the City Fathers in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass.
Again, in 1878, the Americans in Geneva had a dinner and ball at the Hotel de la Paix on the 4th of July, and a party from Chamouni hoisted the American flag on the summit of Mont Blanc.
The 4th of July, 1872, was celebrated at Monroe, Mich., by grayhaired veterans, whose ages ranged from seventy-two to one hundred and one and a half years. At roll-call one hundred rose to their feet and answered to their names with great animation. General Leslie Coombs headed the list. The veterans had with them the flag they
Firemen Saluting the Flag in Charleston, S C., in 1867
carried at Fort Meigs in 1812, and an iron cannon that was captured from the enemy in 1813. A grand banquet and toasts and speeches followed, and letters were read from soldiers of 1812 and others who were invited but could not attend. There were twenty thousand people in attendance on the celebration. The old men were in fine spirits, and promised to return in four years, to the dedication of a suitable monument, which it was proposed to erect.
At the annual parade of the Charleston, S. C., fire department,FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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April 27,1867, notwithstanding the presence of a great many banners, there was not a United States flag displayed. The chief of the fire department, on being informed of the fact, said it had never been the custom to carry the national colors, but simply the company banners, at such parades, and was an inadvertence. Halting the procession in the street, he procured a United States flag, and placed it opposite the reviewing officers, and every person in the column readily and cheerfully saluted it by lifting his hat or cap in passing.
The formal transfer of Eussian America to the United States government took place on the 8th of November, 1867, Captain Festrohoff acting on behalf of the Eussian government, and Major-General Eous-seau on behalf of the United States.
At three o'clock p.m., a battalion of United States troops, under command of Major Charles 0. Wood, of the Ninth Infantry, was drawn up in line in front of the Governor’s residence, where the transfer took place. By half-past three a concourse of people had assembled, comprising Americans, Eussians, Creoles, and Indians, eager to witness the ceremonies.
Precisely at the last-named hour, the Eussian forts and fleet fired salutes in honor of the lowering of the Eussian flag; but the flag would not come down. In lowering, it tore its entire width close by the halyards, and floated from the cross-trees, forty feet from the ground. Three Eussian sailors then attempted to ascend the guy ropes supporting the flag-staff, but each failed to reach his national emblem. A fourth ascended in a boatswain’s chair, seized the flag and threw it in a direction directly beneath him; but the motion of the wind carried it off, and caused sensation in every heart. Five minutes after the lowering of the Eussian flag, the stars and stripes went gracefully up, floating handsomely and free, Mr. George Lovell Eousseau having the honor of flinging the flag to the breeze, and the United States steamers Ossipee and Eesaca simultaneously honoring the event with a national salute.
As the Eussian flag was lowered, Captain Festrohoff stepped forward and addressed General Eousseau as follows: —
“General: As commissioner of his Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Eussia, I transfer and deliver the territory of Eussian America, ceded by his Majesty to the United States.”
General Eousseau, in response, as the American flag ascended, said: —
“Captain: As commissioner on behalf of the United States government, I receive and accept the same accordingly.”592
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
The commissioners spoke in a tone of common conversation, and were only heard by Governor Makesatoff, General Jeff. C. Davis, Captain Kuskol, and a few who formed the troupe. Several ladies witnessed the ceremonies, among them Princess Makesatoff, Mrs. General Davis, and Mrs. Major Wood. The Princess wept audibly as the Russian flag went down. The transfer was conducted in a purely diplomatic and business-like manner, neither banquets nor speechmaking following. The entire transaction was concluded in a few hours, the Ossipee, with the commissioners on board, steamed into the harbor at eleven o’clock A.M., and at four o’clock in the afternoon a dozen American flags floated over the newly born American city of Sitka.1
Ascent of Mount Baker. — In 1868, Mr. Edmund T. Coleman, with Mr. Thomas Stratton, inspector of customs at Port Townsend, W. T., and Messrs. Oglivy and Tennant, of Victoria, and four trusty Indians, started from Victoria, Vancouver’s Island, on the 4th of August, for the purpose of ascending Mount Baker, fourteen miles south of the great boundary line (cut through the forests) which divides the English and American possessions.
On the 16th of August, after incredible difficulties, the party succeeded in reaching its highest summit, never before trod by the foot of man, ten thousand six hundred and thirteen feet above the sea level, and there planted the stars and stripes, which had been prepared for the express purpose by Mrs. Frontin. It was about four o’clock. The plateau on which they stood, says the narrator, “was about a quarter of a mile in diameter, and embraced an extent of about eighty acres. The scene was grand in the nakedness of its desolation. The white surface of the snow was unrelieved by a single rock. The forests had been on fire for weeks, and a dense pall of smoke veiled the surrounding scenery from our view. It lay like a reddish cloud beneath us. We felt cut off from the world we had left. Overhead the sun poured down his bright beams from a sky which formed a dome of purplish blue, unsullied by a cloud. We felt at heaven’s gate, and in the immediate presence of the Almighty. My companions, to whom for the first time this wonderful scenery was unfolded, were deeply impressed. The remembrance of the dangers they had escaped, the spectacle of the overwhelming desolation around, effects of the terrible forces of nature which had been at work,—-these combined evidences of Almighty power filled their hearts with deep emotion and awe. The spirit of the Gloria in
1 Telegraphic despatch to the newspapers, Nov. 10, 1867.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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Excelsis burned within us. With one accord we sang the familiar doxology, —
1 Praise G-od, from whom all blessings flow/ &c.
No profane thought could be cherished, no idle jest could be uttered on this, one of the high altars of the earth. We felt we were worshipping in a vast temple not made with hands, that our feet were standing on hallowed ground. The thought added solemnity to our feelings as we reflected that —
1We were the first that ever hurst Into this silent sea.7
u We now advanced to the centre of the plateau, and, laying hold of the flag-staff bearing the stars and stripes, we planted it firmly in the snow, and named the peak after General Grant. Immediately after, we sang an appropriate patriotic song. We then shook hands.”
There was a peculiarity in the snow which covered this plateau, which in form resembled small tongues of flame, all leaning in the same direction, evidently the effect of the violent eddies of wind. “ It seemed as if there was some mysterious sympathy between the volcanic fires within and the snowy surface without. The only object that broke the monotony of the -scene was a smaller peak at the distance of about five hundred yards. As it was possible that it might be a few feet higher, the party marched up to and placed a flag upon it, and named it after General Sherman. It was found, however, by the aneroid to be the same height, thus agreeing substantially with the trigonometrical measurements of the United States Coast Survey (ten thousand eight hundred and fourteen feet) and the height set down on English maps (ten thousand six hundred and ninety-four feet.) The thermometer stood at forty degrees Fahrenheit.
From the southern side of Sherman Peak they caught a glimpse of the crater, which appeared to extend under the north-eastern side of Grant's Peak. It is, therefore, not impossible that the greater part of that peak may disappear in the next eruption. No traces of fire were visible by daylight, but smoke was plainly observed. Before leaving, Stratton deposited a piece of copper, with the names of the party, at the flag on Grant’s Peak, and one true knight left there the photograph of a lady who had been greatly interested in the expedition.1
1 It is not within the scope of this work to relate the difficulties and dangers of the ascent to and descent from the summit of this mountain. We leave our flag flying there, and for further particulars refer our readers to ‘ Harper’s Magazine,’ in which they are all detailed.
38594
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
In 1868, the United States took possession of two small uninhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean, about half-way between the Sandwich Islands and Japan. This was the first acquisition ever made by our government in this manner. The islands are near each other, and about a mile and a half long, by three quarters of a mile wide. They were occupied by Captain William Reynolds,1 commanding the United States steamer Lackawanna, in obedience to orders from the Navy Department. He went on shore with six boat-loads of men and several officers, and raised the stars and stripes on the highest point of land, under a national salute from the Lackawanna; after which the seine was hauled, a large number of fish caught, and the day spent in picnicking.
Captain Reynolds named our new possession the ‘ Midway Islands/ and called the harbor, which he reported an excellent one for vessels drawing less than eighteen feet, ‘Welles Harbor.5 The islands are formed of coral reefs, are over fifty feet in elevation at the lowest point, and give good shelter. They are covered with shrubs and coarse grass, and afford an abundant supply of pure fresh water. It was thought the bar at the entrance of Welles harbor might be deepened at a small expense, and a port superior to Honolulu established for the supply of provisions, water, and fuel to ocean steamships on their route between San Francisco and Japan, and afford a refuge to merchant ships navigating the Northern Pacific Ocean.
These anticipations have not been realized. An appropriation of $50,000 was granted by Congress in 1869 for deepening the entrance to Welles harbor. The money was economically and judiciously expended, under the direction of Lieut.-Commander Sicard, commanding the United States steamer Saginaw. More difficulties and greater obstacles were encountered than anticipated; and when the appropriation was exhausted, and, in consequence, the work discontinued on the 21st of October, 1869, Lieut.-Commander Sicard estimated that to complete the cut to the width of one hundred and seventy-five feet would require forty-six months’ work, and cost $187,000, exclusive of the expense of removing the debris. He also reported the harbor a poor one for a large ship, as springs would be necessary to cant the vessel’s head right for going out or to turn her around.
On the 28th of October, Lieut.-Commander Sicard took on board the Saginaw the contractor’s party, and such machinery, &c., as he wished to carry away, and left Welles harbor. About three o’clock
1 Captain Reynolds died at Washington, D. C., a rear-admiral, Nov. 5, 1879.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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the next morning his vessel ran upon Ocean Island reef, and was lost. Since then no attempt has been made to improve Welles harbor.1
The bill for the Union Pacific Railroad was signed by President Lincoln, July 1, 1862, simultaneous with his call for three hundred thousand men to put down the Rebellion, and the last tie connecting it with the Central Pacific Railroad was laid on Friday, Aug. 7, 1868. The tie was of polished laurel wood, bound with silver bands, and fastened with a golden spike furnished by California, a silver one furnished by Nevada, and a mixture of gold and silver furnished by Arizona. The wires of the telegraph had been connected with the sledge used to drive the last spike, and the intelligence that the continent had been spanned by the railroad was known at the instant in San Francisco and in New York.
Captain Clayton, who had superintended the laying of the track from the commencement, suggested to the employes and a party of excursionists the idea of erecting a monument commemorative of the event, and planting the national flag on the continental divide. All parties concurring, preparations were made for the ceremony; and on Sunday afternoon, August 9, a company assembled at a point about seven hundred and twenty-five miles from Omaha. -
The Rev. Mr. Gierlow officiated as master of ceremonies. A hole was dug for the staff by Captain Clayton, and our national banner was planted by the fair hands of his wife; and Mrs. Clayton holding the flag, Mr. Gierlow pronounced the following consecration service : —
“ In the name of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, in the name of Faith, Hope, and Charity, in the name of the Holy Trinity, we consecrate this flag to the glory of God, the benefit of civilization, and the happiness of mankind. And when this lone star shall have been surrounded by the sister constellations, may its ample folds protect us in the path of virtue, so that we may become worthy citizens of the land of the beautiful, the land of the free.”
The reverend gentleman then called upon General Estabrook, of Omaha, Judge Wright, E. S. Bailey, W. A. Cotton, and M. E. Ward, in succession, who made appropriate speeches; after which, Mr. Gierlow pronounced this closing benediction: —
“ May the blessing of God rest upon us and our families; may brotherly love cement us, and every moral and social virtue adorn our lives now and forever.”
The spot where this flag was planted is the true continental summit.
1 Keports of the (Secretary of the Navy, 1869, 1870, 1871..596
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
A point higher above the sea-level was reached in the Black Hills; but there the waters, though running both ways, afterwards meet in the Platte, and go commingled to the Atlantic. On this continental divide, a drop of rain falling, and, not carried back to its native cloud by exhalation, would one-hcdf of it go to the Atlantic, the other to the Pacific.
A pleasant anecdote of the Crown Prince of Germany is told by Mr. Hooper. At the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war, the king and prince passed through Hamburg on their way to the field. A young American girl, stopping with her parents at one of the hotels, hung a large American flag from her balcony, and, as the royal couple passed, waved her handkerchief. The king and his son looked up and bowed, and, like a courteous gentleman, the prince ordered each regiment as it went by to salute the stars and stripes.
In 1865, Congress authorized the purchase of American bunting for the navy in place of English. The encouragement afforded has permanently established its manufacture, and now the American article will compare favorably with the best English fabrics. The reproach that we must go abroad for the material of which the national ensign is made no longer exists.1
In 1869, a useful improvement was effected in the making of boat-flags and small ensigns. Instead of being sewed in parts of each color as formerly, requiring considerable labor, and resulting in a more or less clumsy flag, they are now furnished to the navy dyed in patterns, so as to require but three pieces in making up. They are thus less costly, neater in appearance, and more durable in fabric and color, while flying more easily in a light breeze.2
November, 1871. Our flag was advanced into the interior of Africa at the head of the caravan of Mr. Stanley, when he communicated with the great African explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, at Ujiji.
Late in 1869, James Gordon Bennett, of the ‘ Hew York Herald/ gave Stanley a roving commission to penetrate into the interior of Africa, and find Dr. Livingstone, no matter what the pecuniary cost might be. Letters from him, written in March of that year, gave assurance he was still alive. In January, 1871, Stanley reached Zanzibar, and soon after left for the interior, and, after repeated prostrations by fever, reached his goal on the 10th of November, 1871.
On the 1st of November he arrived at the Malagari, a large river flowing from the east into the Zanzibar, and about ten a.m. a caravan appeared coming from the interior, and was asked the news. The reply was, “ A white man had just arrived at Ujiji.”—“ A white man !”
1 See page 348, ante.
2 Report of Bureau of Navigation, Oct. 20, 1869.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
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<
cried Stanley. “Yes; an old man, with white hair on his face, and he was sick.”—“ Where does he come from ? ” “ From a very far country, indeed.”— “Where is he stopping? at Ujiji?” “Yes.”—“And was he ever at Ujiji before ? ” “ Yes ; he went away a long time before.”— “ Hurrah ! ” cried Stanley, “ this must be Livingstone ! ” This was encouraging. Livingstone was not only alive, but near. On the 10th of November, 1871, Lake Tanganyika was reached, the two hundred and thirty-sixth day after Stanley had left Bagamoyo, twenty-five miles from Zanzibar. Surrounded by the blue-black mountains of Ugoma and Ukeramba, the lake spread out an immense broad sheet, a burnished bed of silver, a lucid canopy of blue above, lofty mountains for its balances, and palm forests for its fringes.
Descending the western slope of the mountains, the post of Ujiji
Stanley meeting Livingstone.
lay below, embowered in palms. “ Unfurl your flags and load your guns,” said Stanley. “ Ay wallah, ay wallah bana! ” eagerly responded the men. One, two, three ! and a volley from fifty muskets woke up the peaceful village below. The Kiramgori raised the American flag aloft; and the men stepped out bravely as the crowds of villagers came flocking around them shouting, “Bindera Men-kani ! ” — an American flag.
Suddenly Stanley heard a voice on his right say, in good English, “ Good morning, sir ! ” and a black man announced himself as Susi, the servant of Dr. Livingstone. “ What! is Dr. Livingstone here ? ” “ Yes, sir.” — “ In this village? ” “ Yes, sir.” —“Are you sure ? ” “ Sure,598
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
sure, sir; why, I leave him just now ! 55 Another servant introduced himself, the crowd flocked around anew, and he arrived before the veranda of a house where stood Dr. Livingstone.
Mr. Stanley says : “ I pushed back the crowds and passed down a living avenue of people, until I came in front of the semicircle of Arabs, in the front of which stood the white man with the gray beard. As I advanced slowly towards him I noticed he was pale, had a gray beard, wore a bluish cap with a faded gold band round it, had on a red-sleeved waistcoat and a pair of gray tweed trousers. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob, — would have embraced him, only he, being an Englishman, I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing, — walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said, ‘ Dr. Livingstone, I presume ? 5 — ‘Yes,5 said he, with a kind smile, lifting his cap slightly. I replaced my hat on my head, and he put on his cap, and we grasped hands, and I then said aloud, ‘ I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you.5 He answered, ‘ I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.5 55
Stanley then explained his mission. It was a great day for the old explorer. There were letters from his children. “Ah,55 he said, patiently, “ I have waited years for the letters.55 There was a whole epic of pathos in his voice. Stanley amply relieved Livingstone’s wants, and infused new vigor of mind and body into the long-lost explorer. They remained together four months. Livingstone refused to return home until his work solving the mystery of the Nile had been done; and Stanley, taking his letters for friends in England, left him at Unyanyenbe on the 14th of March, 1872, and returned, bringing also a sealed package containing his Journal, addressed to his daughter Agnes, to be opened and published for the benefit of his family in the event of his never returning to Europe.1
Livingstone died without ever returning to his native laiid, and Stanley has since penetrated the mysteries of Africa, and carried the English and American flags side by side across “ the dark continent.5’
On the 4th of July, 1873, a party of American engineers, in pioneering the Oroya Railroad from Lima across the Andes, raised “ our flag” on a summit of the Andes 17,574 feet above the sea level, in snow knee-deep. Among the Americans present were Dr. E. L. Bis-sell, of Connecticut, A. E. Goldsmith, of New Hampshire, and H. M. Smith, of Springfield, Mass. The mountain was christened “ Mount
1 Scribner’s Magazine, January, 1873 ; Stanley’s Journal, Philadelphia Press.FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
599
Meigs/’ in honor of Henry Meigs, Esq., an American, and the contractor with the Peruvian government to build the road.1
At the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, a reproduction of the Union flag raised at Cambridge in 1776 was hoisted over the Old State House, Jan. 1, 1876. It was no inconsiderable job to adapt and arrange the hundreds of flags on all the flag-staffs on the Exhibition buildings, which the Chief of the Bureau of Installation had in charge. Over the main entrance of the main building were four national ensigns of the United States, each 11 by 18 feet; four national pennants 25 feet long; and four exhibition flags, 11 by 18 feet, white with a blue bend, on which were the words, ‘ Main Building/ the corners being filled with wreaths and laurel branches in golden yellow. On the corner turrets of the central towers forty standards of foreign nations were shown, each 7 by 11 feet. On the central towers, between the turrets, were thirty-two oriflammes, 4 by 12 feet, of varied combinations of the United States and other national flags. On the turrets over the corner towers there were forty national ensigns, standards, or flags, each 5 by 9 feet, and a set of flags displaying the arms of all the States of the Union. Thus on the main building alone there were four ensigns and four pennants of the United States, four exhibition flags, thirty-eight State regimental colors, eighty standards of other nations, three hundred and sixty-six oriflammes or burgees, and, with yacht signals, in all five hundred.
On Machinery Hall there were forty-five standards, 6 by 10 feet, five exhibition flags, twenty-six oriflammes, and twenty-four burgees.
On the Lansdowne Valley bridge there were thirty-eight flags, 5 by 9 feet.
Horticultural Hall also exhibited a goodly show of bunting.
In 1876, there was a centennial celebration of the 4th of July at Canton, China, Gideon Nye, Esq., delivering the oration before his fellow-countrymen and the foreign residents who were invited.
In 1877, our flag was unfurled for the first time, one thousand miles in the interior of China.
On the 15th of March, the United States steamer Monocacy steamed from Hankow, bound up the Yangtse-kiang (river) to Ichang. Since 1861, when the port was opened to foreign commerce, Hankow, six hundred miles from Shanghai, had been the limit of navigation for merchant vessels on the great water-way of China. Ichang is an important city in the province of Hupeh, three hundred and fifty-five miles above Hankow, and one thousand miles from the sea. The
1 Boston Journal, Aug. 19, 1873.600
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE
port was opened to commerce by the recent treaty of Chefoo. The following are extracts from a diary kept on board the Monocacy: —
“ March 19, 1877. Reached Sunday Island, two hundred and fifty miles above Hankow. . . . The'English gunboat was at anchor here, bound down river, having failed to reach Ichang.
“April 1. Anchored off Ichang. . . .
“ April 5. The formal opening of Ichang took place. Commander Jo. Fyffe, U. S. N., General Sheppard, United States consul at Hankow, and a party of officers from the Monocacy went on shore, and were met by the Taotai of Ichang, and other Chinese officials. At 11.45 a.m., the American flag was hoisted over the newly established consulate, being the first foreign ensign raised thus far in the interior of China. As the flag touched the head of the staff, the Monocacy saluted the flag, while the band on shore hailed the stars and stripes with the air of the national song.”
The centennial anniversary of the adoption of the star-spangled banner, June 17,1877, was appropriately remembered in various parts of the United States. At Boston the flag was displayed from all the public buildings, from the shipping in the harbor, and numerous private buildings were ornamented with bunting and miniature flags. At noonday a salute was fired on the Common, by order of the State’s Executive, and in the evening there was a patriotic demonstration in the Old South Meeting-house, on the corner of Milk and Washington Streets, which was filled to its utmost capacity by a most distinguished audience. Mayor Prince presided over the exercises, and called the assembly to order. The veritable flag of Fort McHenry, the original of Francis Scott Key’s “ Star-Spangled Banner,” was displayed, and the song was sung by Mrs. Julia Houston West, the audience joining in the chorus. An oration, suited to the occasion, at once eloquent and entertaining, was delivered by Mr. JSTathan Appleton.
At the sixth annual meeting of the National Association of Veterans of the Mexican War, at Baltimore, Feb. 22, 1879, Colonel Edward Cantwell, of North Carolina, came forward, bearing an old battle-flag of the Twelfth U. S. Infantry, and related the history of the relic with enthusiastic eloquence. It was originally presented to a company of that regiment by the ladies of Fayette, N. C., and was borne through the series of fights which occurred during the notable march of Major F. T. Lally, and under General Joseph Lane. After the close of the war it came into the possession of. General Charles R. Jones, Twelfth Infantry, who, before his death, presented it to the Wilmington Light Infantry. At the beginning of the civil war it was given to ColonelFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES
601
Cantwell, who buried it for preservation upon an island in Cape Fear Biver. In presenting it to the association, he expressed the hope that the American flag would never again have to be buried in this land of freedom. In February, 1863, when Wilmington was reoccupied by the Union forces, a party of soldiers, searching for hidden treasures, discovered the flag, and presented it to a fire company, and it again came into the possession of Colonel Cantwell, who desired that it should be consigned to the War Department for preservation.
It was accordingly resolved unanimously that the president of the National Association should tender the flag to the War Department, in the name and on behalf of the survivors of the Mexican war.
The Encampment of the Grand Army of the Bepublic held in Albany, N. Y., commencing June 17, 1879, was the largest ever held since its organization. A noticeable feature of the parade was the
Pennsylvania llattle-flags borne in a Procession at Albany, N Y., June 17, 1879
enthusiasm which greeted the sight of the tattered battle-flags of the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry, 23d, 26th, 29th, 61st, 69th, 72d, 82d, 99th, 109th, 118th, and 119th Pennsylvania Volunteers, borne in the line by the Pennsylvania veterans, each borne by a member of the regiment to'Which the corps belonged. These were hailed with cheer upon cheer by the men, while bouquets were thrown by the ladies.1
1 The illustration is from a drawing by C. L. Tiffany, published in ‘Harper’s Weekly.’'602
OEIGIN AND PEOGEESS OF THE
Feb. 22, 1880. The celebration of Washington’s birthday at Kings Mountain, N. C., took place on the 21st; included with it was the inauguration of the centennial celebration which is to take place on the 7th of October. Five thousand people were present from Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, also a detachment of the Fifth United States Artillery, military companies from Charlotte and York-ville, and the Cadets of Captain Bell’s school.
The day was ushered in by a salute of thirty-eight guns. The address by Colonel Thomas Hardeman, of Macon, Ga., was replete with patriotic sentiments, and highly national in tone. At the close of the address, Colonel Houston, in behalf of the Air-Line Railroad, presented the Centennial Association with a beautiful United States flag, thirty-six by fifty feet, which was~ received by Dr. Dixon on behalf of the association, and by him intrusted to Major Graham, representing the Governor of North Carolina, and Colonel Johnstone, representing the Governor of South Carolina, who carried it to the pinnacle of the mountain, two miles distant, where, on a staff one hundred feet high, it was flung to the breeze, amidst the firing of cannon and the deafening-shouts of the multitude on the plateau below.
At Charleston, S. C., Washington’s birthday falling upon Sunday, the Washington Light Infantry attended the Church of the Holy Communion at half-past ten a.m. The active members, in full-dress uniform, were joined by the Veteran Association and the honorary, life, and contributing members of the corps, and proceeded to the church. The Eutaw and Boston flags were crossed in front of the chancel, the latter draped in crape, in memory of the late Colonel A. 0. Andrews, who received it from the city of Boston on behalf of the company. The church was filled to its utmost capacity, and the services were conducted by the pastor and the chaplain of the Infantry, who preached the anniversary sermon. In concluding, he said of Colonel Andrews: —
“ Though loyal to his State, his judgment did not accord with the policy which had involved us, and long before the final catastrophe he predicted most of the consequences which have followed. Colonel Andrews was a man of peace, but he possessed a moral courage which enabled him to take positions from which many shrank. Time and circumstances have changed, but some of us remember when Boston, in the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, sent down that national flag as a token of friendship, which stands before you now draped in memory of him. To carry that flag of the Union then, required boldness; but to receive it then, and from Boston, only the record ofFLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
603
the Washington Light Infantry made it a possibility, — but who should receive it graciously from the donors, acceptably to the recipient? Those were more trying hours to some among you than many dreamed of. Colonel Andrews, with a full sense of the responsibility of his task, stepped forth to fulfil it. How he did it none who were present can forget, nor the electrical effect he produced when, taking that banner in his hand, he said: ‘ In behalf of the Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, I accept this banner on which are emblazoned the locked shields of Massachusetts and South Carolina, encircled by the flag of our common country, and I place it under the sheltering branches of our own palmetto, the emblem of a State which struggled to give that flag birth, and where our bosom was pierced in bringing it into existence.’ As Colonel Andrews uttered these words and placed that banner beneath a fine palmetto planted on the stage, he kindled a flame which has burned brighter every year. He awoke a spirit at home and at the North which has done more for our restoration and rehabiliment than all the laws passed since the war.”
In the House of Eepresentatives, Jan. 7, 1880, Mr. Barber, by unanimous consent, introduced the following bill to prevent the use of the flag of the United States for advertising purposes : —
“ Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That it shall be unlawful for any person to print, stamp, or in any manner impress upon the flag of the United States, or any representation thereof, any word, figure, design, or impression calculated to serve as an advertisement of merchandise or other property, or of any person’s trade, occupation, or business, or to publish, exhibit, or use as an advertisement any such flag, or representation thereof, so printed, stamped, or impressed.
“ Sec. 2. A violation of this act shall subject the offender to a fine of not less than fifty nor more than five hundred dollars.”
This bill has not yet become a law, but no one can doubt its propriety.
Our national birthday is celebrated under singular circumstances and in strange places nearly every year, but in none more strange than at North Cape, Norway, 71 north latitude, where a party of Americans found themselves on the Fourth of July, 1880. They arrived there in a steamer at 11 o’clock P. M., July 3, and at one minute after midnight guns were fired, and the shrill whistle of the engine responded to the number of stars on the American flag, and loud cheers were given to usher in our nation’s holiday. The party then ascended the almost perpendicular cliff (900 feet high) and raised an Amerieaxx nag, made for the occasion by the ladies of the party out of604
FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES.
materials purchased at one of the Norwegian towns. It was certainly an extraordinary place for such a celebration, and the first time that a company of Americans ever celebrated the Fourth of July at such an hour and at such a latitude. The midnight sun shone upon the party all the time with dazzling brightness.
Having traced the progress of our flag through all its changes until its establishment in a permanent form in 1818 ; having marked its first appearance on seas now whitened with our canvas, and remote places everywhere on the earth, where man is known to have penetrated, and to ultima Thules beyond man’s previous attempts ; having seen it triumphantly emerge, without the loss of a star, and with added lustre, from the terrors of the fratricidal war that was waged against it, — we take leave of its glittering and multiplied constellation, and “ swear anew, and teach the oath to our children, that, with God’s help, the American republic shall stand unmoved, though all the powers of piracy and European jealousy should combine to overthrow it ; that we shall have in the future, as we have in the past, one country, one constitution, one destiny; and that when we shall have passed from earth, and the acts of to-day shall be matters of history, and the dark power which sought our overthrow shall have been overthrown, our sons may gather strength from our example in every contest with despotism that time may have in store to try their virtue, and that they may rally under the stars and stripes with our olden war-cry, 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.’ ”1
Originally a small constellation emerging from the darkness of tyranny and oppression on the Atlantic coast of the North American continent, our flag has, in the first century of its appearance on the political firmament, crossed the continent, and with its constellation, tripled in lustre by the accession of new States, glitters over the Pacific, where its stars of empire bid fair to rival in number and brilliancy those of the Atlantic cluster.
"0 glorious flag! red, white, and blue,
Bright emblem of the pure and true ;
0 glorious group of clustering stars !
Ye lines of light, ye crimson bars,
Trampled in dust by traitor feet,
Once more your flowing folds we greet Triumphant over all defeat;
Henceforth in every clime to he,
Unfading scarf of liberty,
The ensign of the brave and free.” 2
Î John Jay’s Address at Mount Kisko, Westchester County, N. Y., July 4, 1861« See note, p. 656.
2 Hon. Edward J. Preston.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
605
THE STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.1
u Up rose a grizzled sergeant :
My true love, I give to thee Three true loves blent in one, —
A soldier’s trinity.
u Here’s to the flag we follow ;
Here’s to the land we love ;
And here’s to the holy honor That doth the two preserve.
u Then rose they up around him,
And raised their eyes above,
And drank in solemn silence
Unto the soldier’s love.” — JE. H. Hazeivell.
Many of the States of the Union have either a State flag or regimental color, which is hoisted over the State buildings on occasions of ceremony, or is carried by the State troops when in the field side by side with the national standard. In some of the States this flag or color is established by law ; in other States, by a regulation of the military department, or authorized by the Governor of the State; and in a few of the States the regimental colors are blazoned with devices, subject to the taste or the caprice of donors, or the officers of the
1 In 1866, I obtained by correspondence, as far as practicable, a history of the Seals and Arms of the States and Territories, with impressions of most of the seals, and also some account of the State flags and colors, from the Governors of the several States ; hut on learning that Professor Franklin B. Hough, of Lowville, N. Y., was engaged on the same subject, and had already had some of the seals engraved, I abandoned the pursuit, and loaned my collection to him, and when he returned it, presented my manuscript, and the original letters and impressions of the seals, to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, in October, 1873. Professor Hough has since published a work, entitled ‘American Constitutions,’ in two large octavo volumes, an attractive feature of which is “ carefully engraved fac-similes of the great seal of the United States, and of each State and Territory in the Union, made from actual impressions of the seals before the artist.”
Again, in February, 1879,1 addressed a circular uote to the Governors of all of the several States and Territories of our Union, requesting any and all information concerning the State flags or colors. To those who favored me with a reply, either in person or through their secretaries, or by reference to the State adjutant-general, I return my thanks. They will see how I have availed myself of the information, to the honor and credit of their States. Where no answer was returned, any deficiencies or inaccuracies will he pardonable. The only official discourtesy I have to complain of is that in one instance the Governor of a State transferred my letter to the editor of a local newspaper, who published it in full, with the addition of remarks of his own, which I would never have seen had they not been reprinted in the ‘New York Sunday Times/606
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS,
regiment or company, — almost universally, however, the State arms are blazoned on the flag. It is a little singular that while each and every State has a State seal, recognized as blazoned with the arms of the State, to authenticate its official documents, there is a prevailing feeling that the States should recognize, by law, no State flag or regimental color but the stars and stripes, while in fact nearly every State has a regimental color for its volunteer troops, sometimes legalized, but oftener with devices originating in the caprice of its owners.
Maine. — The State of Maine has no flag established under the authority of any law. At one time, ‘ the stars and stripes,’ with the
seal or arms of the State in the centre of the union, was most in use ; during the late war a blue silk flag, conforming in size and trimmings to the United States regulation colors, and blazoned with the arms of the State in the centre of its held, was carried by the State troops.
The seal and the arms of Maine, adopted by a resolve of the legislature, Jan. 9, 1820, are thus described: —
“ Shield, argent, charged with a pine-tree; vert, a moose deer recumbent at the foot of the same proper.
“ Supporters, on the dexter side a husbandman resting on a scythe proper ; sinister, a seaman resting on an anchor proper.
“ Crest, the north star argent, surrounded by rays.
“ Motto, ‘ Dirigol over the shield in a scroll. The seal has the word ‘ Maine ’ beneath the shield in a scroll.” 1
New Hampshire. — In July, 1777, the Committee of Safety of New Hampshire ordered the Receiver-General to pay Lieutenant
Noah Robinson £30 18s. 9cl., in full for Captain Samuel Blodgett’s account for a suit of colors for Colonel Hale’s regiment of continental troops; and, Feb. 4, 1879, ordered him to pay Samuel Sawyer £19 4s. for taffeta to make colors for Colonel Cilley’s regiment.
Dec. 28, 1792, it was enacted, “ There shall
Arms of New Hampshire pg pr0vided for each regiment one standard,
1 Letter, J. H. Coclirane, Deputy Secretary of State, Sept. 26, 1866 ; letter, S. D. Leavitt, Adjutant-General, May 21, 1879. See note, p. 656.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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and one suit of regimental colors. The standard to bear the device of the arms of the United States; the regimental colours the arms of the State.” Dec. 22, 1808, it was further enacted, “ That there be provided at the expense of this State, for each regiment one standard, and for each battalion one colour.” Dec. 22, 1820, it was again enacted, and re-enacted Dec. 23, 1842, “ There shall be provided at the expense of the State a standard for each regiment . . . and all colours shall be made of good scarlet silk, with the number of the regiment or company marked thereon with white silk by the officer receiving them.”
On the 6th of July, 1867, a law was passed which required the Adjutant-General to “ furnish each regiment of artillery when a regiment exists, and in default thereof to the company first organized in such regiment, a standard, according to the regulations of the army of the United States; to each regiment of infantry a standard, to each regiment of cavalry a standard and guidon, according in each case to the style prescribed in such regulations, — the letters ‘N. H.’ and the arms of the State being substituted for the letters f U. S.’ and the national arms.
At the commencement of the civil war the State had no legally authorized State flag, but when the State commenced putting her troops into the field in support of the Union, one was devised by the Governor and Council, assisted by the Adjutant-General, and each regiment was provided with. one. These flags were of white silk, with a yellow fringe, and blue and white cord and tassels. In the centre on one side was painted the arms of the State, with emblems indicative of the arm, whether artillery or infantry, which carried them; on the other side was represented the arms of the United States, with the name of the State and of the regiment.
On the 6th of August, 1878, an act was approved requiring the Adjutant-General to furnish each squadron of cavalry with a standard, and platoon of artillery with a guidon, and to each battalion and regiment of infantry a State and national flag of the regulation pattern.3
The present seal of New Hampshire was established by the following act, which passed both branches of the legislature, Feb. 11,1785 : —
“An act to establish a seal to be used as the great seal of the State.
“ Whereas, the committee appointed by the General Court to prepare a device and inscription for a State seal, did, on the first day of November last, lay before the said court a device, with the following inscription, viz. : *A
1 Letter, A. B. Thompson, Secretary of State, April 16, 1879.608
STATE SEALS; ARMS, FLAGS; AND COLORS.
field, accompanied with, laurels; round the field in capital letters, “ Sigil-lum Reipublicj3 Neo Hantoniensis ; ” on the field, a rising sun and a ship on the stocks, with American banners displayed, being two inches in diameter/
“ Which was then voted to be received and accepted, and accordingly hath since that time been used as the great seal of the State; but as doubts have since arisen whether the vote for establishing said seal was sufficiently explicit, for removing such doubts, therefore, —
“ Be it enacted, by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened, that the said seal, with the above-recited inscription, be fully established and used in all cases as the great seal of this State, and considered as having been such from the first day of November last.”
In 1866, N. W. Gove, Deputy Secretary of State, forwarded to me a photograph of the battle-flag of the First New Hampshire Heavy Artillery, showing both sides of it. It has a blue field, with yellow fringe and blue and white cord and tassels, having the State arms on one side and the United States arms on the other, with the name of the regiment. This was the State color of all the New Hampshire regiments during the civil war, with the exception that emblems were added to indicate the arm, whether artillery, infantry, or cavalry.
Vermont. — The flag of this State, as established by an act of the Assembly, September, 1866, has thirteen stripes, alternate fed and
white, like those of our national standard, and a blue union, or canton, with one w7hite star in its centre, blazoned with the State arms.1
There is not on record any legislative act, ordinance of council, or any order or decree of any constituted authorities of the State, establishing a seal or coat of arms for Vermont prior to the act <of September, 1866, which established a State flag. The devices, however, were the same as those on the State seal, procured under the order of the executive, by Robert Temple, Esq., in 1821, then the secretary of the governor and council, during the administration of Governor Skinner.
The act which passed the Assembly in 1866, taken from chapter 131 of the General Statutes, is as follows : —
“ Of the State Arms and Flag.
“ Section 1. The coat of arms of the State shall be and is described as follows : —
“ Green, a landscape, occupying half of the shield; on the right and left 1 Rodney Lund, Deputy Secretary of State, Sept. 21, 1866.STATE SEALS, AEMS, FLAGS, AND COLOBS.
609
in the background high mountains, blue ; the sky, yellow. From near the base, and reaching nearly to the top of the shield, arises a pine-tree of the natural color, and between three erect sheaves, placed bendwise on the dexter side, and a red cow standing on the sinister side of the field.
“The Crest. A buck’s head of the natural color, cut off, and placed on a scroll, blue and yelloio.
“The Motto and Badge. On a scroll beneath the shield the motto, ‘Vermont.1 ‘Freedom and Unity.’ The Vermonter’s badge: two pine branches of the natural color crossed between the shield and scroll.
“ Sec. 2. The State seal shall include the coat of arms, excluding the crest, scroll, and badge, and with the motto in a circular border around the same.
“ Sec. 3. The flag of the State shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white. The union shall be one large star, white in a blue field, with the coat of arms of the State therein.”
Massachusetts.—It was ordered by the Governor, in June, 1787, that the standard which the Massachusetts troops should carry in the
field should be of white silk, with the arms of the Commonwealth on one side, and the crest of said arms, or other military device which the corps might choose, on the other. Subsequently, and throughout the civil war, the State flag had the State arms on one side, and on the reverse the same, with the exception of the designation of the corps in place of the motto, “ Ense petit placiclam sub Ubertate quiet am!' The regimental flag was of blue silk down to about 1840. During the civil war, the State flag was white, and an American flag took the place of the blue regimental flag.1
The regulations for the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, issued in 1879, order the State color for the infantry to be of white silk, five feet fly, and four feet and one-half deep on the pike, hearing on one side the State arms and motto, as established Dec. 13,1780, and on the reverse the pine-tree shield, with the number and name of the regiment on the scroll, the colors to be edged with yellow fringe, and to have cords and tassels of blue and white intermixed. Each regiment to carry a national color six by five feet, with the name and number of the regiment in gold on the centre stripe, its staff or pike surmounted by an eagle. The staff of the State color to be surmounted by a spear-head. The artillery and cavalry have colors smaller, but of the same devices, only
1 Hon. Oliver Warner, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1866.
39
Arms of Massachusetts.610
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLOES.
the cords and tassels for the artillery are red and yellow, and yellow for the cavalry. The council of officers of any regiment or corps of cadets may adopt a regimental device and motto, which, if approved by the Commander-in-chief, may be borne on the reverse of the State color in place of the pine-tree shield; but a drawing of the device, properly blazoned, must be deposited in the office of the Adjutant-General.1
Agreeably to a report of Nathan Cushing, Esq., who was appointed to prepare a seal for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the following device was adopted as the arms of the Commonwealth, Dec. 13, 1780: —
“Arms, sapphire, an Indian dressed in his shirt and moccasins, belted proper. In his right hand a bow, topaz; in his left, an arrow, its point towards the base. On the dexter side of the Indian’s head a star, pearl, for one of the United States of America.
“ Crest, on a wreath a dexter arm, clothed and grasping a broadsword, the pummel and hilt topaz.
“ Motto, c Ense Petit Placidam sub Libértate Quietara!
“ Seal, the arms of the Commonwealth, surrounded by the legend, ‘ Sigillum Reipiiblicce Massachusettensis! ”
The motto, as is well known to many, is the second of two Latin lines written about two centuries ago by Algernon Sydney in the album of the public library at Copenhagen, and which, it is said, were indignantly torn from the book by Yerlon, the French ambassador at the court of Denmark. The lines were, —
u Manus hsec inimica tyrannis,
Ense petit placidam sub libértate quietam.”
Two translations of the lines were made by the venerable ex-Presi-dent, John Quincy Adams. The first was obtained by Mr. Winthrop as an autograph for a friend. It happened that morning that Mr. Adams, in vindication of the right of petition, had presented a petition which excited the indignation of some of the Southern members. He had been interrupted and threatened with personal expulsion, and a summary motion was made that his petition should not be received. The yeas and nays were demanded upon this and some other motion, and the clerk proceeded to call the roll. During this process, Mr. Winthrop approached Mr. Adams, and told him his errand, adding, he would not have troubled him at such a moment were not the person
1 Letter, William M. Olin, private secretary of Governor Talbot, April 14, 1879; also, Regulations for the Massachusetts Volunteer Forces, 1879. See note, p. 656.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
611
in whose behalf he applied about to leave Washington by the next train. “ There is no better time than this,” said he. “ Give me the book.” And, taking it, he proceeded, with a trembling hand but an untrembling heart, t# inscribe the following spirited translation : —
“This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe,
For freedom only deals the deadly blow;
Then sheathe in calm repose the vengeful blade,
For gentle peace in freedom’s hallowed shade.”
The second and more literal translation will be found in a lecture on the social compact, delivered Nov. 25, 1842.
“ This hand, the rule of tyrants to oppose,
Seeks with the sword fair freedom’s soft repose.”
Rhode Island. — In 1647, the colony ordered “the seale of the Province shall be an ancker,” and in 1664 ordered “that the seal with
the motto ‘ Rhode Island and Providence Plantations/ with the word f Hope9 over the head of the ancker, is the present seal of the Colonie.” 1 March 30, 1877, the General Assembly of the State enacted the following law : —
“ The flag of the State shall be a foul anchor, with the motto, ‘ HOPE/ the whole to be surrounded by a scroll, around which, in a circle, shall be as many stars as there are States in the Union. The color of the anchor, motto, and stars shall be blue, the scroll red, in the centre of a white field. This act to take effect from and after its passage.”
The device symbolizes those principles t>f civil and religious liberty which led to the founding of the colony, and in which the faith of the citizens of the State is still deeply anchored. The motto, “ Hope,” above the silver shield directs the mind to the uncertain future, anticipating the growing prosperity of the State and the perpetuity of its institutions, while the unlettered label attached to the shield denotes that events are still progressing in the march of time, and await the completion of history before the destiny of the State shall be recorded thereon.
1 Letter, Hon. J. M. Adderman, Secretary of State, March 12, 1879; also, act in relation to the State flag, March 30, 1877. In 1866, Hon. J. R. Bartlett wrote me, the flag of the State is the same as the seal, with more or less scroll-work, according to the taste-of the artist.612
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
Connecticut. — Immediately after the battle of Lexington, the Connecticut troops had standards bearing on them the colony's arms, with
the motto, “ Qui trccnstulit sustinet,” in letters of gold. By act of the General Assembly of Connecticut, July 1, 1775, the regiments were distinguished by the colors of their standards, — blue, red, orange, &c.
In 1861, a State flag, white, bearing three vines depicted in their proper colors, that being the State colony arms since 1656, was proposed, and passed the Senate, but the resolution was indefinitely postponed in the House of Representatives, on the ground that it was not a time to talk about any other flag than that of the Union. Flags of this pattern were carried, however, as regimental colors during the war.1
It cannot be ascertained at what precise time the public seal for the colony of Connecticut was adopted, or by whom it was devised. A seal was certainly in use in 1656, as the General Court, on the 26th of March for that year, ordered, “ There should be given to Captain Culliek a copy of an agreement with Mr. Fenwick, relative to the purchase of Saybrook, sealed with the seal of the colony.”
The first General Assembly, or Court of Election, held under the charter at Hartford, October, 1662, ordered that the seal that was ‘ formerly used ’ by the General Court should still remain and be used as the seal of the colony, until the court saw cause to the contrary; and the Secretary was to keep it and use it on necessary occasions for the colony.
This seal represented a vineyard, with fifteen vines, supported and bearing fruit; above was a hand issuing from the clouds, holding a label on which was inscribed the motto, “ Svstinet Qvi Transtvlit” It was slightly oval in form, and had a beaded border. There are but three impressions of this seal (all in wax) on old colonial documents,— two very poor, and one affixed to a document dated April 1, 1687, not quite perfect. The laws printed in 1673, by order of the General Court, had an impression of the colonial seal upon the title-page. When Sir Edmund Andros took the government of the colony, October, 1687, the Secretary delivered the seal to him, and it disappeared. Whether it was lost or broken up is not known.
The seal used after the resumption of the charter government in 1689 differed considerably from the first seal. It was not so well cut, was a trifle larger, and the hands bend downward.
1 Letters, Charles J. Hoadley, Esq., State librarian, March 4 and May 24, 1879.
Arms of Connecticut.STATE SEALS; ARMS; FLAGS; AND COLORS.
613
No further change was made until Oct. 25, 1711, when, at a meeting of the Governor and Council, it was agreed and resolved that a new stamp should be made and cut, suitable for sealing upon wafers, and that a press, &c., be provided at the cost and charge of the colony, to be kept in the Secretary’s office. This seal was considerably larger than its predecessors, measuring two and a half inches in length by one and three-quarter inches in breadth ; instead of fifteen vines, there were but three, and a hand pointing to them about midway on the left. The motto was upon a scroll below the vines, and around the circumference the legend, “ Sigillum Coloniw Oonnectievtensis.” This seal seems to have been in use until 1784, when the General Assembly passed the following resolution : —
“ Whereas, the circumscription of the seal of this State is improper and inapplicable to our present constitution, Resolved, by this Assembly, that the Secretary be, and he is hereby, empowered and directed to get the same altered from the words as they now stand to the following inscription, viz. “ Sigill. Reip. Connecticutensisr
The inscription was, however, cut without abbreviation, and, at the October session, 1784, the new seal was approved, and ordered to be lodged with the Secretary. The size was two and three-quarter inches in length by one and seven-eighths in breadth, and it was engraved upon silver.
The Constitution adopted in 1818 declares the seal shall not be altered; but neither in that instrument nor in any law is it described.
In 1840, it was Resolved, “ That the Secretary of State be instructed to ascertain the proper seal and bearings of this State, and report to the next session of the General Assembly; and also whether any legislative enactment is required for a proper description of the great seal.” But Mr. Hinman, who was secretary, made no report.
The seal now in use was procured in accordance with a resolution passed October, 1842, which directed it should be similar to the one then in use. The seal was made of the same form and size as the preceding one, only a trifle broader. The workmanship, also, is better: there are three clusters of grapes on each vine, while the old one had four on each of the two upper, and five bunches on the lower. The seal is engraved on brass.
The arms of Connecticut, in heraldic language, would be thus blaz-> oned: Argent, three vines supported and fruited projjer.
The most probable interpretation of this device is, that the three vines symbolize the, plantations of Hartford, Windsor, and Weathers-field, which composed the original colony of Connecticut. The num-614
STATE SEALS, AEMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
ber of vines in the old seal was probably arbitrary. With beautiful simplicity, the Connecticut seal bears perpetual witness to the faith of our fathers in His sustaining power who transplanted the vines from Egypt; who cast out the heathen and planted them; who made room for them, so that, when they had taken root, they filled the land till the hills were covered with their shadow, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars, — till their branches stretched out to the sea, and their boughs to the river.1
Hew York. — The State flag is made of white bunting, twelve feet fly by ten feet hoist, bearing in the centre the arms of the State of
New York, as ordered by an act passed March 27, 1809.2
In 1778 or 1779, a beautiful stand of colors was prepared and painted for the Third New York Regiment, commanded by Colonel Peter Gansevoort, Jr. The colonels of the three New York regiments had petitioned the Committee of Safety to be furnished with colors as early as Nov. 30, 1776. But this regiment was still unprovided with a flag. The knowledge that it had improvised one during the investment of Fort Stanwix3 induced the prejiaration of these colors, which are still reverently preserved in the family, although much tattered. With the kind consent of Mrs. Abraham Lansing, of Albany, its present possessor, it was unfurled with great ceremony at the centennial celebration at Oriskany in 1877, before the fifty thousand people assembled there. In 1864, General Gansevoort wrote under his own hand a declaration that the flag was borne at the surrender of Yorktown in 1781. It is beautifully blazoned with the arms of New York.
In 1879, a State appropriation was made to secure a copy of the arms “ taken from a flag borne at Yorktown in 1781,” expressed in these terms: “ For the Secretary of State, for the purchase of a colored picture of the arms of the State, taken from a flag borne at Yorktown by the American army in 1781, to be deposited in the State library, the sum of fifty dollars.”
The arms are carefully and finely painted upon both sides of the
1	C. J. Hoadley’s account of the public seal of Connecticut, in vol i. Historical Collections of Connecticut.
2	Letters, Assistant Adjutant-General William J. Denstow, June 11 and 13, 1879, and H. A. Homes, State librarian, June 12, 1879.
3	See ante.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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flag, which is of dark blue silk, and about seven feet square. The arms completely cover, upon the flag, a space of about four feet four inches wide by three feet five inches high. The two figures (supporters) are each two feet two and a half inches high.
An exact copy of this venerable flag has been beautifully and perfectly painted on canvas, in oil colors, one-half of the size of the painting on the flag, and is deposited in the State library at Albany, in compliance with the law.
By an “ act to improve the discipline and promote the efficiency of the military forces of the State,” passed April 17, 1854, a board of officers reported a code of regulations, which received the approval of the Commander-in-chief, and were made a part of the statutes for the government of the military forces, April 6,1854. By these regulations, the following colors wTere established : —
Colors of Artillery Regiments. — Each regiment of artillery shall have two colors. The first, or the national color, of stars and stripes, as described for the national flag, and may be either of silk or bunting, with red cord and tassels. The second, or regimental color, to be of yellow silk, with the arms of the State of New York embroidered in silk on the centre, over two cannon crossing, with the number of the regiment above and the letters ‘ 1ST. Y. S. M.’ below their intersection; the cannon, regimental number, and letters to be in gold embroidery, fringe gold or yellow silk four inches deep; each color to be six feet six inches fly, and six feet deep on the pike; the pike, including the eagle and ferrule, to be nine feet ten inches in length; cords and tassels, red and yellow silk intermixed.
Colors of Inf antry and Rifle Regiments. — Each regiment of infantry or rifles shall have two colors. The first, or the national color, of stars and stripes, as described for the national flag, and may be either of silk or bunting, with red cord and tassels. The second, or regimental color, to be of blue silk, with the arms of the State of New York embroidered in silk on the centre, the number and name of the regiment, and the letters ‘ N. Y. S. M.,’ in gold embroidery underneath the arms; the size of each color to b§ six feet six inches fly, and six feet deep on the pike; the length of the pike, including the eagle and ferrule, to be nine feet ten inches; the fringe, gold or yellow silk, four inches deep; cord and tassels, blue and white silk intermixed.
Camp Colors. — The camp colors are of silk or bunting, eighteen inches square, —- white for infantry or rifles, and red for artillery, with the number of the regiment on them ; the pole, eight feet long.
Standards and Guidons of Mounted Regiments. — Each regiment616
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
will have a silken standard, and each company a silken guidon, the standard to hear the arms of the State of New York, embroidered in silk on a blue ground, with the number and name of the regiment, and the letters ' N. Y. S. M/ in gold embroidery underneath the arms, the flag of the standard to be two feet five inches wide, and two feet three inches on the lance, and to be edged with gold or yellow silk fringe.
The flag of the guidon is swallow-tailed, three feet five inches from the lance to the end of the swallow-tail, fifteen inches to the fork of the swallow-tail, and two feet three inches on the lance, to be half red and half white, dividing at the fork, the red above. On the red, the letters ' N. Y. S. M/ in white; and on the white, the letter of the company in red. The lance of the standards and guidons to be nine feet long, including spear and ferrule.
Every pike-pole or staff to which the flags, standards, guidons, or colors above provided are to be attached, will be surmounted with a gilt eagle.1
The first great seal of the State of New York was devised by a committee consisting of Messrs. John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and John Sloss Hobart, appointed by the constitution of the State in 1777-It was thus described: —
“ A rising sun, over three mountains ; motto underneath, ‘ Excelsior’; legend, 'The Great Seal of the State of New York/ The reverse is a huge rock rising out of the sea, and the legend,' Frustra, 1777/ ”
In 1798, a new pendant seal was adopted, having for a device the arms of the State. The third seal, which is still in use, was adopted in 1809, and is incumbent.	o
It is a singular fact that there is no standard form of the arms of New York State extant, but even more singular are the changes which have taken place from the whims of artists, or carelessness of those charged with reproducing the arms on public documents. Attention was first attracted to the subject by the request of the Centennial Exposition Commissioners for an authentic copy of the arms; and since then the subject has been investigated by Henry A. Homes, LL.D., of the State library. Upon searching the records, no adequate description of the arms could be found. There is a record, however, of the adoption, in 1778, of a coat of arms designed by Lewis Morris, John Jay, and John Sloss Hobart, and three copies, made before 1785, are known. One is upon a military commission issued by Governor Clinton in 1778; a second was painted on the
1 General Regulations for the Military Forces of tlie State of New York, 1858.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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flag of the Third Regiment; and a third is a picture hung over Governor Clinton’s pew in St. Paul’s church, in this city, in 1785. Even these differ somewhat, hut from the last was made the copy for Independence Hall; and it is to he hoped that legislation will he invoked to prevent future eccentricities. The true design consists “ of a shield, broad at the base, upon which is pictured a placid stream, the Hudson, with two vessels approaching each other. In the foreground is a level bank with shrubbery. On the opposite shore are three mountain peaks, representing the Highlands, from which the sun, with resplendent rays, is just rising. Above the shield is two-thirds of a globe, showing part of America and Europe, surmounted by a heraldic eagle, — not the American eagle of to-day. On the right of the shield stands the figure of Liberty, robed. In her right hand is an upright staff, surmounted with a liberty cap. Her left supports the shield. Her left foot rests upon an overturned crown, a symbol of emancipation from monarchical institutions. On the left of the shield stands the figure of Justice, robed. In her right hand is a sword, point upward, and in her left an even balance. The arm is partially extended, holding the balance free from her body. The eyes are blindfolded, and the countenance has an expression of intent listening. Under the shield is the motto ‘ Excelsior.’ ”1
Hew Jersey. — The State flag has thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white, — in the centre a blue square or shield, on which
is the coat of arms of the State.2
A joint committee appointed by both Houses to prepare a great seal, of which Richard Smith was chairman, made the following report, which was adopted Oct. 3, 1776 : —
“ The joint committee have considered the subject, and taken the sentiments of several intelligent gentlemen thereon, and are of the opinion that Francis Hopkinson, Esq., should be immediately engaged to employ proper persons at Philadelphia to prepare a silver seal, which is to he round, of two and a half inches
1	Our illustration is not entirely correct, according to this description, "but represents the arms as frequently found upon State official documents, and oftenest painted upon the State flags used during the civil war. The history of the colonial and provincial seals of New Netherlands and New York, from 1625 to the American Revolution, can he found "beautifully illustrated in the ‘ Documentary History of New York,’ vol. iv.
2	Letters, H. N. Conga, Secretary of State, Sept. 17, 1866 ; John A. Hall, Governor’s private secretary, June 24, 1879.618
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
diameter and three-eighths of an inch thick, and that the arms shall be, —
“ Arms. Three plows in an escutcheon \argent].
“ Supporters. Liberty and Ceres.
“ Crest. A horse’s head.
“ These words to be engraven in large letters around the arms, viz. * The Great Seal of the State of New Jersey, mdcclxxvi.’”
In an engraving of the State arms ornamenting the official letter-paper used in the Department of State, the motto “ Liberty and Prosperity ” has been added in a scroll at the foot of the shield.
Pennsylvania. — In 1775, at a meeting of the gentlewomen belonging to the village of Bristol, Penn., they made a collection of money
to fit out a regiment raising there, and wrought a magnificent suit of colors for their use, with devices and mottoes of their own composing. The gentlewoman who was appointed by the others to present them in their name made a very gallant and spirited speech on the occasion, which she concluded by giving it in charge to the officers and soldiers “ never to
Arms of Pennsylvania	desert the colors of the ladies, if they ever
wished that the ladies would list under their banners.” 1
It is a pity the devices on these State colors have not been preserved, or are not remembered.
In 1789, when Washington passed through Philadelphia to assume the presidency in New York, he was received with distinguished honors, and the floating bridge at Gray’s Ferry was decorated with evergreens and flags. Among the latter was a blue flag which had been hoisted in the East Indies by Captain Bell, as a Pennsylvania State flag, which bore the inscription, “ The new era.”
April 9, 1799. The Pennsylvania legislature enacted “that there shall be two colors or standards provided at the expense of the State for every regiment, so that each battalion may have one, and they shall be uniform throughout the State, and of the following dimensions and devices; ” to wit, “ The length or height of the staff of each of the said colors shall be at least nine feet, with a brass spear on the top thereof; the fly of each of the said colors shall be six feet six inches in length, and four feet six inches in height on the staff; on the fly of one of the said colors (to be made of a dark blue-colored
1 From Mather’s Magazine, February, 1789, p. 115.STATE SEALS; ARMS; FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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silk) there shall he painted an American eagle, with expanded wings, supporting the arms of the State, or some striking part thereof; in the upper corner next the staff there shall he inserted, in white letters and figures, the number of the regiment, and the word •"Pennsylvania/ encircled or ornamented with thirteen white stars ; the fly of the other color shall be composed of thirteen red and white alternate stripes, with the upper corner next the staff colored and appropriated as above directed, and each color shall be ornamented with two silk tassels. And the Governor is hereby authorized to cause two colors or standards to be made as soon as convenient, according to the above directions, and lodged in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and preserved as models for the colors of the State, agreeably to which all the regimental colors of this Commonwealth shall hereafter be made.” 1 The regimental colors of Pennsylvania have continued ever since to be of blue silk, blazoned in the centre with the arms of the State.
May 26, 1861. A joint resolution of the legislature required the Governor “to ascertain how the regiments raised in Pennsylvania during the war of the Revolution, the war of 1812, and the war with Mexico were numbered, among what divisions of the service they were distributed, and where the said regiments distinguished themselves in action. That, having ascertained said particulars, he shall procure regimental standards to be inscribed with the numbers of those regiments respectively, on which shall be painted the arms of the Commonwealth and the names of the actions in which the said regiments distinguished themselves. That the standards so inscribed shall be delivered to the regiments now in the field or forming, bearing the regimental number corresponding to the regiments of Pennsylvania in former wars.”
The Governor was further directed “ to procure regimental standards for all the regiments formed or to be formed in Pennsylvania, beyond the numbers in former wars, upon which shall be inscribed the number of the regiment, and painted the arms of this Commonwealth ; and that all these standards, after the present unhappy rebellion is ended, shall be returned to the Adjutant-General, to be further inscribed, as the valor and good conduct of each particular regiment may have deserved; and that they then be carefully preserved by the State, to be delivered to such future regiments as the military necessity of the country may require Pennsylvania to raise.”
1 Letter, C. N. Farr, Governor’s private secretary, Marcli 24,1879, enclosing laws, &c.620
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On the same day, the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati, having presented to the Executive of the State five hundred dollars “ towards arming and equipping the volunteers of Pennsylvania,” the legislature, considering that “ this expression of patriotism by a society founded by Washington and the illustrious chiefs of the Revolution, and embracing in its present organization their immediate and lineal descendants,” &c., demands especial recognition and approval, “ Resolved, That the Governor be, and he is hereby, directed to expend the said money in the purchase of regimental flags having the coat of arms of the State, and to be inscribed as provided for in the resolution.” 1
In accordance with these resolutions, the regiments of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps in camp at Tennellytown, Md., on the 10th of September, were presented with standards at eleven a.m., President Lincoln, accompanied by the Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, Governor Curtin and the members of his staff, and many distinguished soldiers and citizens being present.
Governor Curtin, in his presentation speech to General M’Call, said: “I come here to-day on a duty enjoined by the legislature of Pennsylvania. The remnant of the descendants of the heroes and sages of the Revolution in the Keystone State, known as the Cincinnati Society, presented me with a sum of money to arm and equip the volunteers of Pennsylvania who might go into public service in the present exigency. I referred the subject to the legislature. They instructed me to make these flags, and pay for them with the money of the Cincinnati Society. I have placed in the centre of the azure field of stars, the arms of the State. I give these flags to you to-day, and I know you will carry them wherever you appear in honor, and that the credit of your State will never suffer in your hands.” The story of the return of these flags after the war, elsewhere given, shows with what courage and honor they were carried and preserved.
The seal and arms of Pennsylvania owe their origin to a resolution of the Assembly, passed Sept. 28, 1776, whereby Messrs. Rittenhouse, Jacobs, and Clymer were appointed “a committee to prepare seals for the future legislature and the council of the State.” The origin of the seal is easily ascertained. The devices were taken chiefly from the old seal of the city of Philadelphia of 1701. This escutcheon was quartered, having the devices of clasped hands, a balance, a wheat sheaf, and a ship sailing upon an ocean. The wheat sheaf and the ship were adopted in the State arms, and a plow added to fill out the
1 See above.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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escutcheon, — the three emblems being those of agriculture, husbandry, and commerce.
The present great seal of Pennsylvania was established by an act of the Assembly, passed the 2d day of March, 1809, at which time the seal was ordered to be renewed, viz.: —
“ The shield shall be parted per fess or, charged with a plow proper in chief. On a sea navy proper, a ship under full sail, surmounted with a sky azure, and in base three Garbs or, on the sinister a stalk of maize, and clexter, an olive branch, and on a wreath of its colors a bald eagle proper, perched, wings extended for the crest. Around the margin of the seal, ‘ State of Pennsylvania • ’ the reverse, Liberty trampling on a lion, gules, the emblem of tyranny; motto, ‘ Both can't Survive.’ ”
The coat of arms is the same as the face of the great seal, with two horses rampant for supporters, and a pendant or streamer from the eagle’s beak bearing the motto, “ Virtue, Liberty, and Independence.”
In 1874, the legislature passed a resolution authorizing the Governor, Attorney-General, and Secretary of the Commonwealth to have “ the arms of the State corrected of such errors and anomalies as may thereon be discovered,” — in fact, to restore the arms as originally adopted and engraved, and which, in the lapse of a hundred years, had been changed to suit the whim of every engraver or designer.
Delaware. — Delaware has never had a legally established State flag. The emblazonment on the regimental colors of the State troops
has been usually the arms of the State, but with such other devices as those preparing the flags choose to select. In none of the colonial laws, or laws enacted since Delaware became a State of the Union, is there to be found any thing on the subject of a flag.1
The arms of Delaware are an azure shield or escutcheon divided into two equal parts by a white band or girdle. A cow proper is in the lower division, and in the other a sheaf of wheat and a bundle of leaf tobacco. The crest is a ship under full sail, displaying an American flag, and supported on a wreath. On a white field around the escutcheon were formerly wreaths of flowers, olive branches, &c.; but these have disappeared, and given place to two supporters, viz., a mariner and a hunter. At the bottom of the seal, in numeral letters,
1 Letter, Dr. L. P. Bush, Secretary, Delaware Historical Society, Feb. 15, 1880.622
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is the date of its adoption, ‘ md.ccxciii. ; ’ and around the border, in Roman capitals, are the words, “ Great Seal of the State of Delaware.” Underneath the shield is the motto, “ Liberty and Independence
Maryland. — The State flag of Maryland is blue, having the arms of the State blazoned on one side, and the arms of the United States on the reverse.1
The arms of Maryland are the same as blazoned on the provincial great seal, brought from England in 1658. On one side of the seal is a shield, on which are the arms of Lord Baltimore, the supporters being a fisherman and a ploughman, and the crest a helmet, with a ducal crown on it surmounted by two bannerets. The motto is, “Fatti maschii, parole femine ,” which is translated, “ Manly deeds and womanly words.” Around the margin of the seal is inscribed, “ Scuto
Bonce Voluntatis Tuce Coroncisti Nos” which is translated, “ With the shield of Thy good will Thou hast covered us.”
The first notice of a great seal for the province is in an instrument signed by Lord Baltimore, Aug. 8, 1636, and addressed to his brother. The design of this seal is not known, as it was seized and carried off by one Richard Ingle in 1644. In consequence, a new seal was provided by Lord Baltimore, which is thus described, and which has continued to be the seal and arms of the colony and State to the present time, viz.: —
“On the side thereof is engraven our figure in complete armor, on horseback, with our sword drawn and our helmet on, and a great plume of feathers affixed to it, — the horse trappings, furniture, and caparison being adorned with the figure of our paternal coat of arms; and underneath the horse a seashore, engraven with certain flowers and grass growing upon it, and this inscription about that side of the seal (vizt.), ‘ Cecilius absolutus dominus Terrce Mcirice et Avcdonice Bctro cle Baltimore.’ And on the counter side of the said seal is engraven a scutcheon wherein our paternal coat of arms — to wit, six pieces impaled with a band dexter countercharged, quartered with another coat of arms belonging to our family, vizt. a cross buttoned at each end (and also countercharged) — are engraven ; the whole scutcheon being supported with a fisherman on the one side and a plowman on
1 Letter, John M. Carter, Secretary of State, Sept. 19, 1866.
Arms of Maryland.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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the other, standing upon a scrowl wherein is engraven the motto of our paternal arms, vizt., * Ffciti maschy, parole femini.’ Next above the scutcheon is engraven a count palatine’s cap, and over that a helmet with the crest of our paternal coat of arms, on the top of which crest is a ducal crown, with two half bannerets set upright on it. Behind the said scutcheon and supporters is engraven a large mantle, and this inscription is about the side of said seal, vizt. (Scuto bonce Voluntatis turn coronasti nos? The figure of the seal is round, and it is of the bigness that our former great seal was, and cut in silver, as the other was; the impression of all which in wax is hereunto affixed, it being somewhat different (though but little) from our said former great seal of the said province. We do hereby declare the said new seal to be from henceforward our great seal of the said province of Maryland, and that we will have it so to be esteemed and reputed there till we ourselves shall signify our or their pleasure to the contrary.
“Given at Bath, under our hand and our said new great seal of the said province, the 12 day of Augt., in the 17tli year of our dominion over the said province of Maryland, Anno clomini 1648.”1
Virginia. — The State flag as it now exists is of blue bunting, sixteen by twenty feet, with a circular white ground in the centre, in which
are painted the same words and figures engraved on the lesser seal of the State. The Secretary of the Commonwealth, in 1870, said he could find no legislation with regard to it upon the statute-books. This flag probably had its origin in the rebel convention of 1861, which passed an ordinance that “the flag of the Commonwealth should hereafter be made of Anns of Virginia. bunting, which shall be a deep blue field, with a circle of white in the centre, upon which shall be painted or embroidered, to show both sides alike, the coat of arms of the State as described by the convention of 1776, for one side (obverse) of the seal of the State.”
A letter dated Richmond, Feb. 23, 1833, during the Nullification times, says: “ I give you an item of intelligence which possibly you may not receive from any other quarter. The Governor of Virginia, I understand, at some trouble and expense, caused a superb State flag to
1 From Council Proceedings for 1637 to 1657, in Bosnian’s ‘History of Maryland/ vol. ii., 1633 to 1660, p. 652.624
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be prepared, with the intention of having it hoisted at the quarters of the State Guard on Friday morning last, the 22d instant. Knowledge of its existence, and of his intention, was obtained on Thursday, the 21st, and a good deal of excitement was manifested. Either dissuaded by his party friends, or prompted by his own fears of the consequences, his Excellency determined to let it remain in the painter’s shop; and fortunate it was, for, had the banner been exposed to public gaze, it would have been torn down and prostrated, and in all probability with some bloodshed. Scarce a voice was heard in favor of raising it; and numbers were heard to express their determination to rally under the star-spangled banner of the Union. It was supposed by some that had the State flag been hoisted, the flag of the Union would not have been, by order of the commanding chief. As it was, the Union flag, on a pole, was poked out of a hole in the southern end of the capitol loft, and in this half-erect and awkward situation, flapping on the ridge of the building, and repeatedly hooked on the point of one of the lightning-rods, it wras torn in many places, and pieces were flying in every direction over the heads of the military and citizens assembled on the public square. ”
In the convention of delegates held at Williamsburg, July 1, 1776, it was “ Resolved, That Mr. Richard Henry Lee, Mr. George Mason? Mr. Treasurer, and Mr. Wythe be appointed a committee to devise a proper seal for this Commonwealth ; ” and on the 5th of July the following entry appears on the Journal of proceedings : —
“ Mr. George Mason, from the committee appointed to devise a proper seal for the Commonwealth, reported that the committee had accordingly prepared the following device thereof, which he read in his place, and afterwards delivered it at the clerk’s table, when the same was twice read and agreed to: To be engraven on the great seal. Virtus, the genius of the Commonwealth, dressed like an Amazon, resting on a spear with one hand, and holding a sword in the other, and treading on Tyranny, represented by a man prostrate, a crown fallen from his head, a broken chain in his left hand, and a scourge in his right.
“In the exergon, the word 'Virginia’ over the head of Yirtus, and underneath the words,‘ Sic Semper Tyrannis! On the reverse, a group; Libertas, with her riband and pileus. On one side of her Ceres, with her cornucopia in one hand, and an ear of wheat in the other; on the other side, iEternitas, with the glove and phenix. On the exergon these words, ‘ Reus nobis pacem olim fecit! ”
“Resolved, That George Wythe and John Page, Esquires, be desiredSTATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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to superintend the engraving of the said seal, and to take care that the same is properly executed/’
By an act passed October, 1779, it was required that a great seal should he provided by the executive, and graven with the same devices directed by the convention, save only that the motto on the reverse be changed to the word ‘ Perseverctnclo/ And it was further provided that the seal which hath been already provided by virtue of said resolution of the convention be henceforward called the lesser seal of the Commonwealth, and that the said lesser seal be affixed to all grants for lands, and to all commissions, civil and military, signed by the Governor; provided, nevertheless, that all such commissions signed and issued without affixing the seal shall be good and valid.
The lesser seal, now in the custody of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, has the devices and inscription prescribed for the obverse of the great seal, with the addition of the words ‘ Liberty and Union ’ under the word ‘Virginia,’ and around the head of the figure of Virtu s; and the same words have been added to both sides of the great seal. By whom or when added, or by what authority, is unknown; but by an act which passed the General Assembly, Feb. 28, 1866, which directs “ that the great seal and lesser seal, now under the care of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, are and shall continue the seals of the Commonwealth, as they are now established by law.” The motto has been legalized.
West Virginia, according to a newspaper report, adopted, in 1875, for a flag, four diagonal bars, red and buff alternately, with a white canton bearing the State arms.
The Secretary of State, however, under date April 9, 1880, says: “West Virginia has never adopted any flag. The regimental flags of the West Virginia Volunteers in the civil war are now kept in our State library.”
The joint committee on seals proposed the following device for the great seal of the State, which was adopted Sept. 26, 1863 : —
Arms of west Virginia.	The device and motto for the obverse of the
great seal was also adopted as the arms of the State. The disc of the great seal is two and one half inches in diameter. “ The obverse bears the legend, ‘ State of West Virginia,’ with the motto, ‘Montani Semper Liberil inserted in the circumference. In the centre a rock with ivy,
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emblematic of stability and continuance, and on the face of the rock the inscription, "June 20, 1863/ the date of the foundation of the State, as if ‘ graved with a pen of iron on the rock forever.’ On the right of the rock, a farmer clothed in the traditional hunting-shirt peculiar to this region, his right arm resting on the plow-handles, and his left supporting a woodman’s axe, —indicating that while our territory is partially cultivated, it is still in process of being cleared of the original forest. At his right a sheaf of wheat and corn-stalk. On the left of the rock, a miner, indicated by a pickaxe on his shoulder, with barrels and lumps of mineral at his feet. On his left, an anvil, partly seen, on which rests a sledge-hammer, typical of the mechanic arts, — the whole indicating the principal pursuits and resources of the State. In the front of the rock and figures, as if just laid down by them, and ready to be resumed at a moment’s notice, two hunter’s rifles crossed, and surmounted at the place of contact by the Phrygian cap, or cap of liberty, indicating that our freedom and independence were won and will be defended and maintained by arms.”
A lesser seal, an inch and a half in diameter, with the same legend, motto, devices, &c., was ordered. “ The reverse of the great seal is encircled with a wreath of laurel and oak leaves, emblematic of valor and strength, with fruits and cereals, productions of the State.
“Device, a landscape. In the distance, on the left of the disc, wooded mountains, and on the right a cultivated slope, with the log frame-house peculiar to the region. On the side of the mountain, a representation of the viaduct on the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Preston County, one of the great engineering triumphs of the age, with a train of cars about to pass over it. Hear the centre, a factory, in front of which a river with boats on the bank, and to the right of it, nearer the foreground, a derrick and shed, appertaining to the production of salt and petroleum. In the foreground, a meadow, with cattle and sheep feeding and reposing, — the whole indicating the leading characteristics, productions, and pursuits of the State. Above the mountains, the sun emerging from the clouds, indicating that former obstacles to the prosperity of the State are disappearing. In the rays of the sun the motto, ‘Libertas e Fidelitate ’ (liberty from loyalty), indicating that the freedom and independence of the 'State are faithfulness to" the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the national Constitution.”
It would seem as though the designers of the seal endeavored to compress into the nutshell of the seal the entire history of the State and of its industrial resources.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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Arms of North Carolina.
North Carolina. —The first flag of North Carolina, in June, 1775, was white, and bore a hornet’s nest and the date May 20, 1775, and soon after the people of Bladen and Brunswick Counties carried a flag
having as an emblem a rattlesnake coiled at the root of a pine-tree.1 The State flag now in use, and which was adopted about the time of the war with Mexico, is of blue silk, bearing upon one side the State arms. Occasionally a white flag is used, but blue is the prescribed color. In the infantry regiments of the State Guard, this color and the national ensign are borne side by side.
During the civil war, the loyal (Union) regiments had flags with a blue field, simply inscribed, “ N. C. U. T.,” in scrolls surrounding an eagle’s outspread wings. The flag used at the commencement of the civil war by the Confederates was white, with eleven blue stars, and the words, “ May 20,1775,” “ May 20,1861,” — the date of the Mech-lenburg Declaration of Independence, and of the secession of North Carolina from the Union.
In the proceedings of the North Carolina 'secession’ convention the following design for a State flag was unanimously adopted, June 22, 1861. “A red field to the left entirely across the end; in the centre of the field a white star; over the star the words 'May 20, 1775/ in a semicircle, and under the star, in the same form, the words 'May 20, 1861.’ The folds [the fly] of the flag to be two bars, the upper blue, the lower white, and the length of the flag to be one-third greater than its width.” This flag was carried but a short time, as there was too much confusion in the variety of State flags. All the Confederate State troops bore the 'battle-flag,’ and many of the colonels sent their State flags back tp the Governor. There were other State flags carried by the regiments; viz., one with the red bar, star, and motto next the staff, and with a blue fly or field; another, with the same red bar, star, &c., next the staff, and white and blue perpendicular bars for the fly.
The State flag is never seen in bunting, only in silk, and has never been flown from a staff or any public building.2 During the civil war the flags carried were in most cases made of ladies’ silk dresses.
In the original seal, on a white or silver field, are represented the
1	Wheeler’s History of North. Carolina.
2	Letters of Adjutant-General F. A. Olds, March 30 and April 8, 1879.628
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Goddess of Liberty on the right, and Ceres, the Goddess of Corn and of Harvests, on the left. In the right hand of the former is a scroll representing the Declaration of Independence, and the left supports a wand, surmounted by the cap of liberty. Ceres has in her right hand three heads or ears of wheat, and in her left the cornucopia or horn of plenty, filled with the products of the earth. In the background are mountains. Around the outer circle, starting from a star on the top, is the legend, “ Great Seal of the State of North Carolina.”
The present seal has the figure of Liberty standing and Ceres sitting, — the reverse of our illustration; the mountain background is omitted, and a curtain or canopy is suspended over the head of Ceres.
South Carolina. — The flag now flying at the State House in Columbia has always been the State flag. It is an entire blue field,
with a large white palmetto-tree on one side only, with a white crescent or half-moon in the upper corner near the staff, with a rattlesnake coiled near the outer roots of the tree.
After the adoption of the stars and stripes in 1777, they were used on all festive and gala occasions, and the State flag was seldom, if
Arms of south Carolina.	ever, displayed, until 1861.
After the Southern Cross was adopted by the Confederate Congress, that was generally displayed, and has never since fallen into entire disuse.
The negroes, when in power, raised it alongside of the United States flag on the State House, and kept it flying during their sittings. The State flag now flies from the State House jointly with the United States flag.1
The device for the great seal of South Carolina is thus described:2 —
“ A palmetto-tree, supported by twelve spears, which, with the tree, are bound together in one hand, on which is written, f Quis separabit ? ’ On the tree are two shields, the one inscribed ‘ March 26th,’ the other ‘July 4th;’ and at the foot of the palmetto an English oak, fallen, its roots above the ground, and its branches lopt. In the exergon, ^Meliorem lapsa locavit, 1776.’ The legend, f South Carolina,’
1	Letter of Jos. Dane Pope, Esq., Columbia, S. 0., Feb. 17, 1880.
2	Boston Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser for Oct. 9, 1777.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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immediately over the palmetto, and at the opposite part of the circle, ‘ Animis opibusque paeati.’
“ Explanation. The palmetto furnishes food for man, and affords him a more secure defence against an enemy than stone walls. Superior to the English oak, it defies the British navy. In this country it first proved its worth in a manner that constituted it the most famous tree in America, and, being a native of our soil, it is therefore taken to represent the State of South Carolina.
“The tree and twelve spears allude to the thirteen United States of America, and the position of the latter shows that South Carolina receives support from the Union. On one of the shields is the date of resolutions of South Carolina from under the authority of England; on the other is marked the epocha of the independence of America. The fallen tree is the oak and emblem of England. Its position alludes to the state of her authority with respect to this country, and the lopt branches denote that her colonies have separated from her: it also alludes to the late regal government, contrasted with the present government established in its place, and represented by the flourishing palmetto. The words in the exergon give utterance to this idea. The numerical figures there being only the date of a year, of course include all the events emblazoned by the whole device, and the legend, announces the name of the State and the sentiments of her people.
“ The Reveese is Hope, advancing over a rock, which is rugged and steep behind her, but smooth and of gentle ascent before. The way is strewed with the arms of an enemy. She holds a laurel flower in her right hand, and has a view of the sun rising in full splendor. In the exergon, ‘ Spes.’ The legend is f Dum Spiro Spero
“ Explanation. Hope is dressed in a transparent vest, by the Latins called a f multicium/ from the fineness of its tissue. She draws back her garment, that it may not incumber her in her march; for she is always advancing, it being natural for Hope to press forward to her proper objects. She holds a laurel flower in her hand, because, as a flower, it is not only a natural ornament for her, but is also a native of our State, and an emblem of success. Victory, and their attendant safety, present objects of Hope. By seeing her on a rock, we remember that our hope is well founded, and that her having passed a rugged and steep ascent is an allusion to the great difficulties we have surmounted, by having pressed forward to our natural objects with Hope; as the smooth and gentle ascent before her intimates that we now see our way clearly, and have a prospect of an easier road, by which we may arrive at a possession of the rights of humanity. And630
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although the way is strewed with the arms of an enemy, alluding to the nature of our advance to empire, yet Hope proceeds forward with confidence, an emblem of the disposition of the people of South Carolina.”
“The sun rising in full splendor alludes to the rising glory of America in general, and of this State in particular; and as Hope is animated by the sun’s genial influence, and made gay and cheerful by a view of its lustre, so it is hinted that we are invigorated by the effects of our success, and that, recollecting our illustrious actions, we will cheerfully proceed on the road of honor.
“The word in the exergon gives the idea of the device, and the legend is applicable as well to this as to our constancy in proceeding to establish the State.”1
Georgia. — In 1879, Georgia adopted for a flag one having a perpendicular blue bar from top to bottom next to the staff, with three
horizontal bars, red, white, and red.2 As near a revival of the stars and bars of the first flag of the Southern confederacy as they well could get.
The charter of the colony of Georgia, June 9, 1732, granted by George II. to “the trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia, authorized them to exercise certain acts of sovereign power under a common seal,” and, accordingly, at their first meeting, held in July, 1732, a seal was adopted. It was formed of two faces, — one for legislative acts, deeds, and commissions; and the other, “ the common seal,” as it was called, “ to be affixed to grants, orders, certificates,” &c.
The device upon the one was two figures resting upon urns, representing the rivers Savannah and Altamaha, the northeastern and
Arms of Georgia.
southwestern boundaries of the province, between which the Genius of the Colony was seated, with a cap of liberty on her head, a spear in one hand and a cornucopia in the other, with the inscription, “Colonia Georgia Aug.”
On the other face was a representation of silk-worms, some beginning and others completing their labors, which were characterized by the motto, “Non sibi, seel aliis” This inscription announced the be-
1	Drayton’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 372. The arms were designed fay William Henry Drayton, and the original, executed by him with a pen, is in the possession of his son, hut contains more devices. The reverse of the arms is said to have been designed by Arthur Middleton.
2	Report of Committee to Georgia Legislature.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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neficent disposition and disinterested motives of the trustees, while in the device they had in view the production of silk, which was to be the special object of the new colony.
On the 19th of December, 1751, the trustees, unable to defray the expenses of the colony, surrendered all their rights and powers under the charter of the crown, and the colony passed under the control of the “ Board of Trade and Plantations,” acting under his Majesty, of which the Earl of Halifax was then the head.
On the 21st of June, 1754, the king in council directed a silver seal to be made for the colony, bearing on one side a figure representing the Genius of the Colony offering a skein of silk to the king with the motto, “Hinc laudem sperate, coloni” and around the circumference, “ SlGILLUM PROVINCLE NO STILE GEORGLE IN AMERICA ; ” and Oil the obverse, his Majesty’s arms, crown, garter, supporters, and motto, with the inscription, “ Georgius II. Dei Gratia Mcignce Britannim et Lunenbergi Dux, Sacri Romani Imperii ArcJii-Thesaurarius et Elector I
The great seal of Georgia, adopted by the convention in 1777, had on one side a scroll, whereon was engraved, “ The Constitution of the State of Georgia,” and the motto, “ Pro bono publico.” On the other side, an elegant house and other buildings, with sheep and cattle; a river running through the same, with a ship under full sail, and the motto, “ Deus nobis hoec otia fecit!
After the formation of the third constitution, in 1798, a new seal was thought desirable, and one was adopted, by an act for its alteration, as follows: —
“ The great seal shall be made of silver, and the size of two and a quarter inches in diameter.” The device shall be as follows ; “ On one side a view of the seashore, with a ship bearing the flag of the United States riding at anchor near a wharf, receiving on board hogsheads of tobacco and bales of cotton, emblematic of the exports of the State; at a small distance a boat landing from the interior of the State, with hogsheads, &c., on board, representing her internal traffic; in the back part of the same side a man plowing, and at a small distance a flock of sheep in different postures, shaded by a flourishing tree. The motto on this side, (Agriculture ancl Commerce, 1799.’
“ The other side to contain three pillars supporting an arch, with the word f Constitution ’ engraven within the same, emblematic of the constitution supported by the three departments of government, viz. the legislative, judicial, and executive. The first pillar to have engraven on its base ‘Wisdom’ the second ‘Justice’ and the third ‘Moderation! On the right of the last pillar a man standing with a632
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drawn sword, representing the aid of the military in defence of the Constitution. The motto, 'State of Georgia, 1799.’ ”
The law further directed the old seal to be broken up in the presence of his Excellency the Governor.
On the 5th of December, 1799, a supplementary act was passed, and received the approval of the Governor, which stated that, inasmuch as the law respecting the devices on the side which had the pillars could not be completely carried out, as an impression of the words on the pillars “ would be illegible or unintelligible/’ so much of the law as related to them was repealed, “ and the great seal, as now deposited and in operation in the Secretary of State’s office, with the words 'Wisdom/ 'Justice/ and 'Moderation’ engraven in a wreath on the separate pillars, emblematic of the several departments of the government, be, and is hereby sanctioned, ratified, and declared the great seal of Georgia.”
The same act ratified all papers that had been sealed previously with this seal, and the same has continued to be the seal and arms of Georgia down to the present time.
Florida. — In 1867, the Secretary of State wrote me : "We have no State flag; the only flag we recognize is that of the stars and stripes which floats from the top of the State House.” The State seal at that time, which had no particular history, was adopted in 1846, and represented a map of the peninsula of Florida, with vessels passing to and fro upon the sea to the westward of it. At the bottom of the seal a hill, with palm, olive, oak. Legend, "State oe Florida.” The seal was two and three-fourths inches in diameter, and had for its motto, " God is our trust.”1 Under its present constitution* it has adopted a white flag blazoned with the State arms; viz., "An' Indian upon a bank, scattering flowers; the sun sinking or rising behind distant hills; a river in the middle-ground with a side-wheel steamer. The flag is six feet six inches by six feet.” 2 The State Constitution adopted in 1838 directs, —
" There shall be a seal of the State which shall be kept by the Governor, and used by him officially, with such devices as the Governor first elected may direct, and the present seal of the Territory shall be the seal of the State, until otherwise directed by the General Assembly.” The Constitution was framed in 1838, but Florida was not adopted into the Union until March, 1845.
1	Letter of Benjamin F. Allen, Secretary of State.
2	Letter of I. F. Barnard, Nov. 16, 1871.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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On Wednesday, Dec. 2, 1846, the committee on the Executive Department reported to the Senate, —
“ That his Excellency the Governor has placed in their hands the seal which he has prepared, and the committee submit the same for the inspection of the Senate; ” and further recommended a resolution, which was adopted, that the seal prepared by the direction of his Excellency, William D. Moseley, first Governor elected (representing a map of Florida), be approved and adopted, which was accordingly done; and that seal was continued in use until the adoption of the present Constitution.
The seal of Florida now in use is about two and a quarter inches in diameter, and has for devices in the foreground an Indian scattering flowers; in the middle-ground is a river, on which a paddle-wheeled steamboat is seen ascending; in the background is a range of mountains, behind which a sun is setting or rising (?), and a cocoa-nut tree out of all proportion with the rest of the surroundings. Around the seal is the legend, “ Great Seal of the State of Florida/’ and motto, “In God ive Trust” both in Roman capitals, two stars argent dividing the legend from the motto.
Alabama. — The old seal of Alabama was a rude outline map of the State displayed on a tree, without legend or motto.
The present seal was adopted by an act of the General Assembly of the State, Dec. 29, 1868, and is thus officially described in the Governor’s proclamation, March 23, 1869: “The seal is in the form of a circle, and two and a quarter inches in diameter; near the edge is the word ' Alabama,’ and opposite, at the same distance from the edge, are the words ‘ Great Seal.’ In the centre of the seal an eagle is represented with raised wings alighting upon the national shield, with three arrows in his left talon. The eagle holds in his beak a streamer, on which immediately over the wings are the words, “ Here we rest.” The crest-word, which gives name to the State, signifies “ The land of rest.”1
I have no information concerning the State flag or colors.
Mississippi. — The State of Mississippi has never had a separate or distinctive flag. Up to Oct. 20, 1795, it was a Spanish province; on that day, a treaty was signed at Madrid, by which its territory was relinquished to the United States. On the 29th of February, 1797, the stars and stripes were, for the first time, displayed at Natchez.
1 Letter of P. Ragland, Secretary of State, May 20, 1873.634
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
Hon. J. F. H. Claiborne wrote me, under date, Natchez, March 15, 1879 : “They float there now. Our people have been associated with them on many fields of glory, as our fathers were before us, and our daily prayer is, that they may float for ages to come, over a free and united country, — the one great and indivisible republic.” 1
The seal and arms of Mississippi are simply an American eagle with outspread wings, occupying the entire surface of a silver circular field. In the right talon of the eagle is a bundle of four arrows, and the left talon holds an olive branch fruited. Around the outer circle of the seal is the legend, “ The Great Seal of the State of Mississippi,” in Roman capitals ; a silver six-pointed star in the base. The diameter of the seal is two inches.
Louisiana. — On the 21st of January, 1861, a flag with fifteen stars, representing the number of slave States, was raised on the dome of the
capitol of Louisiana at Baton Rouge when the legislature was in session, and on the 26th, when Louisiana seceded and adopted the ordinance of secession, Governor Moore entered the hall with a military officer bearing a pelican flag, which was placed in the hands of President Mouton. The State flag of Louisiana, taken from the State House at Baton Rouge in 1862, was of blue bunting, with a large white star in the centre, and a pelican feeding its young from its own breast painted upon it. The flag hoisted on the revenue-cutter McCleland, when she was traitorously surrendered at New Orleans to the rebels, and which is now in the possession of the Rev. Morgan Dix, was an ordinary French tricolored ensign, with a circle of seven stars in the blue bar. Subsequently, the convention adopted as the State flag of Louisiana a flag of thirteen horizontal stripes, — four blue, six white, and three red, commencing with the blue at the top, and alternating with the white. The union was red, with its sides equal to the width of the seven upper stripes, and resting on a white stripe; in its centre was a single pale, yellow, five-pointed star. I have been unable to ascertain what flag or colors, if any, the State has adopted or put into use since the civil war.
The seal of Louisiana is circular, and one and three-quarter inches in diameter. On its white or silver circular shield is represented a pelican standing on her nest filled with young ones in the attitude of
1 Letters, Hon. J. F. H. Claiborne, March 13 and April 21, 1879.
Arms of Louisiana.STATE SEALS; ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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protection and defence, and in the act of feeding them, all sharing alike her maternal assiduity. This device occupies the whole of the shield. Over the head of the bird hang the scales of justice evenly balanced, and a circle of eighteen stars around the upper part of the shield signifies the number of States in the Union in 1812, at the time of the admission of Louisiana. Over these stars, on the outer edge of the shield, is the motto, “ Union, Justice, ctncl Confidence” and around the lower edge the legend, ci State of Louisiana ; ” both the motto and legend are in Roman capital letters, and separated by two white five-pointed stars.
Texas was first settled in 1792. In 1827, the united forces of the districts of Nacogdoches and Aysh Bayou declared the province of Texas free and independent of Mexico, and hoisted a flag with the words ‘Liberty and independence’ upon it. The flag consisted of a red and white stripe, emblematic of the union between the red and white men; and a red and white cockade was adopted, a treaty having been entered into between the Nacogdoches independents and the chiefs of twenty-three tribes of Indians. These revolutionists christened the new republic “ The Republic of Fredonia.” 1 It was evidently short-lived. Texas continued a part of the territory of Mexico until 1836, when, by a revolution, she became an independent State.
Mrs. W. G. Venson, who died at Crawford in 1879, claimed that she gave Texas the lone star on its coat of arms. In the summer of 1835, she made a flag containing a large single star, and presented it to a regiment. It was first unfurled on the 8th of January, 1836.
A letter from a young volunteer, dated at Camp Fannin, Rio Brazos, Jan. 28, 1836, states: —
“ Yesterday our battalion was paraded, marched into town, drawn up in line opposite to the flag-staff, and at the firing of a signal cannon a flag containing a single star and the stripes, and the word Independence, was run up by the hands of Mr. Hartwell Walker (son of William Walker, Esq., of Portsmouth, N. H.), who took so conspicuous a part in the capture of San Antonio de Bexar. He is now the sailing master of the schooner of war Invincible. At the moment our flag was run up our battalion presented arms, and fired a volley in salute.
1 Philadelphia Gazette, Feb. 8, 1827, and Nachitoches Courier, Dec. 26, 1826.
Arms of Texas636
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
Meantime the steamboat Yellowstone, fourteen days from New Orleans, crowded with volunteers, appeared in the offing, and came up the river as the flag was hoisted. We counter-marched and formed a line on the beach, and, as she passed, presented arms, fired a volley/ and cheered; a cannon from the shore and the boat, and three cheers from the passengers, answered and joined in the salute and welcome? 1
The national standard of the republic of Texas, adopted Dec. 10, 1836, was of “an azure ground, with a large golden star central.” Another flag in use, the same year, had a plain red ground with a five-pointed white star in the centre, and the letters T. E. X. A. S. in white between the points. The national flag adopted Jan. 25, 1839,. had a blue perpendicular stripe next the staff, one-third the width of the whole length of the flag, with a white five-pointed star in its centre, the fly of the flag being divided into two horizontal stripes of equal breadth, the upper stripe white, the lower red. The naval flag adopted April 9, 1836, was the same as our national stars and stripes, excepting that the Union had but one white star. Auxiliary flags were authorized to be adopted by the President, but there is no record of any having been used.2
Since her admission into the Union, Texas has legalized no State flag.
During the struggle with Mexico, Texas adopted as an official seal a white or silver star of five points on an azure field, encircled by branches of live oak and olive. Around the outer circle were the words, “ Republic of Texas,” in Roman capital letters. The live oak («quercus mrens), which abounds in the forests of Texas, is a strong and durable timber much used in ship-building, and forming an important article of export.
The present seal and arms of Texas, as established by law, is as follows: —
“ The said seal shall be a star of five points encircled by an olive and live oak branches, and the words, ' The State of Texas.5 55
Arkansas, as formed from the French territory of the Louisiana Purchase, was admitted into the Union in 1836. It obtained its name in 1812 from the name of its principal river, which is derived from the Indian word Kansas, “ smoky water,” with the French prefix of Arc, a “ bow.55
1	Philadelphia newspaper.
2	Letter of John A. Green, Secretary of State, Sept. 27, 1866.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
637
The arms and seal of this State, adopted by an act of the General Assembly, approved May 3, 1864, are thus described in it: —
“ An eagle at the bottom, holding a scroll in its beak, inscribed ‘Regnant populi/ a bundle of arrows in one claw, and an olive branch in the other; a shield, covering the breast of the eagle, engraved with a steamboat at top, a beehive and plow in the middle, and a sheaf of wheat at the bottom; the Goddess of Liberty at the top, holding a wreath in her right hand, a pole in her left hand, surmounted by a liberty cap, and surrounded by a circle of stars, outside of which is a circle of rays; the figure of an angel on the left, inscribed ' Mercy/ a sword on the right hand, inscribed f Justice/ surrounded with the words, 'Seal of the State of Arkansas.5
“ All official seals in the State shall present the same impressions, emblems, and devices presented by the seal of the State.
“ The State seal is two inches in diameter.”
Such is the law; but artists have taken considerable liberty with the devices, a specimen of which is shown in the illustration.
I have also an official engraving of the seal in which the shield is supported on the breast of an American eagle, with the olive branch and arrows in his talons, and the motto, “ Regnant populi,” on a scroll issuing from his beak, and twined around one of his wings. The figure of Liberty is standing in a cloud above the eagle’s head, with a semicircle of thirteen stars over her head. The figure of Mercy is holding up the shield on the eagle’s breast, and the word “ Mercy ” is in a scroll over her head. The sword, inscribed "Justice” on its blade, has its point towards the shield, and its hilt rests against the circle, on which is the legend, “ Seal of the State of Arkansas,” in Roman capitals.
Tennessee. — hTo State flag has been adopted by law by Tennessee. The volunteer forces of the State have been accustomed to carry such regimental colors or flags as may have pleased their fancy. “ In the good old days before the Rebellion the stars and stripes were considered all that the volunteers needed to wTave over them.”1
The devices on both the seal and coat of arms wTere adopted by the convention of 1796, the year Tennessee was admitted into the
1 Letters, W. I. Fletcher, Secretary of State, Dec. 8, 1866 ; J. Berrien Lindsley, Secretary of Tennessee Historical Society, Jan. 16, 1880. Letter, Governor of Tennessee, Jan. 31, 1867.
Arms of Arkansas638
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
Union. The name “ Ten-as-se ” is said to signify a curved spoon, and is derived from the Indian name for the river, — “ The river with the big bend.”
The seal is circular, with a white field, the upper half of which is occupied on the right by a plow, on the centre by a sheaf of wheat,
and on the left by a stalk of cotton. Underneath these emblems, extending across the entire middle field, is the word “ Agriculture,” denoting that the first reliance of the State should be upon products of the soil. The lower half is occupied by a loaded barge, with the word “ Commerce ” below the water, indicating that the prosperity of all may be promoted through this means. Over the sheaf of wheat are the numerals “ xvi,” denoting that this was the sixteenth State admitted into the Union. Around the border is the legend, “ The G-reat Seal of the State of Tennessee, * 1796.* ”
Kentucky. — There is no law prescribing a State flag,1 but the one universally adopted by the militia and volunteer forces is a blue silk
flag of regulation dimensions, with a blue fringed border, and the State arms and motto painted in the centre, also a scroll, bearing the name of the regiment and arm of the service beneath.2
Kentuckv was so named in 1792 for its
i/
principal river.
The original design for the State seal as con-Arms of Kentucky. teiTiplated by law, says the Adjutant-General, in a letter dated Feb. 17, 1867, has never been correctly executed.
I am indebted to Colonel John Mason Brown, of Frankfort, whose grandfather was one of those selected by the legislature to present a design for the State coat of arms, for the following description of it.
The act providing a seal adopted by the first legislature of the State, Dec. 20, 1792, has never been changed by law, and was as follows: —
“ Be it enacted by the General Assembly that the Governor be empowered, and is hereby required, to provide, at the public charge, a seal for this Commonwealth, and procure the same to be engraved with the following device, viz.: —
1 See note on p. 655.	2 D. W. Lindsay, Adjutant-General, Feb. 15, 1866.
Arms of Tennessee.STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
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“ Two friends embracing, with the name of the State over their heads, and around about them the following motto, ‘ United we stand, divided ive fall! ”
Colonel Brown had it by tradition from his grandfather, the Hon. John Brown, first United States Senator from Kentucky, that the original intent of the seal was to represent two friends in hunter’s garb, their right hands clasped, their left resting on each other’s shoulders, their feet on the verge of a precipice, which gave significance to the legend. Unfortunately, the engraving of the State has uniformly been intrusted to mere type-foundry die-sinkers, devoid of taste, education, or ideas of art. As a consequence, the present burlesque figures.
The impression of the present seal represents two gentlemen in dress-coats, apparently shaking hands. Over their heads are thirteen stars arranged in a semicircular line, and the legend, “ Seal of Kentucky.” Around the lower part of the seal in a scroll is the motto, “ United ive stand, divided we fall.” The diameter of the seal is one and three-fourths of an inch.
The device upon the military commissions issued by the State represents the two hunters, and the motto in a scroll flying from the beak of an American eagle over their heads, while a log cabin, an iron-clad steamer, guns, a mortar, two soldiers, American flags, &c., support the shield.
Ohio has no legally authorized State flag. The militia of the State in the Indian wars and in the war of 1812, and the Ohio troops
in the national service during the war with Mexico and in the civil war, carried the stars and stripes. The regimental colors differed from the ordinary flag only in having a large eagle, with the number of the regiment and the prescribed number of stars above.1
Ohio was so called in 1802 from its southern boundary. The w^ord is Indian, and means ‘ beautiful.’
The constitution provided that there should be a great seal of the State, but for sixty years there was no legislative act ordering one.2 This oversight in legislation is singular, and that the fact should have remained unknown for more than half a century, that there was no
1	Letter, William H. Smith, Secretary of State, Dee. 29, 1866.
2	The annual report of the Secretary of State for 1865 contains an historical and descriptive account of the great seal of Ohio, from which this is condensed.
Arms of Ohio.640
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law establishing the identity of that which among nations is regarded as the highest evidence of the authenticity of the acts of the Executive, is not a little remarkable.
On the 25th of March, 1803, the first General Assembly of the State of Ohio enacted “ that the Secretary of State shall procure a seal two inches in diameter for the use of the State, a seal for the Supreme Court and each clerk thereof, one and three-fourths of an inch in diameter, and one for each county, an inch and a half in diameter ; and on all these seals was to be engraved the following device : —
“ On the right side near the bottom a sheaf of wheat, and on the left a bundle of seventeen arrows, both standing erect ; in the background, and rising above the sheaf and arrows, a mountain, over which shall appear a rising sun.” The State seal to be surrounded by these words: “The Great Seal of the State of Ohio.”
About two years later, Feb. 19, 1805, an act was passed repealing the above act, and enacting another law on the subject, which omitted, however, all provision for a State seal. Subsequently, in 1831, the law of 1805 was repealed, and nothing enacted in place of it save a single clause, that the Secretary should procure a seal for each organized county, where the same had not been done already, “of the same description and device as those procured for other counties.”
Without any legalized form, and left to the capriciousness of taste, it was not long before the simple device of the first General Assembly for a State seal was modified. A favorite device seemed to be, on the foreground a sheaf of wheat and a bundle of arrows, sometimes standing erect, sometimes recumbent ; in the background a range of mountains, over which appeared a rising sun ; at the foot of the mountains, and between them and the sheaf and arrows, flowed a stream, “La belle Riviere,” of course, on the bosom of which floated a ‘ broad-horn/ a boat familiar to pioneer history. But this ceased in time to be attractive. Less than a quarter of a century after Ohio was admitted into the Union, when the vast scheme of internal improvements was inaugurated, the Ohio River, in the devices of the seal, became a canal, and the f broad-horn ’ gave place to a canal-boat. In some of the seals the sheaf of wheat alone occupies the left bank of the canal, and the arrows, reduced to three in number, vainly attempt to obscure the rays of the sun rising over the mountains. Mr. Smith, the Secretary of State, who made these researches, considering there was no law on the subject, and the size of the seal was inadequate for the proper representation of the devices, recommended “ new legislationSTATE SEALS; ARMS; FLAGS; AND COLORS.
641
on the subject, and an entirely new device, or a revision of the old one/’ and stated there had been a total lack of art and good taste in the official papers of the State, as compared'with the elegant documents received from other States.
The original device for the great seal of Ohio, though unattractive to the eye, was appropriate, and replete with historic interest and sentiment. The sheaf of wheat on the right imported the great agricultural advantages, — the chief source of wealth of the new State ; the bundle of seventeen arrows on the left the union of the States, — Ohio being the seventeenth admitted, — also symbolizing strength and authority. The seventeen States united in one general head, thus bound together possessing power sufficient to resist all opposition; the rising sun appearing over a range of mountains indicated the position of Ohio, the first State born of the immortal ordinance of 1787. In the light of to-day, this simple device is a wonderful history. In 1865, or but little more than half a century, Ohio had become in population and wealth the third State of the Union, and relatively the equal of any in the appliances of civilization, — in what constitutes the moral wealth of a people.
“ From a time long anterior to the time when the engraved devices of the Lacedemonians were brought into use, to the present, the witness of a seal has been essential to all transactions. It is the highest evidence of authority, and its assurance that whatever it authenticates is a deliberate and considered act.”
Such being the fact, says Mr. Smith in his report, and the constitution requiring a seal, the importance of a fixed law upon the seal of the State could not be questioned; and, in accordance with his suggestions, a law was enacted on the 6th of April, 1866, to go into effect on the 1st of July, which directed “that the coat of arms of the State of Ohio shall consist of the following device: —
“ A shield, upon which shall be engraved on the left in the foreground a bundle of seventeen arrows; to the right of the arrows a sheaf of wheat, both standing erect; in the background, and rising above the sheaf and arrows, a range of mountains, over which shall appear a rising sun; between the base of the mountains and the arrows and sheaf in the left foreground, a river shall be represented flowing towards the right foreground. Supporting the shield on the right shall be the figure of a farmer, with implements of agriculture and sheaves of wheat standing erect and recumbent, and in the distance locomotive and train of cars; supporting the shield on the left shall be the figure of a smith, with anvil and hammer, and in the distance,
41642
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
water with a steamboat. At the bottom of the shield there shall be a motto, in these words, * Impermm in Imperio! ”
The second section of the same act provides that the great seal shall be two and one-half inches in diameter, on which shall be inscribed the device within the shield, surrounded with the legend, " The Great Seal of the Stat^ of Ohio.”
The seals of the supreme court and counties are smaller, with the same devices and appropriate legends.
Arms of Michigan.
Michigan. — No part of the United States has been under so many national standards as Michigan. It has been governed by three sovereignties, and five times its flag has been changed. It was under the flag of France from 1622 to 1760, and under the flag of England from 1760 to 1796. In that year the stars and stripes were raised at Detroit by Captain Porter, commanding a detachment of Wayne’s army. At the surrender of Hull at Detroit, in 1812, the flag of England was again hoisted. In 1813, Perry’s victory on Lake Erie resulted in restoring Michigan to the Union, and the star-spangled banner floated once more on her shores and lakes. Eeb. 23, 1837, Stevens T. Mason, the first Governor of Michigan, presented to the Brady Guard of Detroit a flag, now in the possession of the State, having on one side the devices and inscriptions of the State seal, with a Brady Guard and lady; on the reverse, his own portrait. This was the first flag bearing the State arms, and was carried by the first uniformed company of militia in the State.
From that time forth, numerous flags and banners were in use on which were the State arms, with various devices and emblems; but until 1865 there had been adopted no official flag of the State. In that year, a flag combining the State and national arms, recommended by John Robinson, adjutant-general, and approved by the Governor, was made in Philadelphia in June, and was first unfurled at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument in the Soldiers’ National
O
Cemetery at Gettysburg, July 4, 1865. It is now the recognized standard of Michigan, and is carried by its regiments side by side with the stars and stripes.
The flag is made up on one side of the State arms on a blue field, with the appropriate inscription, “ Si quceris peninsulctm cimoenam, cir-cumspice” “ If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you,” andSTATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
643
with the significant motto on the shield, “ Tuebor” “ I will defend.” On the reverse side, the arms of the United States, with the motto, “ E Pluribus Unum” 1
The Secretary of State wrote me in 1866, he had often searched the State archives to find something of the early history of the State seal, but without success. Michigan applied for admission into the Union Jan. 25, 1833, but was not admitted until Jan 26, 1837. Its name is derived from the lake which bears from its shape the Indian name for a fish weir or trap; but another authority says the English meaning of the Indian word is “ a great lake.”
The present State seal was adopted and in use in 1835, when Michigan was still a Territory. The seal is two and one-half inches in diameter. The device on the shield appears to be a hunter, armed in the foreground, with his back towards a mountain, and a rising sun, in the background; or, it may be, a hunter standing on a point of land, surrounded by a prairie, and looking towards the setting sun. At the top of the shield is the word “ Tuebor; ” underneath it, in a scroll, is the motto, “Si Quceris Peninsulam Amcenam, Circvmspice” The shield is supported on each side by two stags rampant. The crest is the American eagle, standing on a scroll, with the motto, “ E Pluribus Unum” in a scroll over his head. Around the seal is the legend, “ The Great Seal of the State of Michigan, a.d. mdcccxxxv.”
Indiana has no legally authorized State flag. “ A State flag ? There is no such piece of bunting in existence. The buffalo and the
wood-chopper on the State seal are the best we have, and they have never as yet got on canvas, their chief duty being to properly guard and cherish the official documents issued under the gubernatorial hand. State legislatures have been remiss in giving Indiana a State flag.” 2
Indiana was admitted into the Union in 1816, and takes its name from the Indians.
The State seal is circular. In the lower portion is represented a scene of prairie and woodland, with the surface undulating, descriptive of the predominant features of the State. In the foreground is a buffalo, an animal once abounding in great numbers in this region,
1 Letter, Governor Charles M. Caswell, March 3, 1879, accompanying hook on ‘Flags of Michigan.’
- Indianapolis News, March, 1879.644
STATE SEALS; ARMS, FLAGS; AND COLORS.
apparently startled by the axe of the woodman or pioneer, who is seen on the left felling the trees of the forest, describing the march of civilization westward. In the distance, on the right, is seen the sun first appearing above the verge of the horizon. In a half-circle spanning this scene is the legend, “ Indiana State Seal.” Around the outer margin of the whole is a plain green border, surrounded by a simple black line.
Illinois has never adopted a State flag, but makes use of the national colors on all occasions. The devices upon the regimental colors
of the State militia have varied with the taste of their donors, or are at the caprice of the regimental officers.1
During the civil war, many of the regiments carried, besides the national ensign, a regimental color, generally presented to them; but two of these have the State arms, the others have various designs, viz.: —
Arms of Illinois	A blue field, with Governor Yates in the
centre; the same, with Lincoln in the centre ; many with the American eagle and motto. Sometimes a national flag was presented, inscribed with the names of the battles in which the regiment had been engaged.1
Illinois was admitted as a State Dec. 3, 1818. It is named for its principal river, and the name is said to signify the ‘ river of men/
There is no legal description of the State seal of Illinois. In 1819, the Secretary of State was ordered to procure one, but the law prescribed no design. The seal in use is two inches in diameter, and bears around its circumference the legend, “ Seal of the State of Illinois, * Aug. 26tl1 1818.* ” In the centre, an American spread eagle perched on an American shield; back of the shield and helping to support it, an olive branch. In its beak a scroll, containing the motto, “State Sovereignty — National Union” The dates 1867-1818 appear on a rock to the left of the eagle, and a rising sun gilds the background on the left.
The State arms are, by law, an eagle sitting on a boulder in a prairie. A rising sun in the background. Motto, in a scroll from the beak of the eagle, “ State Sovereignty — National Union.”
When the State was first organized, the Governor’s private seal was used.
1 Letters, H. Hilliard, Adjutant-General, March 3 and 10, 1879STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
645
In 1867, the f Chicago Tribune ’ said : “ It is proposed to f renew’ the State seal of Illinois, from which we infer that the present die is worn out, and that a new one must be procured. The motto upon the seal is 'State Sovereignty — National Union!	It appears
to us that this is a favorable time for changing the motto, and adapting it to existing facts. There is no such thing as ‘ State sovereignty ’ in this country. Illinois has sent more than two hundred thousand soldiers into the field within five years to overthrow and expunge the very idea of State sovereignty. Sovereignty implies the power to do every thing that a government may do, — the power to coin money, to conclude treaties, to make war and peace, and to secede from the Union. The Rebellion was instituted upon the theory of State sovereignty. It was crushed by the opposite theory. Let the ‘ lost cause ’ cease to be emblazoned upon the State seal of Illinois.”
Missouri. — The flag used by the militia of Missouri has the arms of the State blazoned on a white field.
Missouri was so called in 1821, when it was admitted into the Union, from its principal river, the word meaning ‘ muddy water.’
The seal of the State is prescribed by an act, approved Jan. 11, 1822, as follows : —
“Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, that the device for an armorial achievement for the State of Missouri shall be as follows, to wit : —
“ Arms parted per pale ; on the dexter side gules, the white or grizzly bear of Missouri passant gardant proper, on a chief eng railed azure, a crescent argent ; on the sinister side argent, the arms of the United States ; the whole within a band inscribed with the words, ‘ United
WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL.’
"For the Crest. Over a helmet full-faced grated with six bars or, a cloud proper, from which ascends a star argent, and above it a constellation of twenty-three smaller stars argent, on an azure field surrounded by a cloud proper.
“ Supporters. On each side a# white or grizzly bear of Missouri rampant gardant proper, standing on a scroll inscribed with the motto, c Salus popidi suprema lex est o’ and under the scroll the numerical letters f mdcccxx.’
“ And the great seal of the State shall be so engraved as to present646
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
by its impression the device of the armorial achievement aforesaid, surrounded by a scroll inscribed with the words, ‘ The Great Seal of the State of Missouri/ in Roman capitals, which seal shall be in a circular form, and not more than two and one-half inches in diameter.”
The act was to be in force from its passage.
Iowa. — The Secretary of Iowa, in 1866, wrote me: “ This State has no State flag other than the stars and stripes, a large interest in which she claims.”
Iowa was admitted into the Union Dec. 26, 1846. It was named
for its principal river, its Indian name meaning ‘ the sleepy or drowsy ones.’
By an act of the General Assembly, adopted Feb. 25, 1847, the Secretary of State was authorized to procure a seal two inches in diameter for the great seal of the State, “ upon which shall be engraven the following device, surrounded by the words, ‘The Great Seal of the State of Iowa.’
“ A sheaf and field of standing wheat, with a sickle and other farming utensils; on the left side, near the bottom, a lead furnace and a pile of pig-lead; on the right side the citizen soldier, with a plow in his rear, supporting the American flag and liberty cap with his right hand, and his gun with his left in the centre and near the bottom; the Mississippi River in the rear of the whole, with the steamer Iowa under way; an eagle in the upper edge, holding in his beak a scroll, with the following inscription upon it: ‘ Our liberties we prize, ancl our rights we will maintain.’ ”
Wisconsin was under the government of France ninety-three years, under Great Britain twenty years, was governed by Virginia
one year, by the Territory of Ohio sixteen years, by Indiana Territory nine years, and by Michigan Territory eighteen years. She continued a Territory of the United States nearly twelve years, when, on the 13th of March, 1848, she became the 'thirtieth State of the Union, and was formally admitted May 29,1848.
In 1863, a State flag was adopted, which is of dark blue silk, with the arms of Wisconsin (with the words “E Pluribus Unum ” left out) painted or embroideredSTATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS. 647
on a gray background, surrounded by a circle with a gilt edge; the arms of the United States and the motto “ JE Pluribus Unum” beinsr
O
painted or embroidered on the other side.1
The following is a copy of the joint resolution of the legislature of the State of Wisconsin establishing the flag: —
“ Resolved, by the Senate, the Assembly concurring, that the following be and is hereby adopted as the design for a State flag for the State of Wisconsin : —
“ State flag to be of dark blue silk, with the arms of the State of Wisconsin painted or embroidered in silk on the obverse side, and the arms of the United States, as prescribed in paragraph 1435 of ‘ New Army Regulations,’ painted or embroidered in silk on the reverse side ; the name of the regiment, when used as a regimental flag, to be in a scroll beneath the State arms.
“ The size of the regimental colors to be six feet six inches fly, and six feet deep on the pike; the length of pike for said colors, including spear and ferrule, to be nine feet ten inches ; the fringe, yellow; cords and tassels, blue and white silk intermixed.
“ Approved March 25, 1863.”
Wisconsin was so called from its principal river, the Indian name meaning f wild rushing wave,’ or channel.
There is no official description of the arms and seal on file in the office of the Secretary of State. The seal as it exists in fact is two and a half inches in diameter, and is half surrounded with the legend, “ Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin.” For its device it has a shield argent, on the centre of which is borne the shield of the United States arms, supported on the dexter hand by an anchor, and on the sinister by the arm of a mechanic holding a hammer ready to strike. At the point or base of the shield is a spade and pickaxe crossed, and over them two stalks of grain; and over the shield of the United States arms in a scroll the motto,“F Pluribus Unum,” and over it again a plow. The State shield is supported on the sinister hand by a sailor, and on the dexter hand by a laborer in his shirtsleeves, resting on a pick in his left hand, and with his right arm on the upper corner of the shield; at the point of the shield are two cornucopias pouring out their treasures upon the earth, and around the lower half of the seal thirteen stars arranged in a single row. The crest is a beaver standing on a roll, and over his back in a scroll the motto, “ Forward
1 Letters, Thomas S. Allen, Secretary of"State, Sept. 19, 1866 ; Governor William E. Smith, March 3, 1879.648
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
Minnesota. — There were no State flags carried by the Minnesota regiments during the civil war, as in the case of some other States,
and no State colors have been adopted; but the volunteers from the State carried regimental colors, battle-flags, &C.1
Minnesota was admitted into the Union May 11,1858. The name is Indian, and signifies ‘ whitish water/
The great seal of the State was adopted in 1858. The device is intended to represent the encroachments of the domain of civilization upon that of the barbarians. As the white man appears with the plow, the red man recedes towards the setting sun. The gun resting on a stump is an indication of the transitional period, showing the partial necessity of guarding against an attack, and implying that the settler cannot as yet wholly rely upon agriculture as a means of support. The water-fall is merely a natural feature of Minnesota scenery. Surrounding the seal is the legend, “The Great Seal of the State of Minnesota, 1858,” and over the landscape device, in a scroll the motto, “ Etoile du Nord'.” The seal is two inches in diameter.
California has adopted no State flag or regimental colors for her volunteer militia. The San Francisco Society of Pioneers has had in
its possession for years what was supposed to be the identical bear flag hoisted by Fremont at Sonoma, in 1846; but recently General Joseph W. Eevere, who with his own hands hauled down the flag, has claimed that the real original has ever since been in his possession. A “bear flag” was presented to the f California Hundred/ the first company organ-Arms of California. ized on the Pacific Coast for the war in the East, by Daniel Norcross, Esq., of San Francisco, prior to the departure of the company, Dec. 11,1862. This flag was carried by the company through nearly three years of active service, including twenty-three general engagements, and under it three of the company commanders and many of the men were killed. On the arrival of the company in Massachusetts, an American flag was presented to it by Miss Abbie A. Lord, of Charlestown, Mass. It was never unfurled, except to enshroud the remains of the first company commander, Captain J. S.
1 Letter from H. P. Van Cleve, Adjutant-General, Jan. 12, 1880.
Arms of MinnesotaSTATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
649
Keed. These flags are now in the possession of the Adjutant-General of California, having been presented to the State by George W. Fowle, Jr., one of the ‘ Hundred,’ with a descriptive letter, signed by all the survivors of the company, dated “ Camp of Cavalry Forces, Fairfax Court House, Va., July 20, 1865.” The colors of the Eighth Infantry Kegiment of California Volunteers were turned over to the State by Colonel A. L. Anderson, who commanded the regiment. They were never carried in battle.1
California was admitted a State of the Union Sept. 9, 1850. The origin of the name is uncertain. It was given to it by the early Spanish discoverers.
The arms of California represent in the foreground Minerva, with helmet, buckler, spear, and corselet, seated on a rock near the bank of an extensive bay or river which winds its course among the majestic mountains on either side. Her spear is grasped in the right hand erect, while the left rests on the top of her shield by her side; at her feet, beside the shield, is a grizzly bear, significant of the snow region round about. On the right is a hardy miner with his pick seeking the golden treasures secreted among the rocks; along the centre is seen a majestic bay with two clipper ships in full view, indicating that commerce is one of the chief reliances of the people. Above the snow-clad mountains which bound the view are cumulus clouds and the Greek word “ Eureka,” “ I have found,” and over all is a semicircle of thirty-one silver stars. Around the outer rim of the seal is the legend, “ The Great Seal of the State of California.” The seal is three and one-fourth inches in diameter.
Oregon was admitted into the Union Feb. 14, 1859, and has no State flag.
Oregon has adopted for its arms and seal a shield, surrounded by
the legend, “ State of Oregon, 1857,” inside of which is a circle of stars equal to the number of States in the Union at the date of her admission; over the shield is the American eagle; at the base of the shield, sheaves of wheat, a plow, rake, and pick; over these, in a scroll, “The Union,” in Eoman capitals. In the upper half of the shield there is a landscape, with an emigrant wagon and deer in the foreground, and in the background a sea, with a steamship and brig wearing the American colors. Oregon was so called from the Indian
1 Letter of Samuel H. Bacdus, Adjutant-General, Jan. 17, 1880.
Arms of Oregon.650
STATE SEALS; ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
name of its principal river, which signifies ‘ river of the west/ According to other authorities, the name is derived from Oregano, the Indian name of a wild marjoram, which grows abundantly on the Pacific coast. The territorial seal was widely different from the State seal in its device, and had for motto, “ Alis Volat Propmis?
Kansas was admitted as a State Jan. 29, 1861, and has never adopted a State flag. The State arms have usually been placed on the
regimental colors of the State troops.1 In the Adjutant-General’s office there is a flag which is labelled, “ This is the only flag which was on the battle-field when General Lyon was killed. It belonged to Company H, Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry. The brave Thomas Miller was killed and two other members of the company were wounded while conveying this grand old flag; but it was finally brought from the field, as you see it, — blood-stained, bullet-marked, tattered and torn. Wilson Creek, Aug. 10, 1861.
“ The flag was made by the Misses Emma R and Ellen E. Enos, of Lawrence, Kansas, and by them presented to Company D, of the Second Kansas, in June, 1861.”
Kansas is an Indian word, signifying ‘ the smoky water.’
The seal of the State as authorized by the legislature has the following design and device : —
“ The east is represented by the rising sun on the right-hand corner of the seal; to the left of it, commerce is represented by a river and a steamboat. In the foreground, agriculture is represented, as the basis of the future prosperity of the State, by a settler’s cabin, and a man plowing with a couple of horses; beyond this is a train of ox-wagons going west; in the middle-ground beyond is seen a herd of buffalo retreating, pursued by two Indians on horseback; around the top is the motto in the scroll, ‘Ad Astra per Asperal and beneath it a cluster of thirty-four stars. The seal is surrounded by the legend, ‘ Great Seal of the State of Kansas, Jan. 29, 1861.’ ”
The diameter of the seal is two and one-half inches.
Nevada has no State flag, but is proud to float the American stars and stripes.2
1	Letter, Hon. F. G. Adams, Secretary of State, March 4, 1879.
2	Letters, C. W. Noteman, Secretary of State, Dec. 22, 1866 ; Miss Fras. Hodgkin-son, State Librarian, Jan. 17, 1880.
Arms of Kansas.STATE SEALS; ARMS; FLAGS, AND COLORS.
651
Nevada, a part of ancient Louisiana, was formed from the Indian Territory in 1861, and admitted into the Union Oct. 31, 1864. Its name is derived from the Spanish, signifying ' white with snow.’
The State Constitution of Nevada was adopted as early as Sept. 7, 1864, and the seal now in use was virtually adopted at that time, and has "been in use since; but it was not formally adopted by any legislative enactment until Feb. 24, 1866. The design is, viz. —
“ In the foreground two large mountains, at the base of which, on the right, there shall be located a quartz-mill, and on the left, a tunnel penetrating the silver leads of the mountain, with a miner running out a car-load of ore, and a team loaded with ore for the mill. Immediately in the foreground, there shall be emblems indicative of the agricultural resources of the State, as follows : a plow, a sheaf, and a sickle. In the middle-ground, a train of railroad cars passing a mountain gorge, also a telegraph line extending along the line of the railroad. In the extreme background, a range of snow-clad mountains, with a rising sun in the east. Thirty-six stars to encircle the whole group; in the outer circle the words, 'The Gee at Seal of the State of Nevada/ to be engraven with these words for the motto of our State, (All for our Country.’ The great seal measures three and a half inches in diameter.” The State seal differs very widely from the territorial seal adopted by the territorial legislature Nov. 29,1861, which is thus described: — “ Mountains, with a stream of water coursing down their sides, and falling on the overshot wheel of a quartz-mill at their base; a miner leaning on his pick and upholding a United States flag, with a motto expressing the two ideas of loyalty to the Union and the wealth to sustain it; ‘Volens et Potens.’ ”
Nebkaska has never adopted any State colors. The flags carried by the First and Second Nebraska Regiments during the civil war
are retained as the property of the State, and are in what might be considered a fair state of preservation.1
The territorial seal of Nebraska was never adopted by any act of the legislature; but as it existed in fact, was two and one-half inches in diameter, and bore the following devices : “ In the centre a chart, inscribed, ' The Constitution/ supported on the right hand by a
1 Letters, A. S. Paddock, Secietary of Nebraska, Oct. 22, 1866 ; S. J. Alexander, Adjutant-General, Jan. 13, 1880.
Arms of Nebraska.652
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS..
man in a citizen s dress, and on the left hand by a man in a hunting-frock, holding a gun resting on his left arm, — both of these supporters pointing to an American ensign waving over the chart. On the right of the citizen a locomotive, plow, and other agricultural emblems. On the left of the hunter a river, steamboat, and sheaf of wheat. The sun’s rays are seen behind the folds of the American flag. Over these devices the motto, f Popular Sovereignty,’ under them, the word ‘ Progress.’ ”
Nebraska was admitted as a State into the Union March 1, 1867, and has adopted a State seal two and one-half inches in diameter, with the following devices : Around the circumference of the seal is the legend, “ Great Seal of the State of Nebraska, * March 1,1867.* ” In the foreground, a blacksmith at work on his anvil, and a sheaf of wheat at his right hand, and a tree on the left. In the middle-ground, a wheat-field, and a river bearing on its waters a steamboat, and on its near bank a log cabin. On the farther bank, a locomotive and train of cars is seen on a railroad just emerging from between a cut in two hills. Mountains in the distance, and over all a scroll, the motto, “Equality before the Law”
The arms of Nebraska are the same as the seal, omitting the legend.
Colorado was admitted into the Union Aug. 1,1876. Its name is Spanish, and signifies ‘ red.’ It has legalized no State flag.
The territorial seal of Colorado was two inches in diameter, was surrounded by the legend, “ Sigillum Territorii Coloradensis,
1861,” and had for its devices a shield, the lower half of which was or, and bore a miner’s pick and mallet crossed; the upper half azure, bearing a range of snow-clad mountains; over the shield a battle-axe and fasces, inscribed “ Constitution,” “ Union; ” over that again, the all-seeing eye in a triangle, surrounded by rays. In a scroll underneath the shield, the motto, u Nil sine numine.” The State seal is the same, with the necessary alteration in the legend and date.
The Territory of Utah. — In 1866, Brigham Young wrote me, “We have no territorial flag. Our flag is the flag of the nation, — the stars and stripes.” None has been since adopted. The Territory of Utah was organized Sept. 9, 1850, and a seal was adopted immedi-STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS. 653
ately after. The device is a beehive on a stand surrounded by flowers, with bees hovering around it, emblematic of the industry of its people. Surrounding the seal is the legend, “Territory of Utah, mdcccl,” and above the date and at the base of the hive, “ Sept. 9.” The diameter of the seal is one inch and three-quarters.
The Territory of New Mexico was organized Sept. 9, 1850. Its territorial seal is two inches in diameter, and has for a device the American eagle, with its arrows and olive branch, united with the Mexican eagle, standing on the cactus, and strangling a serpent; underneath the eagles, in a scroll, the motto, “ Crescit Lhmdo; ” surrounding the seal the legend, “ Territory of New Mexico, 1850.”
Washington Territory was organized March 2, 1853. Its territorial seal is two and one-fourth inches in diameter, and surrounded by the legend, “Territory of Washington, 1853.” For devices, it has a female figure with flowing tresses seated in the foreground, facing to the left, and holding up her right hand; at her side is an anchor; to her right, a city with spires and domes, and a steam vessel; on her left, a log cabin and a pine forest; surrounding the head of the female is a sun with rays, and over her head, in large capitals, “ Al Ki,” Indian for “ by and by.”
The Territory of Dacota was organized March 2, 1861. Its seal has for devices a tree, over which is a circle of thirteen stars. In the foreground, at the foot of the tree, to the right, is an Indian on horseback chasing and about to spear a buffalo; on the left, an anvil and agricultural implements; around the shield, in a ribbon, “ Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever, March 2, 1861.”
The Territory of Idaho has no flag of any kind. The Governor informs me he has in his office an American flag, and also a Confederate
Seal of Utah.
Seal of New Mexico.654
STATE SEALS, ARMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
flag, — the ‘ stars and bars/ — which he brought out of the first day’s fight at Shiloh.1
The Territory of Idaho was organized in 1863, and a seal was adopted.
On the 11th of January, 1866, it was resolved by the House of Representatives of the Territory of Idaho, the Council concurring, that the Governor be requested to design, adopt, and engross an appropriate seal for the Territory of Idaho, as the one now in use is a very imperfect imitation of the Oregon seal.
Under the authority of this resolution, Governor Caleb Lyon, of Lyonsdale, on the 5th of March adopted the following for ‘ The Great Seal of the Territory of Idaho/ viz.: —
“Shield. A view of the Shoshonee River, with the mountains of Owyhee at the left; and a distant view of the mountains of Pannock and Bannock on the right, with a new moon in the sky, and a steamer on the river.
“ Supporters. Liberty with her sword at the right, and Peace, with her palm branch on the left.
“ Crest. An elk’s head to the neck, with full antlers.
“Motto. ‘Salve’ (Welcome to the miner, to the farmer, to the merchant).
“ Around the seal is the legend,‘ Seal of the Territory of Idaho.’ ”
The seal is two and one-half inches in diameter.
The Territory of Arizona was organized in 1863. The territorial seal is two and one-fourth inches in diameter, surrounded by the legend, “Seal of the Territory of Arizona, * 1863.*” The device is a miner, dressed in a miner’s shirt and trousers and broad-leaved hat, leaning on his pick and spade. In the distance, mountains ; and below his feet the motto, “ Ditat Deus,” in Roman capitals.
The Territory of Montana was organized May 24, 1864. Its seal is two inches in diameter, and is surrounded by the legend, “ The Seal of the Territory of Montana, * Oro y Plata* ” For device, it has a brilliant sun setting behind a range of mountains; in the middle-ground, a buffalo retreating; in the foreground, a plow, and miner’s pick and spade.
Wyoming Territory was organized July 25, 1868. The seal of the Territory has in the upper half a range of mountains, at the base
1 Letter, Governor William Brayman, March 13, 1879.STATE SEALS, ARMS, ELAGS, AND COLORS.
655
of which is a railroad and train of cars; a snn in the left-hand corner gilding the mountains with its rays; over the mountains the motto, “ Cedant Arm.a togm, 1863/’ The lower half of the shield is divided per pale; the dexter half gules, bearing agricultural implements; the sinister half or, a mailed hand holding a drawn sword.
The seal of the Indian Territory, or Cherokee Nation, has for device a seven-pointed silver star, in a circular field gules, surrounded by a wreath proper, the whole borne on a shield or.
Note to page 638 (Kentucky State Flag).—The centennial of the settlement of Louisville, Ky., was celebrated on St. John’s Day, June 24, 1880. One of the interesting features of the celebration was the presentation of a flag to the Louisville Legion by the representatives of the Masonic Widows’ and Orphans’ Home. The Legion saw service in the Mexican war, and was then presented, by a young lady of Louisville, with a banner, which it carried through several bloody battles, and which waved for months over Monterey.
The Legion was reorganized in 1877, under the charter granted the corps in 1839. The contemplated presentation of this centennial flag was suggested to the Governor and the Adjutant-General, and the design being discussed, it was developed that Kentucky never had a State flag. There was accordingly issued by the Governor a special order designating three officers to report on a design for the State colors.
On the 28th of May this committee met and designed this flag, and adopted ‘ ‘ Protection ” as the motto. How acceptably they performed the work the following general orders will show : —
“State of Kentucky, Office of Adjutant-General, “ Frankfort, June 15, 1880.
“First. — Captain John H. Leathers, Company C, Louisville Legion, Captain George K. Speed, Company A, Louisville Legion, and Captain M. H. Crump, Bowling Green Guards, K. S. G., who were, by General Orders No. 4, A. G. 0., current series, appointed a Board of Officers and Special Committee to report a design for a service flag for adoption and use by the Kentucky State Guard, having reported and recommended the design hereinafter set forth, the same is approved and adopted, and will he used on all occasions of active duty, ceremony, parade, review, inspection, court-martial, campaign, encampment, &c., except when otherwise specially directed or permitted.
“ Blue silk, with the arms of the State of Kentucky embroidered in silk on the centre, surmounted by an eagle proper, wings distended, holding in his beak a scroll, inscribed with the legend, ‘ United we stand, divided we fall! ’ and in his talons, dexter and sinister, respectively, an olive branch and bundle of arrows. Underneath the arms, in gold embroidery or gilt, the regimental or battalion number, with the letters ‘ K. S. G.,’ and the name of the battalion where there is no other designation. Fringe of gold or yellow silk. Cords and tassels, blue and white silk intermixed. Unattached companies will carry the State Guard flag, with company name, and letters ‘ K. S. GP underneath the arms. The battalion or regimental flag will he six feet on the staff, by six feet six inches fly. The pike or staff, including spear and ferrule, will he nine feet six inches in length.
“ Second. — Each regiment and battalion of the State Guard, and of the reserve militia, when called into service by the Governor, shall have two flags : the State Guard color, as hereinbefore prescribed, and the national color of stars and stripes, — which latter may be either of silk or hunting, with red cord and tassels.
“ By order of Luke P. Blackburn, Governor and Commander-in-chief.
“ J. P. Nuckols, Adjutant-General.”
Louisville Courier Journal, June 28, 1880.656
STATE SEALS, AKMS, FLAGS, AND COLORS.
Note to page 604. — The Future of the Republic. When, in 1776, the thirteen North American colonies put forth that Declaration of Independence which preluded the birth of a nation, the combined white population inhabiting them did not exceed two and a half million souls. Yet they had the courage to throw down the gage of battle to a power “with which,” in Daniel Webster’s words, “for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, was not to be compared ; a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of martial airs of England.” Fourteen years later, in 1790, the first census of population was taken in the United States, and it was found that within the borders of the young nation there were not quite four million souls. At the expiration of ten years it appeared, upon taking the second census, that the population was a little more than five and a quarter millions, having increased, between 1790 and 1800, at the rate of thirty-five per cent. In 1880, the tenth census of what has long been a mighty people was taken, and the total shows a population of a trifle less than fifty millions. In other words, the population of the great Republic in 1880 is their population in 1776 multiplied by twenty. Provided the same ratio of increase could be maintained for another century, the mind of man would sink before the effort of imagining what it is possible for the monster Republic to be in 1980. It can hardly be expected that the second centenary of the United States will be celebrated by a thousand million human beings, and yet such would be the result of multiplying fifty millions by twenty. It is certain that a century hence no such assemblage of men speaking the same language and amenable to the same general traditions of feeling, habit, and education will ever have been gathered together upon earth as will then probably occupy the great Western Continent. —London Telegraph, May 12, 1880.
Note to page 606.—Maine State Seal. In the winter of 1879-80, during the political muddle of the time, the State seal of Maine was carried off and lost. The 4Kennebec Journal,' in commenting on it, said it was no great loss, “because the pine-tree engraved upon it was such a poor representation of this beautiful tree.” The tree whose likeness is on the new State seal stands on the Edmunds side of Denny’s River, nearly opposite the residence of T. W. Allan, Esq., in Dennysville, Washington County. A sketch of it was made by Miss Carrie Talbot, of Portland, and placed in an art exhibition in that city last winter. The drawing was liked so well, that, when the engraver of the seal needed a picture of a pine-tree, Miss Talbot’s sketch was selected for his use.”
Note to page 610. —Massachusetts State Seal. Massachusetts will begin the second century of life under the present polity, Oct. 25, 1880, with a new seal. The first seal came in with Governor Hancock, an hundred years ago, and it went out in 1830, in Governor Lincoln’s time. Under the same chief magistrate a new seal was procured, which vanishes under Governor Long. Each seal served for half a century, and the third seal should serve as well as its predecessors.PL.m
DISTINCTIVE FLAGS U.S.NAVYFROM 1776 TO 1880
REGULATION 1866- 69 AND 1876 -1880
SECTYOF THE ;
IS
ML
COMMODORE
COMMANDERS OF DIVISIONS
2? DIVISION
»COMMODORES PENNANTS 1876 -	1880 .
A Star for each State.
*	* A *
A It *t * A"
*	* * *
FLAG OFFICERS FLAGS 1858 -1866
TheRirsiI Rear Adm irals Flays mere t/z e | sar/i e
REGULATION 1869 - 1876
SENIOR OFFICERS’
COMMODORES' PENNANT
The dates should be 1777- 1866, instead oi 1876 -1880PART YII

THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
1776-1880.
THE FLAGS, COLORS, STANDARDS, AND GUIDONS OF THE
UNITED STATES ARMY.
1880.
THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
1782-1880.
AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS AND FLAGS.
1880.
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.“A nation’s character is the sum of its splendid deeds ; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation’s inheritance. They awe foreign powers, they arouse and animate our own people.” — Henry Clay.
“ Americans ! your fathers shed
Their blood to rear the Union’s fame ;
For this our fearless banner spread On many a gory plain.
Americans ! let no one dare,
On mountain, valley, prairie, fknd,
By hurling down that temple there,
To desecrate that blood !
The right shall live, while faction dies !
All traitors draw a fleeting breath ;
But patriots drink from God’s own eyes Truth’s light, that conquers death.”
William Moss Wallace.
et Stand by the flag ! its folds have streamed in glory, — To foes a fear, to friends a festal robe, —
And spread in rythmic lines the sacred story Of freedom’s triumphs over all the globe.
Stand by the flag ! on land, and ocean billow ;
By it your fathers stood, unmoved and true ;
Living, defended ; dying, from their pillow,
"With their last blessing, passed it on to you.
“ Stand by the flag ! though death-shots round it rattle, And underneath its waving folds have met,
In all the dread array of sanguine battle,
The quivering lance and glittering bayonet.
Stand by the flag ! all doubt and treason scorning, Believe, with courage firm and faith sublime,
That it will float until the eternal morning Pales in its glories all the lights of time.”
AnonymouSoPART YII
■4»
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF THE UNITED STATES
NAYY.
1776-1880.
From the formation of our navy to the present time, a long and narrow pennant, or coach-whip, as generally called, has been the designating mark of a captain in the navy, and of officers of inferior rank when in command of a United States vessel of war.1
One of the earliest laws of the Continental Congress, on the subject of a navy, forbade merchant ships or privateers wearing this symbol
of rank and authority when in the presence of a vessel of war.
The first commander-in-chief of the American navy, Commodore Esek Hopkins, wore for his standard a square yellow silk flag, blazoned with a lively representation of a rattlesnake in the act of striking, and underneath it the motto, “Dont tread on me” One description of this flag says, the rattlesnake was at the foot of a pine-tree. How long this flag continued in use,
Flag of the Naval Commander-in-chief, 1776.
1 When Van Tromp, the Dutch admiral, hoisted a broom at his masthead, to indicate his intention to sweep the English from the sea, the English admiral hoisted a horse-whip, indicating his intention to chastise the insolent Dutchman. Ever since that time, the narrow, or coach-whip, pennant, symbolizing the original horse-whip, has been the distinctive mark of a vessel of war, adopted by all nations.
It is the custom in England to hang a broom at the masthead of a vessel offered for sale at auction.
The following is an advertisement of signals used in the'royal navy as early as 1722 : —
“ Advertisement.
JUST published the Sailing and Fighting Instructions or Signals, as they are observed in the Royal Navy of Great-Britain; being a neat Pocket Volume, Engraven on Copper Plates, and printed on a superfine Elephant Paper, with a Ship to each Signal, and the various Signal Flags, painted in their own proper Colours. Very useful and nec-660
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
or when it was succeeded by the proper broad pennant of a commodore, is unknown.
When the stars and stripes were adopted, or very soon after, the
commodore’s broad pennant was made to conform to their union, and was blazoned with the same number of stars.
These broad pennants were blue, red, or white, according to the seniority of the captains commanding squadrons, who were, by courtesy, styled ‘commodores.’ The blue was always worn, excepting when more than one officer, authorized by the Secretary of the Navy to wear a broad pennant, happened into the same port. In that case, the senior officer retained the blue pennant, the next in rank wore a red pennant, and the third in rank a white pennant.1
essary for all Officers or others in his Majesty’s Navy, Commanders of Merchant Ships, that may happen to go under Convoy. Its likewise very Ornamental in Sheets, for Rooms, Stair-Cases or Cabins. To be sold at 5s. the Set, in Sheets, and 6s. Bound, by R. Mount on Tower-Hill, J. Brotherton, at the Black-Bull in Cornhil, and by T. Bowles in St. Raid’s Church-yard ; and at John Greenwoods, at the Anchor and Crown in Mansel-street, Goodman’s Fields. Where any Person may be supplied with them, coloured or uncoloured, with reasonable Allowance to those that sell again.”
1 “It is worthy of record (says the ‘ New York Gazette,’ in 1831) that there are now three broad pennants flying in our harbor, —the blue, red, and white. The former at the Navy Yard, under Commodore Chauncey ; the red on board the Potomac, Commodore Downes ; and the latter on board the Hudson, Commodore Cassin, just arrived from the Brazils.”
DAY SIGNALS U. S. NAVY 1803 — 4.
3* TRIAHOL.K
QUARANTINETHE UNITED STATES NAVY.
661
A description of the first signals used by the American fleet can be found in the preceding pages of this work.1
In 1800, Captain Edward Preble, commanding the United States frigate Essex, devised signals for communicating with vessels under
his convoy, which he seems to have copied from a printed code, obtained from Sir Eoger Curtis, Baronet, commanding a British squadron at the Cape of Good Hope. The English signals, and several copies of the signal-books used by Preble’s convoy, are preserved with his papers. Among his papers, also, are several manuscript signal-books, containing the day and night signals established for the Mediterranean squadron by Commodore Bichard Y. Morris, which were continued by Commodore Preble, who succeeded him in command of the American squadron before Tripoli, in 1803-4. The day signals of this
Note.—Cornet, two perpendicular lights. All signals answered nr)r|p WPTP made bv with one light. First triangle, two red perpendicular lights.	^
Second triangle, a white and blue light.	twelve Square flags and
three pennants; viz., ten numerals, 1 to 0, a cornet, an answering flag, and three triangles, or repeaters, being the number now used.
The cornet was used to show that the signal accompanying it did not express its full meaning, and that it was either a reply to an interrogatory, or that only the numbers of the signal were meant to be expressed. For example : Hos. 1, 2, hoisted above a cornet, signified that
1 See pp. 232, 233.662
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
the answer to an interrogatory was “ twelve.” The night signals were made by lanterns, arranged as in the illustration.
There was also a flag, called a dictóte} which, hoisted with a signal, denoted the execution of that signal was to be postponed. After the signal was answered, a flag was displayed, showing the time to which the execution of the signal was postponed. Hoisted at the fore, the numerical value of the diptote signified a.m. ; at the main, p.m. The diptote had also a twofold character, and was useful to multiply or divide a signal. Thus, hoisted between Nos. 8 and 6, for instance, the signal was to be read 43; again, suppose signal 264 flying, and it was wished to make 265, and the vessel had only one set of signal-flags, then the flags hoisted would be Nos. 1 and 3, diptote 5; the diptote doubling the value of the flags hoisted above it.
These signal-books give us the distinguishing flags of vessels belonging to our navy at that time, viz.: —
Frigate United States,		Square flag,	Blue, white, red, perpendicular.
71	Philadelphia,	17	Bed, white, blue. In another hook, wThite, with a red ball.
11	Chesapeake,	Burgee,	Blue. In another book, yellow, with red cross.
11	President,	Square flag,	Blue, white, perpendicular. In another book, all blue.
11	Constitution,	ii	Blue, with yellow cross. In another book, half blue and wThite, perpendicular.
17	New York,	ii	Bed, yellow ring in centre.
11	Congress,	ii	Three yellow, twTo red stripes, horizontal.
11	Essex,	ii	Bed, white, red, horizontal; and also red, with white square centre.
11	Adams,	Burgee,	Bed.
Ship	Boston,	Square flag,	White, with yellow or blue cross.
ii	John Adams,	ii	Blue, with red cross.
11	General Greene,	17	White, with red cross.
Brig.	Nautilus,	71	Bed and white, perpendicular.
ii	Vixen,	11	Blue and red, perpendicular.
ii	Syren,	Swallowtail,	Bed, with white cross.
ii	Scourge,	Burgee,	White.
Sehr.	Enterprise,	Square flag,	Yellow, blue or black cross.
The naval regulations, issued by command of the President of the United States of America, Jan. 25, 1803, make no mention of a flag
1 Diptote, from the Greek, signifying twice, twofold. In grammar, a noun, which has only two cases. — Webster’s Dictionary.THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
663
r
or broad pennant for a commander of a squadron, though it is known one was then in use.
The illustration of the signals in use in the navy during the
_____________________ war of 1812-14 is obtained from
the papers of Commodore John Eodgers, Sen.
On the evening of the 9th of September, 1813, before the battle of Lake Erie, Commodore Perry called his officers around him, and about ten o’clock the conference ended. The moon was at full, and it was a splendid autumn night. Just before they adjourned, Perry brought out a large square battle-flag, which, at the request of his friend, Purser Samuel Hambleton, he had caused to be privately prepared at Erie. It was of blue, and bore in large letters, made of white muslin, the dying words of the lamented commander of the Chesapeake : “ Don’t give up the ship.” “ When this flag is hoisted,” said the commodore, “ it shall be your
signal for going into action.” As the officers were leaving, he said,
“ Nelson has expressed my idea in the words, If you lay your enemy close alongside, you cannot be out of your place.’ Goodnight.” 1
The flag from which our illustration is taken was exhibited in the trophy room of the Great Sanitary Fair in the city of New York, April, 1864. It is between eight and nine feet square, it were written by Henry T.
	
■	Ilk J
D.
U.S.N. SIGNALS, 1312-14-
Perry’s Battle-Flag
The following lines concerning
Tuckerman:
1 Lossing’s War, 1812.664
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
“Behold the chieftain’s glad, prophetic smile,
As a new banner he unrolls the while;
Hear the gay shout of his elated crew
When the dear watchword hovers to their view,
And Lawrence, silent in the arms of death,
Bequeaths defiance with his latest breath.”
The signal-book used by Perry at the battle of Lake Erie is now preserved and exhibited in the museum in Independence Hall, Philadelphia.
The rules and regulations, prepared in 1818 by the navy commissioners, agreeably to an act passed Eeb. 7, 1815, merely say, ''commodores are to wear their broad pennants at all times on board the ship they command,” and should the commander of a fleet or squadron be killed or disabled in battle, “ his flag is to be kept flying while the enemy remains in sight.” They also established the relative rank of commodores in the navy with brigadier-generals in the army.1
In the rules additional to those of 1818, promulgated by the Navy Department, March, 1832, by the Hon. Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Navy, it was prescribed that whenever a captain in the navy was appointed to the command on a foreign station of more than one vessel of war, he was authorized to hoist his broad pennant as soon as he took charge of, and was ready to sail in, any vessel belonging to his squadron, and his extra allowances as a commander of a squadron were then to commence. On ceasing to command such vessel, he was to lower his pennant, and his extra allowances for rations and cabin furniture were then to cease.
Towards the close of 1833, Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Navy, submitted to General Jackson, the President of the United States, a set of rules and regulations for the United States* navy, which were submitted, with his approval, to Congress. They were referred to the naval committee, but failed to become a law.
These regulations looked to the appointment of admirals, vice-admirals, and rear-admirals, but provided, "until such grades were established,” “ that captains of ten years should rank with brigadier-generals, and fifteen years after the date of their commissions with major-generals.” Should there be created a higher rank than captain, then rear-admirals were to rank with major-generals, vice-admirals with lieutenant-generals, and admirals with generals, as now.
1 “The printed regulations of 1818 took effect in the United States on the 1st of December, 1818, abroad, on the 1st of January, 1819.”—Rules of the Navy Department, 1882.THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
665
Article 109 of these regulations provides that “an officer appointed to command a squadron shall hoist his proper flag or distinguishing pennant on the vessel appointed to receive him, and shall wear it until his suspension, removal, or return to the United States.” 1
Another set of rules and regulations was prepared and presented, Jan. 13, 1843, in compliance with a resolution of Congress, by the Hon. A. P. Upshur, Secretary of the Navy; but they were not legalized. These regulations prescribed, “No officer below the rank of captain shall be appointed to the command of a fleet, squadron, or port station, and the officer so appointed will be authorized to hoist a broad pennant. But an officer who may succeed to the command of a squadron abroad shall be invested with all the authority of a commander-inchief. Ho officer shall, under any circumstances, hoist a broad pennant without special authority of the Navy Department; and when captains thus authorized meet in command, the seniors shall continue to wear the blue, the next in seniority the red, and all others the white. If an officer authorized to wear a broad pennant meet his senior while in command without a broad pennant, the junior shall not wear a broad pennant in the presence of such senior.” Captains, “ while entitled to wear a broad pennant,” were by the same rules “ to rank with brigadier-generals, but at all other times with colonels in the army.” The general abroad, under this rule, was often found by his foreign friends, on visiting the United States, to be only a colonel at home, and the;y might well imagine he had lost his rank from bad conduct or inefficiency.
Prequent changes in the arrangement of signal-flags is obviously necessary. The Navy Department, by an order dated May 7, 1856, appointed a board, of which Commodore Charles S. McCauley was. president, to prepare a new code of signals for the navy. The board did not report until March 30, 1858, and the code they had prepared was not adopted by order of the department until the 13th of July following. The signal-flags of this code, like those of 1812-14, were ten square flags, answering to the numerals 1 to 0; a cornet, a guard flag, three triangular repeaters, and preparatory, answering, interrogatory, numeral, meal, and church pennants. These signal-flags continued in use throughout the civil war, and until 1866, when another change was made. Several times, however, the relative value of the flags was changed, and No. 1 became temporarily No. 2, 3, or 4, and so with the other numbers. In 1859, a system of colored lights for night
1 Congress Doc. No. 20, 23d Congress, 1st session, House of Representatives, Executive.666
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
signals, invented by B. F. Coston, a gunner in the navy, superseded
the old-time lantern night signals, and in 1861 their use was extended to the Unit-ed States army transports. About the same time, a new system of telegraphic signal was devised by Major Albert J. Myers,1 using but one flag by day, and a torch or lan-tern by night. This was commonly used by both army and navy throughout the war. In November, 1858, the Hon. Secretary of the Navy issued a general order, and the first on the subject prescribing lights and fog-signals, and certain rules and regulations tending to prevent collisions at sea.
Agreeably to an act passed March 3, 1857, another set of rules and regulations was prepared by a board of officers, and submitted to Congress by Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, with his annual report, Dec. 6, 1858. Like its predecessors, it failed to become a law.
One provision of these rules was that when the President of the United States visited a vessel of war he should be received upon the deck by all the officers in full uniform; the yards were to be manned;
1 Brevet Brigadier-General Albert J. Myers is now chief signal officer in charge of the signal office and weather reports of the War Department, and is best known as “ Old Probabilities.” See note, p. 679.
DAY SIGNALS U.S. NAVY. 1858-66.
i.
5.
6.
7.
\m
8.

0,
CORNET

W Nil?
GUARDTHE UNITED STATES NAVY.
667
the full marine guard paraded with presented arms; and the music to give three ruffles of the drum, and play a march. He was further to
receive a salute of twenty -one guns. During his presence on board ship, the national ensign was to be displayed at the main, and the flag or pennants indicating the command of any other officer was to be struck The Vice-President of the United States was to be received with the same honors, less three guns of the salute. An ex-President was to receive the honors prescribed for the President, excepting the display of the national ensign at the main and manning the yards.
No officer under the rank of a captain was entitled to wear a broad pennant, and no captain was to hoist one without the direct order of the Secretary of the Navy. A captain authorized to hoist a broad pennant was entitled to wear it until ordered to strike it by the Secretary of the Navy, except when in the presence of a senior captain wearing a narrow pennant. Blue, red, or white pennants marked seniority, as in the preceding orders, and the commodore was allowed to shift his pennant to any vessel of his fleet, squadron, or division, assigning his reasons, by the first opportunity, for the change, to the Secretary or Commander-in-chief.
The pennant of a commander of a squadron was only to be worn on a vessel when the officer entitled to it was embarked in her, and was to be struck if he intended being absent from her over twenty-four hours, and was then to be worn by the ship commanded by the officer next in rank, or the captain of the fleet if senior, until his return.66 8
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
The same year, the title of flag-officer was introduced into our naval service. An act of Congress, approved Jan. 16, 1857, directed that “captains in command of squadrons” should he denominated flag-officers. The officers so appointed, for want of regulation on the subject, continued to wear the broad pennant of a commodore, or hoisted the square flag of an admiral, as they deemed most proper. A year later, this act was supplemented by the following order from the Secretary of the Navy, relative to their distinctive flags : —
“Navy Department, May 18, 1858.
“It is hereby ordered that in lieu of the broad pennant now worn by 6 flag-officers ’ in command of squadrons, they shall wear a plain blue flag of dimensions proportionate to the different classes of vessels prescribed for the jack in the tables of allowance, approved July 20, 1854.
“ Flag-officers whose date of commission as captain is over twenty years shall wear it at the fore; all others at the mizzen.
“ Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy”
This order introduced the flags of vice and rear admirals into our navy, though the title was considered too aristocratic-sounding for republican ears at that time.
Captain William Branford Shubrick was the first, as he was also the only, officer who, under this order, carried the square blue flag of a flag-officer at the fore when commanding the Paraguay Expedition, and hoisted it on his flag-ship, the frigate Sabine. Flag-officer French Forrest, his junior, commanding the United States squadron on the coast of Brazil, and temporarily under his orders, at the same time hoisted his flag at the mizzen of his flag-ship, the frigate St. Lawrence. The French and English admirals at Monte Video saluted these flags as those of a vice and rear admiral. In 1859, this order was further extended, viz.: —
“Navy Department, Sept. 26, 1859.
“ Captains in command of navy-yards, who by order of the department have commanded a squadron, will be allowed to wear the flag authorized by the general order of May 18, 1858, on the receiving-ship attached to the station. Should there be no receiving-ship attached to the station, then at any suitable place in the yard under his command.
“ The senior flag-officer of the navy will wear his flag at the main.
“ Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy.n
The senior officer of the navy at that time was Captain Charles Stewart, and the blue flag at the main, the distinctive mark of a full admiral, was an intended compliment to him.THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
669
That old hero died in 1869, and complained, with reason, in 1866, of his promotion (?) to the rank of a rear-admiral, on the retired list, which only gave him the right to wear his flag at the mizzen, with a reduced pay.
The next general order on the subject was issued two days before Mr. Toucey retired from the Navy Department, and was as follows : —
“Navy Department, March 2, 1861.
“"When officers entitled to wear flags meet, or are in the presence of each other, the senior shall wear the plain blue flag prescribed by general order; the next in rank, a plain red one of similar dimensions ; and the next in rank, a plain white one; each resuming the plain blue flag when they separate.
“ Isaac Toucey, Secretary of the Navy”
The fourth section of “an act to promote the efficiency of the navy,” approved Dec. 21, 1861, again recognized the rank and title of flag-officer, thus: —
“ And he it further enacted, that the President of the United States shall have authority to select any officer, from the grades of captain or commander in the navy, and assign him to the command of a squadron, with the rank and title of a ‘ flag-officer; ’ and any officer thus assigned shall have the same authority and receive the same obedience from the commanders of ships in his squadron, holding commissions of an older date than his, that he would be entitled to receive were his commission the oldest; and to receive, when so employed, the pay to which he would have been entitled if he were on the active list of the navy.”
By this mean expedient, in a time of war, it was intended to obviate the necessity of commissioning permanently any officers of a higher rank than captains (equivalent to colonels in the army). It is believed it was the first, only, and it is hoped it will be the last, instance in which the rank of a commission was duly legislated away in our navy, with its corresponding rights and privileges.
The inconvenience and the absurdity of this law, and its injurious effect upon the harmony, efficiency, and discipline of the service, was soon perceived, and it was followed by the act approved July 16,1862, “ to establish and equalize the line officers of the navy,” looking to a general reorganization of the naval service. By this act, nine rear-admirals were to be commissioned on the active list, to be selected, during the war, from those officers, not below the grade of commanders, most distinguished for courage, skill, and genius in their profession.670
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
No one could be selected unless, upon the recommendation of the President, he had by name received the thanks of Congress for distinguished service. Nine rear-admirals were also commissioned by this act on the retired list, selected from the captains who had given the most faithful service to the country.
The same act directed “ that the three senior [active] rear-admirals shall wear a square flag at the main-masthead; the next three, at the fore topmast head, and all others at the mizzen.”
Under this law, David Glasgow Farragut was commissioned the senior rear-admiral, and hoisted a plain square blue flag at the main of his flag-ship, the Hartford, at New Orleans, on the 13th of August, 1862, it being the same flag which up to that time he had worn at the mizzen of the Hartford as a ‘ flag-officer/ His flag at the main was saluted by the Hartford, Brooklyn, Mississippi, and Pensacola, then anchored in front of New Orleans. Thus was the flag of an admiral for the first time legally hoisted at the main in our navy.
The absurdity of a rear-admiral’s wearing his flag at the fore or main, in opposition to the universal custom of other naval powers, became apparent, and, at the suggestion of the Hon. Kichard H. Dana, Jr., Congress, March 3,1863, enacted that the section of an act to equalize the grade of line officers, which required "that the three senior rear-admirals shall wear a square flag at the main-masthead, the next three at the fore-masthead, and all others at the mizzen, be and the same is hereby repealed.”
By this act, all law on the subject of the distinguishing flags for admirals and other officers was repealed, and the regulation as to how, where, and when they were to be worn was left discretionary with the department. Under this law, Rear-Admiral Farragut hauled down his flag at the main, and re-hoisted it at the mizzen. Soon after, however, on his promotion to vice-admiral, Dec. 21, 1864, he hoisted his flag at the fore, and again hoisted it at the main after his promotion to admiral, July 25, 1866, and subsequently performed a cruise in the Mediterranean with his flag flying at the main of the steam-frigate Franklin, 54.
No general order, however, was issued on the subject, until a year later, February, 1865, when the allowance tables established for vessels of the navy was published by authority of the Secretary of the Navy. By those tables, an admiral’s distinctive flag was required to be “ a rectangle in shape, and to have its opposite sides parallel and equal, and to be all of one color, blue, red, or white, without any stars,” being the same as had been previously prescribed for flag-officers.THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
671
The next official order on the subject is in the regulations for the government of the United States navy, issued April 18,1865, by order of the Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy.
These regulations were the first to authoritatively prescribe a flag denoting the presence of the President or Vice-President of the United States, members of the cabinet, Secretary of the Navy, governors of the States of the Union, and the honors and ceremonies to be observed at the reception of each on board our national vessels. By these rules, the flag of the President of the United States was the American ensign, displayed at the main from the time of his reaching the deck of the vessel until his departure; the usual flag or pennant of the officer commanding being, for the time, struck. For the Vice-President, when received on board one of our vessels in a foreign port, the American ensign was to be displayed at the fore. The same honor was to be paid to members of the cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, and the governors of States of the Union.
The flag of a rear-admiral was a rectangular, plain blue flag, and to be worn at the mizzen. But if two or more rear-admirals in command, afloat, should meet, or be in the presence of each other, the senior only was to wear the blue, the next in seniority the red, and the other, or all others, the white. Bear-admirals in command of shore stations were allowed to wear their flag on the receiving-ship, or at some suitable place within the navy-yard.
No officer was to hoist a broad pennant, except when in command of a separate squadron; and when, by authority of the Secretary of the Navy, he was so authorized, he was not to strike it until duly ordered, except on meeting with an officer of a different squadron, or commanding a station, who was senior or superior to himself, and wearing a narrow pennant. The usual and necessary distinctions of color in the pennants to denote relative seniority were prescribed.
As the grade of commodore, with a commission as such, had existed in the navy since the act of 1861, these restrictions upon the use of the recognized commodore’s pennant were, to say the least, singular. However, after a commodore had been duly authorized to wear a broad pennant at sea, he was privileged to hoist one on board the receiving-ship, or elsewhere, at any suitable place within his command, when commanding a shore station.
Any officer, not authorized to wear the flag of a rear-admiral, or the broad pennant of a commodore, but appointed by an express order to command a division of a squadron, was to wear a divisional mark, of the size prescribed in the book of allowances (viz. five to eight feet672
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
hoist by from four to six feet length of fly), at the masthead, where the pennant is usually worn. These divisional marks were to be triangular in shape, with the middle part of a different color from the rest, in the form of a wedge, the base occupying one-third of the fly. For the first division, blue, white, blue; for the second division, red, white, red; for the third division, white, blue, white.
When two or more vessels of the navy in commission, away from a naval station, were assembled, the senior officer present, if not authorized to wear a flag of higher significance, was to wear a triangular pennant, in shape like the divisional pennants, but white, red, white. Any officer commanding a vessel of the navy, and not entitled to wear either of the aforementioned flags or pennants, was to wear a narrow pennant at the main; but this pennant was to be regarded, not as an emblem of rank, but rather significant of command, and that the vessel was of a public character.
On the 25th of July, 1866, Vice-Admiral David Glasgow Farragut was commissioned a full admiral, the first ever commissioned in our navy, as he was also the first who ever obtained the rank of vice-admiral. Hear-Admiral David D. Porter was at the same time selected and commissioned to succeed him as the vice-admiral.1 These new grades required a new arrangement of distinctive flags, which the naval signal-code, prepared by Commodore Thornton A. Jenkins, under authority of the Secretary of the Navy, prescribed, viz.: —
1.	For the President of the United States. — The Union flag, or jack; viz., a blue, rectangular flag, studded with a constellation of white stars, equal in number to the States of the Union.
This flag to be hoisted at the main-royal masthead of any vessel of war or tender of the navy while the President of the United States was on board, and to be carried in the bows of a boat belonging to any vessel in the navy in which the President of the United States, for the time being, was embarked. The President’s flag was to be honored with a salute of twenty-one guns.
2.	For the Secretary of the Navy. — A blue, rectangular flag, from 10.25 to 10.40 feet in hoist, and 14.41 feet in length of fly, with a white foul anchor, three feet in extreme length, placed vertically in the centre, with four white stars in each corner of the flag surrounding the anchor.
This flag was to be hoisted at the main-royal masthead whenever the Secretary of the Navy embarked, and while he remained on board
1 On the death of Admiral Farragut, Aug. 15, 1870, Vice-Admiral D. D. Porter was commissioned an admiral, and Rear-Admiral S. C. Rowan, vice-admiral.THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
673
a vessel of the navy, and was to be carried at the bow of any boat or tender in which he was embarked. The flag of the Secretary was to be saluted with fifteen guns.
3.	For the Admiral. — A rectangular flag of a blue color, with four white stars in the centre, forming a diamond.
This flag to be worn at the main of his flag-ship, and in the bows of his barge, tender, or other boat in which he was embarked. This flag was first hoisted on the steam-frigate Franklin, Admiral Farragut’s flag-ship, at New York, in June, 1867. The admiral’s salute is seventeen guns.
4.	For the Vice-Admiral. — A plain blue, rectangular flag, with three five-pointed white stars, arranged as an equilateral triangle, eighteen inches from centre to centre, with the upper star eighteen inches from the head, and twenty-seven inches from the tabling.
His flag to be worn at the fore-royal masthead, and in boats, &c. The salute for the vice-admiral’s flag is fifteen guns.
5.	For Bear-Admirals — A plain blue flag, with two white five-pointed stars placed vertically. But if two or more rear-admirals in command afloat should meet, or be in the presence of each other, the senior only was to wear the blue flag, the next in seniority was to wear a red flag with white stars, and the other, or all others, were to wear a white flag with blue stars.
The rear-admiral’s flag is always hoisted at the mizzen-royal masthead, and in the bows of boats, &c., and is entitled to a salute of thirteen guns.
6.	For Commodores. — The designating flag was a blue, swallowtailed, broad pennant with one white star, to be worn at the main of his ship and in the bow of his boat, when in command of a squadron, or of a single ship other than the flag-ship of the admiral commanding the fleet. When in command of naval stations it was to be worn on board the receiving-ship, or if there was no such vessel, then at the usual place at the navy-yard for displaying a flag.
When two or more commodores met, the superior in rank was to wear a blue, the next a red, and the other or others a white pennant, the same in order as prescribed for rear-admirals’ flags. The salute of a commodore, which had been thirteen guns, was by these regulations reduced, in consequence of the introduction of the higher grades, and to conform to the custom of foreign navies, to eleven guns. The commodore’s broad pennant was required to be swallow-tailed, the angular point to fall on a line drawn at a right angle with the hoist or head from its middle, and at a distance from the head of three-fifths
436*74
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
the whole length of the pennant. The lower side of the pennant to be rectangular with the hoist or head; but, on the contrary, the upper side to be sloped, so as to narrow the pennant across at the extremity of the tail, one-tenth of the measure of the hoist, and thus render the upper tail correspondingly shorter than the lower one.
7.	For Commanders of Divisions, Commanders of Squadrons of Divisions, and Senior Officers present. — The flags or pennants were all triangular in shape, and were to be worn by officers below the rank of a commodore at the main-royal masthead (alongside the narrow pennant distinctive of their rank), when in command of a division and more than one ship, but were not to be worn in the bows of boats.
The triangular pennant of the commanders of divisions were, for the 1st division, blue; 2d, red; 3d, white and red vertical. The senior officer’s flag white and blue vertical. In 1869, these flags were reversed thus : The pennant of the commander of the 1st division all red, of the 2d, white, red perpendicular, of the 3d, all blue, and the guard flag, white with a red saltire, the senior officer’s flag.
The flags of the commanders of the first seven squadrons of divisions had the middle part of a different color from the rest, in the form of a wedge, the base occupying one-third of the hoist or head, and the point extending to the extremity of the flag.
The flag of the first squadron of division was blue — white — blue; 2d, red — white — red; 3d, white — blue — white; 4th, white — red — white ; 5th, white — yellow — white ; 6th, red — white — blue ; 7th, white—blue — red. The flag of the 8th squadron of division was yellow and blue vertical; the 9th, white and yellow vertical; and the flag of the reserve squadron blue and yellow vertical.
No divisional commander was to wear a distinctive mark when separated singly from the squadron or station to which he belonged; and no officer wearing such a distinctive mark, or that of a senior officer present, was in consequence thereof to assume any additional title, or allow himself to be addressed by any other than his commission allowed, nor was he to permit his vessel to be called a flag-ship.
8.	The Pennant for a Commanding Officer of a, single Vessel ivhen of lower Ranh than Commodore. — Captains, commanders, and other line officers of inferior rank, when actually in command of a vessel of war, were required to wear the narrow or coach-whip pennant at the main-royal masthead of their vessel, and in the bow of the boat in which they embarked.
This pennant was to be regarded not as an emblem of rank, but as significant of command, and that their vessel was of a public char-THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
675
acter. This narrow pennant was to have the union part composed of thirteen white stars in a horizontal line on a blue field, one-fourth of the length of the pennant. The remaining three-fourths of its length was to be of a red and white stripe, each of the same breadth at any part of the taper, and with the red uppermost. The number of stars in the union of night and boat pennants was to be confined to seven.
The flags of commanders of divisions, of squadrons of divisions, of a senior officer present, and the narrow pennant of other commanding officers, were not entitled to a salute; but when these officers saluted an officer of a superior rank, they were to receive, if a captain, a return salute of nine guns, and if of less rank, a return salute of seven guns.
The return salute of officers holding equal rank is always gun for gun. No vessel of the navy, mounting less than six guns, and no store-ship or transport is allowed to salute. If necessary to avoid giving offence, such vessel may fire a return salute. No surveying vessel is ever to fire, or return a salute.
In addition to these flags, distinctive of rank and command, the regulations of 1866 provided several for general purposes, viz.: —
1.	A Convoy Flag. — A white, triangular flag, bordered with red, to be worn by vessels of war when convoying merchant or other vessels.
2.	A Pilot Flag. — The union jack bordered with red, hoisted at the fore, to denote a pilot wanted.
3.	A Compass Flag. — This was a square flag divided into four squares or cantons, blue, yellow, white, red. To be hoisted over the numeral flags of the signal code representing the points of the compass.
4.	A Guard Flag. — A white flag with a red St. Andrew’s cross hoisted at the fore, to indicate the vessel charged with guard duty for the day, whose duty it is to board all vessels approaching, and ascertain their character before allowing communication with them.
5.	A Guide or Pivot Flag. — A square flag composed of five perpendicular stripes, red and white. To designate any steam vessel of a fleet or squadron, &c., as a guide or pivot ship in the performance of any naval evolution. In 1869, this flag was dispensed with. The guard flag was made to answer the purpose of a guide flag.
6.	A Despatch Flag. — A white, square flag with five blue crosses, generally known as the five of clubs; hoisted forward, this flag denoted important and urgent special service, which must not be676
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
interfered with by any officer junior to the one by whom it was despatched.
7.	A Powder Flag. — A plain red flag hoisted at the fore, denoting the vessel is taking in or discharging powder.
8.	A Quarantine Flag. — A plain yellow flag, also worn at the fore by vessels in quarantine and waiting pratique, denoting all intercouise with the vessel is forbidden.
A Church Pennant. — A white pennant without swallow-tails, charged with a blue Latin cross, to be hoisted at the peak, during divine service, over the ensign. The only flag to which the national ensign shows such submission.
10.	A General Recall Flag. — A blue, square flag with a white Latin cross dividing it into four equal parts. When hoisted by the commander-in-chief, or senior officer present, it is to be considered a peremptory order for all vessels or boats sent in chase, or engaged in other duty pf whatever nature, to return at once to their vessels, duty, or station, unless they shall have been previously specially ordered to disregard the signal. The general recall is not hauled down until all the vessels or boats obey the signal.
11.	The Cornet. — Long used in the navy, and still continued as the ordinary recall of all boats and officers, and as a signal for sailing. This is a square flag divided into four equal squares of alternate red and white, and when hoisted anywhere, without other flags, is to be considered a peremptory order for all absent boats and officers to return on board without delay. When hoisted above or over the numeral flags of the signal code, it denotes those numerals are the ship’s book number, opposite to which in the navy list in the signal-book is the ship’s name. The cornet hoisted at any part of a vessel, with numeral flags at a different part of the ship, indicates that those numbers are to be sought for in the telegraphic dictionary, and that the signal will be communicated word by word or letter by letter. The cornet under signal numbers indicates that they represent the private number of a ship.
In addition to these distinctive flags, the naval signal code provided pennants to designate shipping, squadron, boat recalls, meal-time, &c., also ten numeral flags and three repeating pennants, for telegraphic purposes. As a whole, this was, perhaps, the most systematic, complete, and best code of distinctive, general, and telegraphic flags the navy had known; but with a change in the administration of the bureau came a radical change in the distinctive flags. At a sacrifice of beauty and time-honored associations, the following order was pro-U. S. NAVY SIGNALS AND LIGHTS, 1880. |						
						
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* Rockel al rughi ùiplaee of Chmct.THE UNITED STATES NAVY.
677
mulgated, changing the blue at the main to a bit of striped bunting. Restoring the national ensign to the main, in the place of the jack, was, however, a move in the right direction.
“Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, “Washington, Dec. 31, 1869.
“ Sib, — By direction of the Secretary of the Navy the following instructions are promulgated : —
“ When the President shall visit a ship of war of the United States, the ensign shall be hoisted at the main when coming on board, and hauled down at his departure. It is also to be hoisted in the bow of the boat in which he embarks.
“ When the Secretary of the Navy shall visit a ship of war of the United States, the union jack shall be hoisted at the main, and in the bow of the boat in which he embarks.
“ As the jack is taken from the union of the ensign, in order to utilize the latter still further, the stripes will compose the flag of flag-officers, and the broad pennants of commanders, made in the usual shape and size according to the designs in the new signal-book.
“Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
“ James Alden, Chief of Bureau.
“To Officers commanding Squadrons.”
By another circular order, dated Dec. 23, 1869, commandants of naval stations were directed to furnish the new naval signal-book to each of the vessels in commission, prior to the 1st of January, 1870, when the book was to be put into use, and the new distinguishing flags and pennants prescribed therein were to be hoisted.
By the book of navy regulations, issued in 1870, the distinctive flags were —
1st. For the President. — The national ensign at the main, so long as he remains on board a vessel of war.
2d. For the Vice-President. — When received on board a vessel of the navy, in a foreign port, the national ensign at the fore.
3d. For the Secretary of the Navy. — The union jack hoisted at the main so long as he remains on board a vessel of the navy.
4th. For Admirals, Vice-Admirals, and Pear-Admirals. — A flag of thirteen plain, horizontal stripes, alternate red and white. Worn at the main by an admiral, at the fore by a vice-admiral, and at the miz-zen by a rear-admiral. The vice-admiral’s boat-flag to have a single red star in a white square at the luff of the second red stripe. The rear-admiral’s boat-flag to have two red stars perpendicular in the luff at the second and third red stripes. The same distinction to be borne678
THE DISTINGUISHING FLAGS OF
by a junior or juniors at the mizzen, when more than one rear-admiral is present; a rear-admiral is to hoist the same flag at the fore if saih ing in a two-masted vessel.
5th. The Broad Pennant of a Commodore. — The same striped flag, the end or fly of it swallow-tailed, and worn at the main. Should more than one commodore be present, the junior is to hoist his pennant at the fore. Senior officers present, below the rank of commodore, hoist a smaller broad pennant of the same kind, at the mizzen.
The following table shows the proportions and dimensions of the national ensigns, Union jacks, and distinctive flags prescribed for the United States navy: —
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HHHHHTHE UNITED STATES NAVY.
679
The striped flags for admirals, and pennants.for commodores, were not received with favor by the officers most interested, and there was a universally expressed wish by officers of all grades that the time-honored blue, red, and white pennants, associated with so many of our naval triumphs, might be restored.
At last, after six years of trial, the old and honored flags were restored by the following order, to take effect on the nation’s centennial birthday. It is hoped that an act of Congress will prevent any other change without the authority of a law.
“General Order No. 198.
“ Navy Department, Washington, Jan. 6, 1876.
“ For various reasons, involving past usages and services, and for the convenience of distinguishing the relative rank of officers of the same grade, the department has determined to restore the flag of the Secretary of the Navy, of the Admiral, of the Vice-Admiral, of Hear-Admiral of blue, red, and white, and the pennant of Commodore of blue, red, and white.
“The patterns will be those in use prior to, and changed on, Jan. 1, 1870.
“ The execution of this Order will take effect on July 4, 1876.
“ Geo. M. Eobeson, Secretary of the Navy.”
Note to page 666. — “ Germ of our Present Army and Navy Signalling. In Yol. II. of Churchill's ‘Collection of Voyages and Travels,’ published in 1704, there is an account of how Captain John Smith, who was with a relieving force, communicated with the Governor of the town of Olampagh, besieged by the Turks, by night, from a hill seven miles from the town, by means of a preconcerted code worked with three torches. He appears to have divided the alphabet into two parts: one, A to L; the other, M to Z. The letters of the former were signalled with one torch, those of the latter with two. Individual letters were denoted by flashes, the number of flashes varying according to the letter’s position in the alphabet, counting from A to M. Thus, A would he represented by a single flash from one torch, B by two, C by three, and so on: if, on the other hand, would be one simultaneous flash from two torches, N two such flashes, 0 three, and so on. The display of three torches showed the end of the word, or, if shown by the party signalled to, that the word was understood.” — V\, in iNotes and Queries,’ Qth series, Vol. /., May 15, 1880.
• The idea of betokening public grief by placing flags at half-mast is very ancient. In Rome, at the funeral of an illustrious person, the soldiers carried their ensigns inverted ; and in the Greek and Roman navies, on the death of a commander, his red flag was half furled. In the English navy, at first, a flag at half-mast was a signal of distress, but is now used only as a token of public mourning.
In the Punic wars it was customary to lower the flag in token of defeat, for, after the capture of the Carthaginian ships by the Romans, their flags were taken down and trailed over their sterns by the victors, as is still done when captured vessels are brought into port.
In their earliest use at sea, flags were only the means of emphasizing signals. A bit of colored cloth waved up or down a staff, or to the right or left, was the simplest form of telegraphing to friend or enemy, as it is to-day the latest and best means of communication.680 THE FLAGS, COLORS, STANDARDS, AND GUIDONS
THE FLAGS, COLORS, STANDARDS, AND GUIDONS OF THE
UNITED STATES ARMY.
Prescribed by the Army Rules and Regulations and General Orders.
Garrison Flag. — The garrison flag is the national flag. It is made of bunting, thirty-six feet fly and twenty feet hoist, in thirteen horizontal stripes of equal breadth, alternately red and white, beginning with the red. In the upper quarter, next the staff, is the union, composed of a number of white stars, equal to the number of States, on a blue field, one-third the length of the flag, extending to the lower edge of the fourth red stripe from the top. This flag is furnished only to important posts, or those having large garrisons, and will be hoisted only on gala-days and great occasions. The post flag is twenty feet by ten feet, and furnished all posts garrisoned by troops, and is hoisted only in pleasant weather. The storm and recruiting flag is eight feet fly and four feet two inches hoist, and is furnished to all occupied military posts and national cemeteries, and is hoisted in stormy and windy weather, and used as a recruiting flag.
Colors of Artillery Regiments. ■—Each regiment of artillery shall have two silken colors. The first, or the national color, of stars and stripes, as described for the garrison flag. The number and name of the regiment is to be embroidered with gold on the centre stripe. The second, or regimental color, to be yellow, of the same dimensions as the first, bearing in the centre two cannon crossing, with the letters ‘ U. S/ above, and the number of the regiment below; fringe, yellow. Each color to be six feet six inches fly, and six feet deep on the pike. The pike, including the spear and ferrule, to be nine feet ten inches in length. Cord and tassels, red and yellow silk intermixed.
Colors of Infantry Regiments.—Each regiment of infantry shall have two silken colors. The first, or the national color, of stars and stripes, as described for the garrison flag; the number and name of the regiment to be embroidered with silver on the centre stripe. The second, or regimental color, to be blue, with the arms of the United States embroidered in silk on the centre; the name of the regiment in a scroll underneath the eagle. The size of each color is to be six feet six inches fly, and six feet deep on the pike. The length of the pike, including the spear and ferrule, to be nineOF THE UNITED STATES ARMY.
681
feet ten inches. The fringe yellow; cords and tassels, blue and white silk intermixed.
Camp Colors. — The camp colors are of bunting, eighteen inches square; and are white for infantry, and red for artillery, with the number of the regiment on them. The pole eight feet long.
Standards and Guidons of Mounted Regiments. — Each regiment will have a silken standard, and each company a silken guidon. The standard to bear the arms of the United States, embroidered in silk, on a blue ground, with the number and name of the regiment, in a scroll underneath the eagle. The flag of the standard to be two feet live inches wide, and two feet three inches on the lance, and to be edged with yellow silk fringe.
The flag of the guidon is swallow-tailed, three feet five inches from the lance to the end of the swallow-tail; fifteen inches to the fork of the swallow-tail, and two feet three inches on the lance. To be half red and half white, dividing at the fork, the red above. On the red, the letters ‘ U. S/ in white ; and on the white the letter of the company in red. The lance of the standards and guidons to be nine feet long, including spear and ferrule.
In the appendix to the Revised Regulations, the camp colors and guidons are hereafter to be made “ like the United States flag with stars and stripes,” instead of as prescribed in the regulations.
Colors of the Engineer Battalion. — “ The flags of the engineer battalion will be as follows: The national color as described for the garrison flag, with the words ‘ United States Engineers9 embroidered in silver in the centre. The battalion color will be of scarlet, of the same dimensions as above, bearing in the centre a castle, with the letters 6 U. S.’ above, and the word ‘ Engineers ’ below, in silver; fringe white. The size of each color and the length of the pike the same as described for colors for artillery and infantry regiments. Cords and tassels, red and white silk intermixed.”
Corps Badges. — Under the following resolution of Congress permission is given to all officers and soldiers who served during the Rebellion to wear the badge of the corps in which they served: —
“ [I. Public Resolution —■ No. 55.]
u A resolution granting permission to officers and soldiers to ivear the badge of
the corps in which they served during the Rebellion.
“ Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all who served as officers, non-commissioned officers, privates, or other enlisted men in the regular army,682
THE UNITED STATES AKMY.
volunteer, or militia forces of tlie United States, during the War of the Rebellion, and have been honorably discharged from the service or remain still in the same, shall he entitled to wear, on occasions of ceremony, the distinctive army badge ordered for and adopted by the army corps and division, respectively, in which they served.
“Approved July 25, 1868.”THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 683
THE HISTOEY OF THE SEAL AND AEMS OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMEEICA.
“As well might the Judas of treason endeavor
To write his black name on the disk of the sun As try the bright star-wreath that binds us to sever,
And blot the fair legend of 1 Many in One.’ ” — 0. W. Holmes.
Dr. Franklin, Mr. John Adams, and Mr. Thomas Jefferson were appointed a committee to prepare a device for a great seal* for the
Seal commonly used.
Dr. Franklin proposed for the
United States of America, July 4, 1776,1 the very day of the Declaration of Independence.
Du Simitiere, a French West Indian, a silhouette cutter of portraits, and painter of miniatures, water-colors, &c., was called to their assistance, and proposed a device showing on a shield the arms of the nations from whence America was peopled, with a figure of Liberty on one side and an American rifleman on the other for supporters.2
device Moses lifting his wand and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh and his chariot overwhelmed with the waters. For a motto, the words of Cromwell, “ Rebellion to Ty-eants is Obedience to God.” Adams proposed ‘The Choice of Hercules,’ as engraved by Gribelin: the hero resting on a club; Virtue pointing to her rugged mountain on one hand, and persuading him to ascend ; and Sloth, glancing at her flowery paths of pleasure,
1	Journal of Congress.
2	The illustrations of designs for the great seal are reduced fac-similes of the designs on file in the State Department at Washington, excepting Jefferson’s design, which was684 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
wantonly reclining on the ground, displaying the charms both of her eloquence and person to seduce him into vice.
Jefferson proposed ‘The Children of Israel in the Wilderness/ led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night ; and on the other side, 4 Hengist and Horsa/ the Saxon chiefs, from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.
At the request of the other members of the committee, Jefferson attempted to combine the several ideas presented in one compact design, and on the 10th of August, 1776, the committee reported the following device and explanation thereof, which was ordered to lie upon the table : —
Jefferson’s Design, 1776.
“ The great seal should on one side have the arms of the United States of America, which arms should be as follows : —
“ The shield has six quarters, parti one, coupi two. The first or, an enamelled rose, gules and argent, for England; the second argent, a thistle proper, for Scotland; the third vert, a harp or, for Ireland; the fourth azure, a fleur-de-lis or, for France; the fifth or, the imperial eagle, sable, for Germany; and the sixth or, the Belgic crowned lion, gules, for Holland, — pointing out the countries from which the States have been peopled. The shield within a border, gules, entwined of thirteen escutcheons, argent, linked together by a chain or, each charged with initial sable letters, as follows: 41st, 1ST. H., 2d, Mass., 3d, R. I., 4th,
drawn "by Benson J. Lossing, LL.D., from the description of it reported to Congress. See an interesting article on the subject in ‘Harper’s Magazine,’ for 1856, by Mr. Lossing, also ‘Wells’s Illustrated Handbook,’ 1856, on the great seal of the United States, and the article on ‘ The Seal of the United States ’ in Nicholson’s Encyclopedia.THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 685
Conn., 5th, 1ST. Y., 6th, NT. J., 7th, Penn., 8th, Del., 9th, Md., 10th, Va., 11th, 1ST. C., 12th, S. C., 13th, Ga., for each of the thirteen independent States of America/
“ Supporters, dexter, the Goddess of Liberty, in a corselet of armor, in allusion to the then state of war, and holding in her right hand the spear and cap, and with her left supporting the shield of the States; sinister, the Goddess of Justice, hearing a sword in her right hand, and in her left a balance.
“ Crest, the eye of Providence in a radiant triangle, whose glory extends over the shield and beyond the figures; motto, f E Pluribus Unum/
“ Legend round the whole achievement, ‘ Seal of the United States of America, mdcclxxvi/
“ On the other side of the said great seal should be the following device: —
“ Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot, a crown on his head, and a sword in his right hand, passing through the divided waters of the Red Sea, in pursuit of the Israelites. Rays from a pillar of fire in the cloud, expressive of the Divine presence and command, beaming on Moses, who stands on the shore, and, extending his hand over the sea, causes it to overthrow Pharaoh.1
“ Motto, f Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God! ”1
On the 25th of March, 1779, it was ordered that the report of the committee on the device of a great seal for the United States in Congress assembled be referred to a committee of three, and Messrs. Lovell and Scott, of Virginia, and Houston, of Georgia, were appointed. On the 10th of May the committee reported that, —
“ The seal be four inches in diameter; on one side the arms of the United States as follows : the seal charged in the field with thirteen diagonal stripes, alternately red and white.
“ Supporters, dexter, a warrior holding a sword; sinister, a figure representing Peace bearing an olive branch.
“ The Crest, a radiant constellation of thirteen stars.
“ The Motto, ‘ Bello ml pace!
1 Dr. Franklin’s suggestion. The shields of the States, connected by a silver chain, seem to have been suggested by Jefferson, as also the motto, “E Pluribus Unum” which was finally adopted, as was the eye of Providence on the reverse of the seal, instead of the obverse, as in this design. The motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God, ” is from the epitaph of John Bradshaw, chief of the Regicides. It is written over what is called the Regicides’ Cave, West Rock, New Haven, Conn. The epitaph was pasted upon the windows of New England inns during the war of the American Revolution.686 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
“ The Legend round the achievement, ‘ Seal of the United States.’
“ On the Reverse, the figure of Liberty, seated in a chair, holding the staff and cap.
“The Motto, fSemper;’ underneath,‘mdcclxxvi.’”
VtP&iU,.
Design submitted in 1779.
On the 17th of May, the report of the committees on the device of a great seal was taken into consideration, and, after debate, ordered to be recommitted, and the result was the following report: —
“ The seal to be three inches in diameter; on one side the arms of the United States, as follows: the shield charged in the field azure, with thirteen diagonal stripes, alternate rouge and argent.
“ Supporters, dexter, a warrior holding a sword; sinister, a figure representing Peace bearing the olive branch.
“ The Crest, a radiant constellation of thirteen stars.
“ The Motto, ‘ Bello ml face!
“ The Legend round the achievement, ‘ The Great Seal of the United States.’
“ On the Reverse, ‘ Virtute Perenms,’ underneath, ‘ mdgglxxvi.’
The design reported was like the former, differing only in the mottoes and date, and the figure of the warrior, representing an American Indian instead of a Roman soldier. The sketches, preserved in the State Department, and from which our illustrations are taken, are believed to have been made by Du Simitiere. The report proposed a miniature of the face of the great seal, half its diameter, should be prepared, and affixed as the lesser seal of the United States.
Congress, however, was hard to please. This report was not accepted, and the matter was allowed to slumber nearly three years, or untilTHE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 687
April, 1782, when Henry Middleton, Elias Boudinot, and Edward Rutledge were appointed a committee to prepare a great seal. They reported, on the 9th of May following, substantially as the committees of 1779 and 1780 had done, which was not satisfactory to Congress, who next referred the whole matter to its secretary, Charles Thomson, who, calling in the aid of Mr. William Barton, of Philadelphia, received
from him the following elaborate and rather impracticable design and description of it. The reverse of the great seal was, however, finally taken from it.
“Arms. Barry of thirteen pieces, argent and gules, on a canton
azure, and many stars disposed
in a circle of the first; a pale or, surmounted of another of the third; charged in chief with an eye surrounded with a glory proper, and in the fess point, an eagle displayed on the summit of a Doric column, which rests on the base of the escutcheon, both as the stars.
“ Crest. Or, a helmet of burnished gold damasked, grated with six bars, and surmounted by a cap of liberty, gules, turned
Barton’s Design, 1782.
up ermine, a cock armed with gaffs proper.
“ Supporters. On the dexter side, the genius of America (represented by a maiden with loose auburn tresses), having on her head a688 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
radiated crown of gold, encircled with a sky-blue fillet, spangled with silver stars, and clothed in a long, loose, white garment, bordered with green. From her right shoulder to her left side a scarf, semee of stars, the tinctures thereof the same as in the canton, and round her waist a purple girdle, fringed or embroidered argent, with the word ‘ Virtue/ resting her interior hand on the escutcheon, and holding in the other the proper 'Standard of the United States/ having a dove argent perched on the top of it.
“ On the sinister side, a man in complete armor, his sword-belt azure, fringed with gold, his helmet encircled with a laurel wreath, and crested with one white and blue plume ; supporting with his dexter hand the escutcheon, and holding in the interior a lance, w7ith the point sanguinated, and upon it a banner, displayed, vert in the fess point; a harp strung with silver, between a star in chief, two fleurs-de-lis in fess, and a pair of swords in saltire in basses, all argent. The tenants of the escutcheon stand on a scroll on which is the following motto: —
‘ Deo Famnte,’
which alludes to the eye in the arms, meant for the eye of Providence.
“ Over the crest, on a scroll, this motto: —
‘ Virtus sola invicta.’
“ The thirteen pieces barways, which fill up the field of the arms, may represent the several States ; and the same number of stars, upon a blue canton disposed in a circle, represent a new7 constellation, wdiich alludes to the new empire formed in the world by the confederation of those States. Their disposition in a circle denotes the perpetuity of its continuance, the ring being the symbol of eternity. The eagle displayed is the symbol of supreme power and authority, and signifies the Congress; the pillar upon which it rests is used as the hieroglyphic of fortitude and constancy, and its being of the Doric order (which is the best proportioned and most agreeable to nature), and composed of several members or parts, all taken together forming a beautiful composition of strength, congruity, and usefulness, it may with great propriety signify a well-planned government. The eagle being placed on the summit of the columns is emblematical of the sovereignty of the government of the United States; and, as further expressive of that idea, those two charges or, five and six azure, are borne in a pale v7hich extends across the thirteen pieces into which the escutcheonTHE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 689
is divided. The signification of the eye has been already explained. The helmet is such as appertains to sovereignty, and the cap is used as the token of freedom and excellency. It was formerly worn by dukes: says Guillien, they had a more worthy government than other subjects. The cock is distinguished for two most excellent qualities ; viz., vigilance and fortitude. The genius of the American confederated republic is denoted by the blue scarf and fillet, glittering with stars, and by the flag of Congress which she displays. Her dress is white, edged with green, emblematical of innocence and truth. Her purple girdle and radiated crown indicate her sovereignty, — the word f virtue,’ on the former, is to show that that should be her principal ornament; and the radiated crown, that no earthly crown should rule her. The dove on the top of the American standard denotes the mildness and purity of her government.
“ The knight in armor, with his bloody lance, represents the military genius of the American empire, armed in defence of its just rights. His blue belt and blue feathers indicate his country, and the white plume is in compliment to our gallant ally. The wreath of laurel round his helmet is expressive of his success.
“The green field of the banner denotes youth and vigor; the harp1 [with thirteen strings], emblematical of the several States acting in harmony and concert; the star in chief has reference to America, as principal in the contest; the two fleurs-de-lis are borne as a grateful2 testimony of the support given to her by France; and the two swords crossing each other signify the state of war. This tenant and his flag relate totally to America, at the time of her revolution.”
Another device proposed by Mr. Barton at this time, and very nearly the one finally adopted, is thus described by him as “ blazoned agreeably to the laws of heraldry : ” —
“Arms. Paleways of thirteen pieces argent and gules; a chief azure, the escutcheon placed on the breast of the American (the bald-headed) eagle, displayed proper, holding in his beak a scroll inscribed with the motto, viz. ‘ E Pluribus TJnuml3 and in his dexter
1	The pen is run through the words, with thirteen strings, in the original
2	“ In the arms of Scotland, as manifested in the royal achievement, the double tres-sure which surrounds the lion is borne jlory and counter Jiory (with fleurs-de-lis), which is in consequence of a treaty between Charlemagne, emperor and king of France, and Achias, king of Scotland, to denote that the French lilies should guard and defend the Scottish lion. ”
8 Borrowed from Jefferson’s design, Aug. 10, 1776.
44690 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
talon a palm or olive branch, in the other a bundle of thirteen arrows,, all proper.1
“ For the Crest. Over the head of the eagle which appears above the escutcheon, a glory, or, breaking through a cloud, proper, and surrounding thirteen stars forming a constellation argent, on an azure field.2
“ In the exerque of the great seal, —
‘ Jul. IV, MDCCLXXVI.’
“ In the margin of the same, —
‘ Sigil, Mag. Repub. Confced. Americ.’ ”
Mr. Barton explained the meaning of his device thus : “ The escutcheon is composed of the chief, and pale, the two most honorable ordi: naries; the latter represents the several States, all joined in one solid, compact entire, supporting a chief, which unites the whole, and represents Congress. The motto alludes to the union; the colors or tinctures of the pales are those used in the flag of the United States. White signifies purity and innocence; red, hardiness, valor; the chief denotes congress; blue is the ground of the American uniform, and the color signifies vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
“ The meaning of the crest is obvious, as is likewise that of the olive branch and arrows. The escutcheon, being placed on the breast of the eagle, is a very ancient mode of bearing, and is truly imperial. The eagle displayed is another heraldic figure; and, being borne in the manner here described, supplies the place of supporters and crest. The American States need no supporters but their own virtue, and the preservation of their union through Congress. The pales in the arms are kept closely united by the chief, which last, likewise, depends on that union, and strength resulting from it, for its own support, the inference is plain.”
June 13, 1782, Messrs. Middleton, Boudinot, and Rutledge reported a modification of Mr. Barton’s devices, which was referred to the Secretary of the United States; and a week later, on the 20th of June, 1782, the Secretary of the United States, in Congress assembled, to whom was referred the several reports of committees on the devices of
1	As the paler or pallets consist of an uneven number, they ought in strictness to be blazoned, argent 6 pallets gules ; but as the thirteen pieces allude to the thirteen States, they are blazoned according to the number of pieces paleways.
2	This was borrowed from the designs submitted in 1779 and 1780.THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 691
a great seal to take order, reported the following device, which was adopted as —
The Gee at Seal oe the United States of Ameeica,
“ Arms.	Palewciys of thirteen pieces argent and gules; a chief
azure; the escutcheon on the breast of the American eagle displayed proper, holding in his dexter talon an olive branch, and in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arroivs, all proper ; and in his beak a scroll, inscribed with this motto, 4 E Plueibus Unum.’
“ For the Ceest : over the head of the eagle which appears above the escutcheon, a glory breaking through a cloud proper, and surrounding thirteen stars, forming a constellation, argent, and on an azure field.
“ Eeveese. A pyramid unfinished. In the zenith an eye in a triangle, surrounded with a glory, proper ; over the eye these words,( Annuit Cceptis.’ On the base of the pyramid the numerical letters, ‘ mdcclxxvi/ and underneath, the following motto: ‘Novus Obdo Secloeum.’ 1
1 Mr. C. T. Lukens, of Philadelphia, in a letter to me, dated Oct. 25,1871, says : “The armoristic- lapses of this act are : First. The omission of ‘ wings elevated ’ [or tips in chief] after displayed, as the bald eagle might be displayed, and yet have the wings * inverted ’ [or tips in base]. Second. The tincture of the scroll or motto ribbon, which might be either red or blue, and yet harmonize with the tinctures of the shields, as arms is omitted. The motto itself would inevitably be gold, unless otherwise mentioned. Third. Denominating the stars over the head of the eagle a ‘crest.’ They are, instead, only approximately a crest, but are not a crest, except through great latitude in the use of the term, because they could not be tangibly represented as in nature, and attached to the top of a helmet. Theoretically, the crest must be something possible to represent in apparent solidity in carved or stamped work, which, being affixable to the helmet, can also be reasonably represented as resting upon the top of the shield.” Mr. Lukens’s letter is embellished with several elegant pen drawings, illustrating his views.692 THE SEAL AND ABMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
“ The interpretation of these devices is as follows : The escutcheon is composed of the chief and pale, the two most honorable ordinaries. The thirteen pieces paly represent the several States in the Union, all joined in one solid, compact entire supporting a chief which unites the whole, and represents Congress. The motto alludes to the union. The pales in the arms are kept closely united by the chief, and the chief depends on that union, and the strength resulting from it, for its support, to denote the confederacy of the United States of America, and the preservation of their union through Congress.
“ The colors of the pales and those used in the flag of the United States of America : white signifies purity and innocence ; red, hardiness and valor ; and blue, the color of the chief, signifies vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
“ The olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace and war, which is exclusively vested in Congress. The crest or constellation denotes a new State taking its place and rank among other sovereign powers ; the escutcheon is borne on the breast of the American eagle^ without any other supporters, to denote that the United States of America ought to rely on their own virtue.
“ Keverse. The pyramid signifies strength and duration ; the eye over it and the motto alludes to the many and signal interpositions of Providence in favor of the American cause. The date underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence ; and the words under it signify the beginning of the new American era, which commences from that date.”
The mottoes, “ Annuit Gceptis” (“God has favored the undertaking ”), “ Novus Orclo Seclorum ” (“ A new series of ages ”), denoting that a new order of things had commenced in the Western Hemisphere.
The eye of Providence in a triangle on the reverse of the seal as adopted, and the motto, “ E Pluribus Unum ” formed part of the device reported by the committee, Aug. 10, 1776. The crest, a radiant constellation of thirteen stars breaking through a cloud proper, was on the devices and reports of 1779 and 1780. The thirteen red and white stripes on the shield were also then suggested, but placed diagonally. The State of New York had taken the eagle on the crest of its arms more than four years earlier.
The illustration is the full size of the great seal, which has been in use ever since its adoption. Only the side containing the arms of the Union is used.THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 693
Mr. Tossing1 says, on the authority of Thomas Barrett, an antiquary of Manchester, England, that these arms were suggested to John Adams by Sir John Prestwick, who meant to signify by the blue chief, which in his design was spangled with stars, the protection of Heaven over the States; and that thus to a baronet of the West of England, who was a warm friend of America, as well as an accomplished antiquarian, we are indebted for our national arms. This legend is contradicted by the following paper in the autograph of William Barton, which passed into the possession of his son, Dr. W. P. C. Barton, U. S. 1ST., and on his death in 1856, into the hands of his brother, J. Ehea Barton, M.D., and is now believed to be in the possession of his son, Francis Barton: —
“In June, 1782, when Congress was about to form an armorial device for a great seal for the United States, Charles Thomson, Esq., then secretary, with the Hon. Arthur Lee and Elias Boudinot, members of Congress, called on me and consulted me on the occasion. The great seal, for which I furnished those gentlemen with devices (as certified by Charles Thomson, Esq.), was adopted by Congress on the 20th of June, 1782. Mr. Thomson informed me, four days after, that they met with general approbation.”
(Signed)	“W. Barton.”
The following is the statement referred to by Mr. Barton, written four days after the arms were adopted, and still preserved in the Barton family: —
“ Sir, — I am much obliged for the perusal of the ‘ Elements of Heraldry/ which I now return. I have just dipt into it so far as to be satisfied that it may afford a fund of entertainment, and may be applied by a State to useful purposes. I am much obliged for your very valuable present of Fortescue de Laudibus Legum Anglice, and shall be happy to have it in my power to make a suitable return.
“ I enclose you a copy of the device by which you have displayed your skill in heraldic science, and which meets with general approbation.2
“ I am, sir,
“Your obedient humble servant,
(Signed)	‘Charles Thomson.
“June 24, 1782.”
1	Field-Book American Revolution, vol. ii. ; also in article on the Great Seal of the United States, in Harper’s Magazine, July, 1856.
2	I am indebted to Medical-Director James D. Miller, U. S. N., who married a granddaughter of William Barton, for these letters, and for a copy of a description of the arms of the United States as adopted, taken from one in his autograph. (See note, page 700.) A copy of Thomson’s letter can be found in Nicholson’s Encyclopedia, under the heading ‘ Heraldry.’694 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
On the north and south walls of St. Paul’s Chapel, New York, opposite each other, and half-way down the nave, hang the arms of the United States and the State of New York. These are supposed to mark the places which were occupied by the large square pews set apart for the President of the United States and the Governor of the State. At “ some dreary day of modernizing and miscalled improvement ” these canopied pews were destroyed, and the paintings consigned to unmerited obscurity. A few years ago they wTere restored, as nearly as could be determined, to their original positions.
The arms of the United States on the north side are believed to mark the place of the President’s pew, in which General Washington was accustomed to sit. The painting is evidently the work of a skilful painter, working from the device of an experienced herald. The blazon is as follows : —
Argent six palets gules, a chief azure. Borne on the breast of the American eagle displayed, in his dexter talon an olive branch, in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arrows, points upward, all proper, the last feathered or ; his head surrounded with a circular sky, azure, charged with thirteen mullets 5, 4, 3, 1, argent, environed with clouds proper and beyond rays, or ; in his beak a scroll, with the words “ E Pluribus Unum ” or}
The legal blazon of the arms is good, but this, describing the blazon of the arms in St. Paul’s, is more definite. It is a matter of regret that in the ordinary representation of the arms of the United States the chief is charged with three or more mullets.
The question from whence our fathers derived the motto “E Pluri-lus Unum ” is often asked, but has never been satisfactorily answered. The motto of the 'Spectator’ for Aug. 26, 1711, is “Exempta Jurat E Pluribus Una ” (Hor. 2 ep. ii. 212), which is the earliest use of it I have found. It was suggested by Dr. Lieber that as at the time of the Eevolution the ' Gentleman’s Magazine ’ had a popular circulation in the colonies, the motto may have been adopted from the motto on the title-page of that serial. The title to the first volume of the ' Gentleman’s Magazine,’ 1731, forty-five years previous to the adoption of the motto on our arms, has the device of a hand grasping a bunch of
1 Heraldry, St. Paul’s Chapel in New York, ‘ Genealogical and Biographical Record,’ July, 1872. In 1875, six hundred dollars was appropriated by the State of New York, for the purpose of having two copies of the arms of New York painted on a panel or metal, one to he placed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, the other in the State library at Albany, —the object being to diffuse and perpetuate a knowledge of the genuine State arms. For a heraldic description of these arms, see 4 The Correct Arms of the State of New York,’ by Henry A. Home, LL.D., 1880, p. 26.THE SEAL AND AEMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 695
flowers, and the motto, “ E Pluribus Unum.” And on the title to the first or January number, and all subsequent numbers of the first volume, is the motto, “Prodesse et Delectare” The title of the magazine says that its contents are collected chiefly from the public papers, by Sylvanus Urban.
On the title to the second volume (1732), the two mottoes are united thus: —
“ Prodesse et Delectare [device of a hand grasping a bouquet], E Pluribus Unum”
And these united mottoes are continued on the title-pages of the magazine a hundred years later, in 1833, after which they were discontinued. There were, however, changes in the intervening years. From 1786 to 1788, the volumes bore the mottoes, without the device. From 1789 to 1794, the device without the mottoes. Again, in 1798, the mottoes without the device. In 1808 the device was changed from a hand grasping a bouquet, to a vase filled with fruit and flowers; and this device, with the mottoes of 1732, was on the title of all the volumes from 1808 to 1832. In 1834, a new series of the magazine was commenced, and the old mottoes abandoned. The motto placed on our coins is ascribed to Colonel Eeed, of Uxbridge, Mass. It first appeared on a copper coin struck at Newburg, NT. Y., at a private mint. The pieces are dated 1786. The legend on the New York doubloon of 1787 is, “ Unum E Pluribus” and^of the f Im-munis Columbia ’ copper of the same year, “ E Pluribus Unum; ” and a Washington cent of 1791 has the same motto, — but all these were after it was adopted for the arms.
A writer in ‘ Lippincott’s Magazine ’1 traces the origin of our motto to a Latin poem, ascribed to Virgil. He says : “ Perhaps in the minds of those who first chose it to express the peculiar character of our government it had no definite origin. It may have been manufactured for the occasion. Certainly, when it was first used in the report of the Committee of congress, Aug. 7, 1776, as the epigraph of the public seal, it was a phrase too familiar or too plain to need explanation or authority. But whether remembered, or reinvented on that occasion, almost the exact words occur in a Latin poem called ‘ Moretum,’ ascribed to Virgil, but which is not usually found in his collected works. It is a vivid description of an ancient Italian peasant’s morning meal, with incidental suggestions of his mode of life generally. The moretum is a species of pottage made of herbs and cheese, which, with the help of his servants, he concocts before dawn;
1 Lippincott’s Magazine for February, 1868.696 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
lie grinds up the various materials with a pestle. Then says the poet: —
1 It manus in gyrum; paullatim singnla vires Deperdnnt proprias; color est E Pluribus Unus.5
This poem has been seldom noticed/’
A writer in the ‘ Overland Monthly ’ says : —
“ In choosing a national motto, they [our fathers] derived it from a modest metrical composition in Latin, written by John Carey, of Philadelphia,1 entitled, ‘The Pyramid of Fifteen States/ in which occur the following verses: —
1 Andax inde cohors stellis e pluribus unum,
Audax pyramidos tollit ad astra caput.’” 2
Its title, ‘ The Pyramid of Fifteen States/ is evidence that the poem was written after the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the original thirteen, in 1794 or 1795, and the title of the poem was probably suggested by the device on the reverse of the national seal.3
1	I can find no mention of John Carey, or Cary, of Philadelphia, in any of the American Biographical Dictionaries.
2	Picking Historical Marrowbones, by Stephen Powers, in ‘Overland Monthly,’ San Francisco, Cal., March, 1871.
3	The following interesting historical sketch of the origin and use of the motto upon our coins, by A. L. Snowden, Superintendent of the United States mint in Philadelphia, was published in the ‘ Press ’ in 1879 : —■
“To the Editor of the Press: —
“ I send you, as desired, a brief historical sketch of the origin and use of the motto,
‘ E Tluribus Unum.’ The origin of the motto is ascribed to Colonel Peed, of Uxbridge, Mass. It first appeared on a copper coin, struck at Newburg, New York State, where there was a private mint. The pieces struck are dated 1786. In 1787, the motto appeared on several types of the New Jersey coppers, also on a very curious gold doubloon, or sixteen-dollar piece, coined by a goldsmith named Brasher. It was there put ‘ Unum E Pluribus.’ Only four of these pieces are known to be extant, and they are very valuable. One of them, in possession of the mint, is supposed to be worth over a thousand dollars. When Kentucky was admitted, in 1791, it is said copper coins were struck with ‘ E Pluribus Unum.’ They were made in England. The act of Congress of 1792, authorizing the establishment of a mint, and the coinage of gold, silver, and copper, did not prescribe this motto, nor was it ever legalized. It was placed on gold coins in 1796, and on silver coins in 1798. It was constantly used thereafter until 1831, when it was withdrawn from the quarter-dollar of new device. In 1834, it was dropped from gold coins, to mark the change in the standard fineness of the coin. In 1837, it was dropped from the silver coins, marking the era of the Kevised Mint Code. It has been thought proper to restore it recently to our new silver dollar, without any special sanction of law, although the expression is one very proper for our coin.
“ Mr. William E. Dubois, assayer at the United States Mint, has recently investi-THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES. 697
The President’s Seal. — At the same time that the seal of the United States was adopted, Congress ordered a smaller seal for the use
of the President of Congress. It was a small oval, about an inch in length, the centre covered with clouds surrounding a blue sky, on which were seen thirteen stars arranged to form a six-pointed star. Over this device was the motto, “ E Pluribus Unum.” This seal was used by all the Presidents of the Continental Congresses.
The President’s seai.i The seal of the President of the United States is now round, with an eagle upon it.
THE DEPARTMENT SEALS.
Each of the departments of the United States government has its official seal, about the size of the great seal of the United States, which
is attached to all commissions and important documents emanating from the department to which it belongs.
Post-Office Department. — Under the national government, Samuel Osgood, of Massachusetts, was appointed the first Post-master-General, and the rude woodcut of a post-rider, which had been used by Franklin on his circulars, became the device on the seal of the department, and it is retained to this day as such, with the words around it, “ Post Office Department, * United States of America.”
Navy Department. — On the 26th of September, 1778, Congress appointed a committee, consisting of John Witherspoon, Gouverneur Morris, and Richard Henry Lee, to prepare a seal for the treasury and for the navy; and on the 4th of May, 1779, they reported as a device
gated this subject, and, I understand, has prepared an article in relation thereto. For more definite and extended information, it would be well, perhaps, for you to consult him.
“I am, very truly yours,
“A. Loudon Snowden.
“Philadelphia, Jan. 15, 1879.”
1 From an impression on a letter written by Thomas Mifflin, to the President of the Continental Congress.
Franklin’s Post-Rider.698 THE SEAL AND ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
an escutcheon, on which was a chevron with a blue field above it, and thirteen perpendicular alternate red and white bars in the chevron. Below the chevron was a reclining anchor proper, on a white or silver field ; the crest was a ship under sail ; the motto, “ Sustentans et Sus-tentatum ; ” the legend, “ U. S. A. Sigil. Naval.,” with thirteen stars to complete the circle of the seal.
Naval Seal, 1779
This seal was used until 1798, when, in the spring of that year, a regular navy department was established, and Benjamin Stodert, of Maryland, was appointed the first Secretary of the Navy. Then the old continental naval seal was laid aside, and another, similar to the one now in use, was adopted. In place of the chevron with bars, a large space of the face of the seal is covered with a spread eagle. The ship and the anchor are retained, but not the heraldic posture. The motto and stars are omitted, and the legend is, “ Navy Department, United States oe America.”
War Department. — In 1778, a seal was adopted for the “Board of War,” having for its device a group of military trophies, with the
Phrygian cap, the emblem of freedom, between a spear and a musket; over this was a serpent. Beneath the trophies the date, “ mdcclxxviii.” Around the seal were the words, “Board of War and Ordnance, United States of America.” This was the origin of the present seal of the War Department, which bears precisely the same device. The date is omitted. Within the curve of the serpent are the words, “ Will defend,” and around the seal the legend, “ United States of America. War Office.”
Seal of the War Department. 1778-1880PLX
AMERICAN YACHT CLUB FLAGS - 1880,
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AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
u Up with the anchor! the white-crested billows Are leaping like dolphins onr swift keel to greet;
Awake! all ye sluggards, throw by your soft pillows,
Make sail on our darling, the Queen of the Fleet.
u She welcomes the breeze with ripples of laughter,
And shows her white teeth at each wave that we meet;
She flings back the spray at crafts that come after;
Ah! none can compare with our Queen of the Fleet.’7
Yachting Song, ~by B. S. Barker.
Yachting has ever been, and must always remain, an aristocratic sport. The cost of building and maintaining the smallest yacht
places yachting beyond the resources of any but the wealthy. The rich merchants of Tyre, according to the Prophet Ezekiel, had their private galleys, with “benches of ivory ” and masts of cedar of Lebanon, and sails of “fine linen with broidered work from Egypt.” The yachts of the Roman emperors were built of costly cedar inlaid, and had their sterns studded with rare jewels. They were furnished with baths, porticos, and even hot-houses and gardens. It is safe to conclude that they never engaged in ocean regattas, or were remarkable for speed. The royal yachts of England, Holland, and Russia are perfections of their class, in reference to the comfort of their accommodations, rather The Commodores^ocean challenge than in the perfection of their models.
Queen Victoria has three steam yachts, the Prince of Wales two, and the Duke of Edinburgh one. The latter, being a sailor, has seen that his yacht possesses seagoing qualities and speed as well as cabin accommodations. Napoleon III. kept three steam yachts, which are now the property of the republic. Eor many years the Czar of Russia has maintained an imperial yacht club at St. Petersburg, to encourage a taste for nautical science among the young nobility of his empire.1
1 Yachts and Yachting, in ‘ Scribner’s Monthly,’ for August, 1872.T02
AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
The English naval dockyards built royal yachts as far back as 1660, when Phineas Petts was the master shipwright of the royal navy. Charles II. owned the yacht Mary, of one hundred and sixty-three tons, and the Queensborough, of twenty-seven tons. Pepys mentions a race, May, 1661, between a Dutch yacht belonging to the Merry Monarch, and a new one built by Petts, and says: " Commissioner Petts’s do prove better than the Dutch one that his brother [the before-mentioned master shipwright] built.”
William Falconer, the author of 'The Shipwreck,’ in his 'Marine Dictionary,’ first published in 1769, defines a yacht as "a vessel of state, usually employed to convey princes, ambassadors, or other great personages from one kingdom to another.” " As the principal design,” he adds, " of a yacht is to accommodate the passengers, it is usually fitted with a variety of convenient apartments, with suitable furniture, according to the quality or number of persons contained therein.
"The royal yachts are commonly rigged as ketches, except the principal one, reserved for the sovereign, which is equipped with three masts, like a ship. They are generally elegantly furnished and richly ornamented with sculpture, and always commanded by captains in the royal navy.
" Besides these, there are many other yachts of a smaller kind, employed by the commissioners of the excise, navy, and customs, or used as pleasure-boats by private gentlemen.”
A plate of flags published in Entick’s ' Naval History,’ in 1757, shows the ensign of the Water Club of Cork to have been a union jack with an Irish harp in a green square in the centre of the two crosses. This flag only differs from the flag of the Lord-Lieutenant or Viceroy of Ireland of to-day in the color of the square or shield which surrounds the harp, and being minus the cross of St. Patrick, added in 1801.
Modern yachting may be said to have had its origin in 1720, when the " Cork Water Club,” called since 1828 "The Royal Cork Yacht Club,” was first organized. This club then consisted of only a very few vessels, whose appearance at a modern regatta would most undoubtedly cause a sensation. Their hulls closely resembled the shape of a walnut with a curved stem and a large poop. The mast was in the middle of the boat, and the bowsprit pointed well up to the sky, while the lift of boom would seem to modern eyes simply enormous-Still they were good, wholesome sea-boats, though perhaps hardly handsome to look at. They could not, however, travel very fast in a light breeze, as topsails were a commodity they did not possess. It was, however, many years before pleasure sailing was imported intoAMERICAN YACHT CLUBS'.
703
England; for it was not until 1775, at the beginning of the American war, that a yacht was introduced on the Thames, and then the type of boat was but very little different from the old Cork water-boat. About this time the Gravesend “ tilt-boats ” used to carry passengers between London and Gravesend, and their skippers were so proud of their performances that they boasted that they could beat any yacht upon the river. Matches between them naturally arose, and hence the first taste of the pleasure of yacht-racing was felt. This led to matches being made between the yachts themselves; and yachting, being patronized by the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV.,- began to be taken up as a fashionable amusement. The first regatta was held in Cork harbor in 1812. In that year, the Royal Yacht Club was founded, and, counting among its members many influential and wealthy noblemen and gentlemen, much encouragement was given to the production of superior fast-sailing yachts. It held its first regatta in 1828.
The first outcome of this rivalry was a revolution in the form of yacht lines, which by degrees were made sharper, while the old poop was swept away, as it was found to hold too much wind in going to windward. But as fashion always runs in extremes, so the cod’s head and mackerel tail now became the prevailing type, — the stern right down in the water and the bow cocked up, — and this type remained in vogue many years. At this period, the idea remained fixed that, no matter what the form of the hull, speed was to be obtained by crowding on as much canvas as possible, and consequently by increasing also the amount of ballast in order to enable a yacht to stand up under her enormous spars and sails. The cut of these great sails was, however, not much considered, and huge jibs were to be seen with great slack feet, while the after-peak of the mainsail shook and shivered, and its foot hung in a great curve below the boom. Then, too, the system of shifting ballast was resorted to in order to assist a vessel in standing up under her great spread of canvas. In 1840, the hull of yachts began again to receive attention, — a deep, sharp floor was introduced, so as to get the ballast lower and gain stiffness, while the beam was reduced; and swift vessels but unwholesome sea-boats were obtained. The old cod’s-head bow was condemned, and a sharp bow with a fine run took its place. At last, in 1851, the English yachtsmen, thinking their yachts with the smallest hull and biggest amount of ballast and canvas were perfection, proceeded to challenge the whole world, and were beaten by the yacht America.1
1 The Sportsman’s Year-Book, 1880.704
AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
Yachting flourishes in England more than in any other country, inasmuch as the English have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, and the coast of Great Britain is studded with good harbors. There are fifty yacht clubs in England, each of which has a flag, which only its members who are yacht-owners have a right to display. The Royal Yacht Squadron, of Cowes, besides its squadron flag, has the exclusive right to carry the white ensign of the British navy. In 1850, the yacht fleet of England numbered eight hundred vessels. In 1867, Hunt’s ‘ Universal Yacht List ’ gave the number as one thousand and forty-eight; in 1875, three thousand and seventy-two. The cost of the yacht fleet of Great Britain in 1872 was estimated at $10,000,000, and the cost of its annual maintenance not far from $2,000,000. Over ten thousand men are employed in the English yachts. The number of yachts on Hunt’s list in 1879 had increased to three thousand seven hundred and five.
In 1876-77, Mr. Thomas Brassey, M.P., made a voyage around the world in his yacht Sunbeam; leaving Cowes, England, July 6, 1876, and arriving at Cowes, on his return, May 26, 1877.
The history of aquatic sports in this country is but little known. The first boat club established was the Knickerbocker, in New York City, in 1811. It was disbanded the following year, owing to the war with England. After many years, Robert L. and John Stevens, Ogden Hoffman, Samuel Verplanck, Charles L. Livingston, Robert Emmet, and others, to the number of one hundred, started, in 1830, the New York Boat Club. Their first boat was built by Joseph Francis, but was soon presented to the Emperor of Russia. The second, a double-decked barge of sixteen oars, thirty feet long, and called the Seadrift, is still in excellent preservation, half a century after its construction. It is of chestnut and oak, and has been intrusted to Mr. Samuel Yerplanck and his heirs, to be preserved as long as any of the members continue living. A number still exist, including Captain Francis, the veteran builder.
The first yacht club in the United States was styled the “ Hoboken Model Yacht Club.” It was organized in 1840, and consisted of a few small sail-boats. In 1844, it was merged in the New York Yacht Club, organized that year with one hundred and seventy-one members and a fleet of seventeen vessels, but not incorporated until 1865. This club has now four hundred and forty members, and a squadron of fifty-five vessels, with an aggregate of five thousand tons, representing a cost value of about two millions of dollars, while the value of the yacht fleet of the whole country, represented by thirty-one distinct clubs, was, in 1872, estimated to have cost five millions.AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
705
With, a curious sort of appropriateness, the initial meeting of the New York Yacht Club was held on board a small vessel lying in New York harbor, in days when the universal introduction of steam had not vitiated the force of the classical quotation, “ Nos agimur tumiclis velis” which has since been adopted as its motto. As far back as 1844, half a dozen gentlemen began to discuss the formation of a club for the cultivation of naval science, and had several informal meetings for the debating of preliminaries on board that little vessel. Edward A. Stevens was one of the first movers in the matter, seconded by Robert S. Hone, Jonathan McVicker, and Hamilton Morton, who acted as the secretary for its first struggling years.
The club was not at first successful, and numbered for several years but few members. Three or four members were added in 1845, half a dozen in 1846, Moses H. Grinnell among the number, until, in 1850 the membership numbered one hundred.
During this period the New York Yacht Club struggled bravely to keep its head above water, and a taste for the sport was created by it. In 1848, Congress was appealed to, and a special statute was enacted instructing the Secretary of the Navy to permit vessels of the club, employed exclusively as pleasure crafts, &c., to be licensed to proceed from port to port of the United States without entering or clearing at the custom-house.
In 1848, through the influence and exertions of the New York Yacht Club, the following act for the encouragement of yachting was enacted: —
“ An act to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to license yachts, and for
other purposes.
“ Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to cause yachts, used and employed exclusively as pleasure vessels, and designed as models of naval architecture, and to be enrolled as American vessels, to be licensed on terms which will authorize them to proceed from port to port of the United States1 without entering or clearing at the custom-house. Such license shall be in such form as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe: Provided, such vessels so enrolled and licensed shall not be allowed to transport merchandise, or carry passengers for pay : And provided further, that the owner of any such vessel, before taking out such license, shall give bond in such form and for such amount as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe, conditional that the
1 Amended June 20, 1870, by the insertion of the words, “and by sea to foreign ports.”
45706
AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
said vessel shall not engage in any unlawful trade, and shall comply with the laws in all other respects.
“ Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That all such vessels shall, in all respects, except as above, be subject to the laws of the United States, and shall be liable to seizure and forfeiture for any violation of the provisions of this act.
“ Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That all such licensed yachts shall use a signal of the form, size, and colors prescribed by the Secretary of the Navy, and the owners thereof shall at all times permit the naval architects in the employ of the United States to examine and copy the models of said yachts.
*'‘ Approved August 7, 1848.”
American Yacht Ensigns.
The flag prescribed by the Secretary of the Navy, under authority of this act, and which continues to be the recognized American yacht ensign, was the American ensign, substituting in the blue field a white foul anchor, encircled by thirteen stars in white, in lieu of a star for each State. (See Plate I.)
In 1870, the act of 1848 was amended, as follows: —
“ An act to amend an act entitled i An act to authorize the Secretary of the
Treasury to license yachts.’
“ Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the first section of the act, entitled 4 An act to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to license yachts, and for other purposes,’ approved August 7, 1848, is hereby amended, by inserting in the first clause thereof, after the words ‘ port to port of the United States,’ the words ‘ and by sea to foreign ports.’
“ Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That yachts belonging to a regularly organized yacht club of any foreign nation, which shall extend like privileges to the yachts of the United States, shall have the privilege of entering or leaving any port of the United States without entering or clearing at the custom-house thereof, or paying tonnage tax.
“ Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That for the identification of yachts and their owners, a commission to sail for pleasure in any designated yacht belonging to any regularly organized and incorporated yacht club, stating the exemptions and privileges enjoyed under it, may be issued by the Secretary of the Treasury, and shall be a token of credit to any United States official, and to the authorities of any foreign power, for privileges enjoyed under it.
“ Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That every yacht visiting a foreign country under the provisions of this act shall, on its return to the UnitedAMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
707
States, make due entry at the custom-house of the port at which, on such return, it shall arrive.
“Approved June 29, 1870.”
The following are the forms adopted for licensing and commissioning American yachts, and for application for a commission. I am informed by the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury that up to April, 1872, only one commission had been issued.
“ License
“ Official number.
“ Numeral letter.
“ Of a yacht of twenty tons and upwards, to proceed from port to port of the United States, without entering or clearing at the custom-house.
“ In pursuance of an act of the Congress of the United States of America, entitled 6 An act to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to license yachts,
and for other purposes,’------having given bond that the----------called the
-----, whereof the said-------are owners, burden--------tons and--------hundredths of a ton, as appears by her enrolment, dated at-----------------, used and em-
ployed exclusively as a pleasure vessel, and designed as a model of naval architecture, shall not, while this license continues in force, transport merchandise, or carry passengers for pay, or engage in any unlawful trade, nor in any way violate the revenue laws of the United States, and shall comply with the laws in all other respects.
“ License is hereby granted for the said yacht called the ----, to proceed
from port to port of the United States, without entering or clearing at the custom-house, but not to be allowed to transport merchandise or carry passengers for pay. This license to continue and be in force for one year from
the date hereof, and no longer. Given under my hand and seal at---------, this
—— day of--------, in the year 18 7-.
-, Collector.
-, Naval Officer.”
Application for a Yacht Commission.
187-.
“ I,-----, owner of the yacht called the-------, of----, hereby make
application for a commission to sail the said yacht on a voyage of pleasure to a foreign port or ports, under the provisions of sec. 3, Act of June 29, 1870.
-----, Owner.
“ To-----, Collector of Customs :
“Description : Name------; Home Port,-------; Managing Owner,--------;
Master,------; Rig,----; Tonnage,-----; Name of Yacht Club,------; Official
Number, —----; Bound for-------.708
AMEEICAN YACHT CLUBS.
“Custom House,------, 187-
“ I hereby certify that the above-mentioned yacht belongs to the-------
Yacht Club, an association duly incorporated and organized under the law?'
of the State of----, and I recommend that the above application for a com«-
mission be granted by the Secretary of the Treasury.
“-----, Collector/’
Commission.
“ Commission for a Pleasure Yacht, under the Act of June 29, 1870.— The Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America. To all to whom these presents shall come greeting: Be it known, that whereas the yacht called the------, of-----, whereof ------ is at present master or commander, being schooner-rigged and of the burden of----------tons, or thereabouts, her official number being---------------------------, belonging to an association duly incorporated and organized under the laws of the State of-----, known as the
■----, hath been duly enrolled and licensed according to law, which said
yacht is now lying at the port of--------, bound for------, on a voyage of
pleasure; and whereas-------, the owner thereof, has made application for a
commission for the said yacht under the provisions of the act hereinafter mentioned:
“ Uow, therefore, I, George S. Boutwell, Secretary of the Treasury, in pursuance of authority in me vested by the act entitled ‘ An act to amend an act, entitled an act to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to license yachts/ approved June 29, 1870, do hereby commission the aforesaid yacht
called the-----, as a vessel of the United States, entitled to proceed from
port to port of the United States, and by sea to foreign ports, without entering or clearing at the custom-house : Provided, that said yacht shall not transport merchandise nor carry passengers for pay, nor engage in any unlawful trade, nor in any way violate the laws of the United States : And provided further, that the said yacht having visited a foreign country shall, on returning to the United States, make due entry at the custom-house of the district within which on such return she shall first arrive, and shall thereupon surrender this commission; and so long as the aforesaid conditions shall be faithfully observed, this commission shall be a token of credit to any United States official at home or abroad, and to the authorities of any foreign power, for the privileges enjoyed under it.
“ In witness whereof, I have hereunto subscribed my name and caused the seal of the Treasury Department to be affixed, at the city of Washington,
on the-----day of-----; in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and seventy------.
“-----, Secretary of the Treasury.
“ Attest :
t “-------, RegisterAMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
709
A pretty long net-work of law to cover so small a matter. Thus protected and fostered, the work pressed bravely on. The progress, however, of the popular taste in this direction was very gradual. In 1850, the whole fleet of the club could be counted on one’s fingers. It had its regattas, but they were not the popular events they have since become.
In the summer of 1851, the yacht America,1 built by George L. Steers, bearing the pennant of John C. Stevens, Commodore of the
Hew York Yacht Club, crossed the Atlantic to take part in an international yacht race, open to the yachts of all nations. Sailing from Havre to Cowes, she fell in with the crack yacht of England, whose owner proposed a race. Her sailing-master (Commodore S. not being on board) assented, and the yachts started for Cowes, Isle of Wight. The America soon left the English yacht astern, which so frightened the Englishmen, that the international race was given up. Commodore Stevens then posted a notice in the Club House at Cowes offering to race the America against any English yacht for ten thousand guineas. That offer was not accepted; but the America was entered for one of the Royal Yacht Club matches, the prize being a cup presented by the squadron, open to the yachts of any country, of any rig, and of any size, to be sailed without time allowance, around the Isle of Wight. There were sixteen entries. The America won the race with ease, and returned with the cup to the United States. Her owner presented the cup to the Hew York Yacht Club, to be always held as a challenge cup. It received the name of the ‘ Queen’s Cup,5 though British yachtsmen call it the ‘ 1851, or America’s Cup,’ its proper name. The deed of trust to the Hew York Yacht Club reads as follows: —
“ Any organized yacht club of any foreign country shall always be entitled, through any one or more of its members, to claim the right of sailing a match with any yacht or other vessel of not less than thirty nor more than three hundred tons, measured by the customhouse rule of the country to which the vessel belongs.
“ The parties desiring to sail for the cup may make any match with the yacht club in possession of the same that may be determined upon 1 The America is now owned by the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler.710
AMEBIC AN YACHT CLUBS.
by mutual consent; but, in case of disagreement as to terms, the match shall be sailed over the usual course for the annual regatta of the yacht club in possession of the cup, and subject to its rules and regulations, the challenging party being bound to give six months’ notice in writing, fixing the day they may wish to start. This notice to embrace the length, custom-house measurement, rig, and name of the vessel.”
The great event in the history of the New York Yacht Club took place in 1866-67, when the Henrietta, Yesta, and Fleetwing crossed the Atlantic, the Henrietta, belonging to James Gordon Bennett, Jr., winning the race.
This daring event contributed more to give a status to our country’s yachts and yachtsmen than any feat ever before accomplished by them. For years, although the speed of our yachts was admitted, it was the custom, at home and abroad, to consider our yachtsmen as smooth-water sailors, addicted to cruising in land-locked bays, and seldom venturing off soundings. After this race, all such jibes were forever silenced.
The start in this ocean race was made Dec. 11, 1866. The course was from Sandy Hook Light-ship to the Needle’s Light, in the English Channel; it was a sweepstake race, for a purse of ninety thousand dollars, — thirty thousand dollars for each yacht, the winner receiving the entire amount.
The contestants were the schooners Henrietta, a keel yacht of 205 tons, the Yesta, centre board, of 201 tons, and the Fleet wing, keel, of 212 tons. The race was a close and gallant one, all three making their Cowes anchorage within three hours of each other. After the first day out, the vessels saw nothing more of each other until they encountered in port. Mr. Bennett went out in the Henrietta, and Mr. George Lorillard in the Yesta. The Henrietta, Captain Samuels, carried off the honors, making the passage in 13 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes.1
The Henrietta was modelled by William Tooker, and built by Henry Steers, at Greenport. She was launched in June, 1861. Her dimensions were 107 feet on deck, 99 feet water line; tonnage, by custom-house measurement, 205 tons.
Soon after her launch the civil war began. Mr. Bennett generously placed her at the disposal of the government. His offer was accepted, and the yacht was commissioned as a revenue cutter, and
1 We a.re indebted to the politeness of the publishers of ‘Brentano’s Monthly’ for the engraving of the Henrietta.
The ‘ Log of the Yesta,’ by Col. Stuart M. Taylor, and ‘ How the Henrietta Won,’ by Stephen Fiske, published in ‘ Brentano’s Monthly,’ are admirable records of the race. See, also, the illustrated paper on Yachts and Yachting in £ Scribner’s Monthly,’ vol. iv., August, 1872.AMEBICA» YACHT HENRIETTA CROSSING THE ATLANTIC, December, 1866.712
AMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
did efficient service from New York to Florida, and at the close of the war, in 1865, returned to the service of the New York Yacht Club. In September, 1865, she was beaten by the Fleetwing, in a race around Cape May Light-ship, by 1 hour, 19 minutes. In October she was defeated by the Yesta over the same course, both her contestants in the ocean race, when she came off victor.
After the Henrietta’s return from the ocean race she was laid up, and ultimately sold for fifteen thousand dollars, to a Boston gentleman, for a fruiter; and, after making several successful voyages, she was lost off the coast of Honduras, Dec. 16, 1872, on her return voyage to New York. The Henrietta will always be thought of as winner of the first mid-winter ocean yacht race across the Atlantic, and no subsequent yacht race can ever deprive her of its laurels. After her triumph, Mr. Bennett bought her antagonist, the Fleetwing, for sixty-five thousand dollars, and renamed her the Dauntless.
In 1870, the race between the Dauntless, belonging to Bennett, and Cambria, belonging to Mr. Ashbury, was undertaken, resulting in the defeat of the Dauntless.
The club-house of the New York Yacht Club, bought in 1868, is a villa-like structure, located in Clifton, Staten Island, and is conducted on house rules varying in no substantial particular from city clubs in general.
The admission fee to the Club is forty dollars; annual dues, twenty-five dollars.
The New York Yacht Club remained in undisturbed possession of the America’s cup until 1870, when Commodore Ashbury, of the Royal Harwich Yacht Club, England, challenged the New York club, and entered the yacht Cambria against the fleet of the New York Yacht Club, over their course. The race was sailed Aug. 8, 1870, and was won by the Magic, of the New York Yacht Club, the Cambria being the tenth yacht in. Commodore Ashbury, returning to England, had a new yacht built, the Livonia, and again challenged the holders of the cup to sail a series of races, the first of which came off Oct. 16, 1871, and was won by the New York yacht Columbia. The second race was between the Livonia and Columbia, Oct. 18, 1871, and was also won by the Columbia. The third race was run the next day, between the same vessels, and under a time allowance the victory was assigned to the Livonia. A fourth race, between the Livonia and Sappho, was won by the Sappho ; and a fifth race, between the Livonia and Dauntless, was won by the Dauntless. These races were all sailed under the rules of the New York Yacht Club, under the management of the club committee. That they were fairly won, and proved theAMERICAN YACHT CLUBS.
713
superiority of the models of the American yachts, there can he no doubt. The Livonia sailed for England, November 9, leaving the cup in the possession of the New York club.
During our civil war, the America, which had previously been purchased by an English gentleman, became a noted blockade-runner, but was once so closely pressed that she was run on shore and scuttled. She was raised by our officers, repaired by the United States government, and stationed at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where she was used for experimental practice until June, 1873, when she was offered at auction, and purchased by Major-General Benjamin E. Butler, who was the only bidder, for five thousand dollars, and she is now (1880) owned by him.
The following are the names of the principal American yacht clubs whose signal-flags are given in the colored illustration (Plate X.), with the date of their organization or incorporation, when known : —
Amekican Yacht Clubs.
	Organized.	Incor.	Organized.	Incor.
1. Eastern		1870	1871	29. Union, N. J		
2. Portland		.. 1869		30. Otego		
3. Boston		.. 1866	1868	31. St. Augustine		
4. New York		.. 1844	1865	32. Poughkeepsie Ice..	
5. Columbia		.. 1867	1868	33. Beverley	1872	
6. Hudson River ...	.. 1873	1875	34. Bunker Hill	1869	
7. Chatauqua Lake.	.. 1871		35. Manhattan		1870
8. Jersey City		.. 1858	1866	36. Hoboken	1856	1868
9. San Francisco		.. 1870		37. Neenah	1874	
10. Georgia				38. Long Island	1872	
11. N. Y. Canoe ....			39. New Brunswick	1875	
12. Riverside			.. 1871		40. Oceanic		
13. South Boston....	.. 1868		41. International »	1874	
14. Brooklyn		.. 1857	1864	42. N. Hamburg Ice .. 1869	
15. Seawanhaka		.. 1871		43. Haverhill	1874	
16. Central Hudson -.	.. 1874		44. Royal Sail		
17. Rockaway		.. 1874		45. Williamsburg	1870	1871
18. New Jersey				46. Harlem		
19. Stapleton				47. Riverside		
20. South Carolina				48. Atlantic 		1846	1846
21. American Model .	• -		49. Copenhagen		
22. Madison, Wis		. 1870	1871	50. Royal Canadian ...	
23. Lynn		.. 1870		51. Royal Halifax		
24. Dorchester		1870		52. Royal Bermuda		
25. Long Island				53. Warwick		
26. Knickerbocker		.. 1874		54. Prospect Park Model	
27. Genessee		.. 1874		55. Long Island Model	
28. Oshkosh, Wis		.. 1870			714
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOSNATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
715
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
u I knew a very wise man, who believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws, of a nation.77 — Andrew Fletcher.
■ ■»-
HAIL COLUMBIA.
BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON.
The author of this lyric was the Hon. Joseph. Hopkinson, LL.D., a son of Francis Hopkinson. He was Vice-President of the American Philosophical Society, and President of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, &c. He died at Philadelphia, Jan. 15, 1842, aged seventy-two years. In a letter addressed to the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, a few months before his death, he wrote: —
“ c Hail Columbia7 was written in the summer of 1798, when war with France was thought to be inevitable. Congress was then in session in Philadelphia, deliberating upon that important subject, and acts of hostility had actually taken place. The contest between England and France was raging, and the people of the United States were divided into parties for the one side or the other, some thinking that policy and duty required us to espouse the cause of republican France, as she was called, while others were for connecting ourselves with England, under the belief that she was the great preservative power of good principles and safe government. The violation of our rights by both belligerents was forcing us from the just and wise policy of President Washington, which was to do equal justice to both, but to take part with neither, and to preserve a strict and honest neutrality between them. The prospect of a rupture with France was exceedingly offensive to the portion of the people who espoused her cause, and the violence of the spirit of party has never risen higher, I think not so high, in our country, as it did at that time, upon that question. The theatre was then open in our city. A young man belonging to it, whose talent was high as a singer, was about to take a benefit. I had known him when he was at school. On this acquaintance, he called on me one Saturday afternoon, his benefit being announced for the following Monday. His prospects were very disheartening; but he said that if he could get a patriotic song adapted to ‘ The President’s March ’ he did not doubt of a full house; that the poets of the theatrical corps had been trying to accomplish it, but had not succeeded. I told him I would try what I could do for him. He716
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
came the next afternoon, and the song, such as it is, was ready for him. The object of the author was to get up an American spirit which should be independent of, and above the interests, passion, and policy of both belligerents, and look and feel exclusively for our honor and rights. No allusion is made to Prance or England, or the quarrel between them, or to the question which was most in fault in their treatment of us. Of course the son«“
O
found favor with both parties, for both were American; at least, neither could disown the sentiments and feelings it indicated. Such is the history of this song, which has endured infinitely beyond the expectation of the author, as it is beyond any merit it can boast of except that of being truly
Ÿ
and exclusively patriotic in its sentiments and spirit.
“ Yery respectfully,
“ Your most obedient servant,
“Rev. Rufus W. Geiswold.”	« Jos. Hopkinson.
Mr. Hopkinson was twenty-eight years old when he wrote ' Hail Columbia.’ Printed and written documents show it was written in April, at 132 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, where he then resided. 'The Aurora’ of May 5, says: "Joseph Hopkinson, the author of the late Federal song to the tune of 'The President’s March,’ has been nominated by the President a commissioner to transact some business with the Indians. He has written his song to some tune, — that’s clear ! ”
Mr. Eeinagle, with Mr. Wignall, of the new theatre, on Chestnut Street, arranged the music for the song, and for 'The President’s March.’ Both were printed by Willig, the music-seller on South Fourth Street, Philadelphia. The author, in a letter to ' The Wyoming Bard,’ Aug. 24, 1840, giving a particular history of its composition says it was called for on Saturday, completed on Sunday evening, announced Monday morning, and sung at the theatre the same evening. A correspondent of the ‘ Historical Magazine ’ says it was written " at the request of Mr. Gilbert Fox,” a professed vocalist, who was, no doubt, the actor alluded to by Mr. Hopkinson.
The morning papers of the 25th of April announced the tragedy of 'The Italian Monk’ for the benefit of Mr. Fox, "after which an entire new song (written by a citizen of Philadelphia), to thé tune of ' The President’s March,’ will be sung, accompanied by a full band and a grand chorus.” It was encored, and repeated eight times, the audience at last joining in the chorus. The words were immediately caught up and repeated in all parts of the city, and thence throughout the country. It was sung at night in the streets by large assemblies of citizens, including some members of Congress.•NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
717

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719
"The President’s March’ was a popular air, and the adaptation easy. It was composed in honor of President Washington, then residing at No. 190 High Street, Philadelphia, by a German teacher of music named Roth,1 or.Roat, familiarly known as “Old Roat.” He was considered as an eccentric, and kind of a droll, and took snuff immoderately. Philip Roth, teacher of music, described as living at 25 Crown Street, whose name appears in all the Philadelphia directories from 1791 to 1799, inclusive, was probably the author of the march.
According to his son, who asserted he was one of the performers, the march was composed by Professor Phyla, of Philadelphia, and was played at Trenton, in 1789, when Washington passed over to New York to be inaugurated.2
During the centennial year an autograph copy of " Hail Columbia ’ was displayed in the museum at Independence Hall, Philadelphia. This copy was written from memory, Feb. 22, 1828, and presented to George M. Keim, Esq., of Reading, in compliance with a request made by him. It has marginal notes, one of which informs us that the passage " Behold the chief ’ refers to John Adams, then President of the United States. Mr. Hopkinson also presented General Washington with a copy of his poem, and received from him a complimentary letter of thanks, which is now in the possession of his descendants. The autograph fac-simile we give is from an autograph in the possession of C. D. Hildeburn, Esq., of Philadelphia.
1 Poulson’s Advertiser, 1829.
3 Historical Magazine, vol. iii. 23 ; Baltimore Clipper, 1841; American Historical Record, vol. i. 53 ; Hon. S. Salisbury’s paper before the American Antiquarian Society, 1872.

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721
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
BY FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
The author of this lyric, by profession a lawyer, was born in Frederick County, Md., Aug. 1, 1779, and died in Baltimore, Jan. 11, 1843. He was educated at St. Johns College, Annapolis, practised
law in Frederick City, and Washington, D. C., and is buried in Frederick, Md. It is .to be regretted his descendants were not all
its hour of peril as he was.
The song, which has immortalized his name and become national, was inspir the author’s witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Sept. 13,1814. “ The scene which he describes, and the warm spirit of patriotism which breathes in the song,” savs his brother-in-law, Chief Justice Taney, “ were not the offspring of mere fancy or poetic imagination. He describes what he actually saw, and he tells us what he felt while witnessing the conflict, and what he felt when the battle was over and the victory won by his countrymen. Every word came warm from his heart, and for that reason, even more than its poetical merit, it never fails to find response in the hearts of those who listen to it.”
The song was first published in the f Baltimore American’ of Sept. 21, 1814, a week after the battle, with these prefatory remarks : “ This
46
as loyal to the flag in722
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
song was composed under the following circumstances, — A gentleman left Baltimore in a flag of truce, for the purpose of getting released from the British fleet a friend of his who had been captured at Marlborough.1 He went as far as the mouth of the Patuxent, and was not permitted to return lest the intended attack upon Baltimore should be disclosed. He was therefore brought up the bay to the mouth of the Patapsco, where his flag [of truce] vessel was kept under the guns of a frigate [the Surprise], and was compelled to witness the bombardment of Port McHenry, which the admiral had boasted he could carry in a few hours. He watched the flag at the fort through the whole day, with an anxiety that can be better felt than described, until the night prevented him from seeing it. In the night he watched the bombshells, and at early dawn his eye was again greeted by the proudly waving flag of his country.”
A writer in the ‘ American Historical Record’ for January, 1873, says it was “ wThile pacing the deck of the ‘ cartel ship Minden,’ between midnight and dawn, that Key composed this song.” Her Majesty’s ship of the line of that name has generally been credited as having been the vessel on board of which it was composed; but she was not one of the enemv’s fleet at the bombardment. From 1854 to 1859, the Minden, 74, in the words of a song, ‘ being no more fit for the sea,’ was anchored in Hong Kong harbor, China, as a hospital ship. When broken up in 1859, her timbers were anxiously sought after by patriotic Americans, from the supposition that on her deck our national song was composed.2
Judge Taney, whose information was derived from Mr. Key, in a letter introductory to Key’s poem, furnishes the following narrative regarding its composition: —
“ [Vice] Admiral [Sir Alexander] Cochrane, with whom Key dined
1	Dr. Beanes, a leading physician of Marlborough, the intimate friend of Mr. Key, whose house had been the quarters of Admiral Cockburn and some of the principal officers of the army, when the British troops camped at Marlborough on their march to Washington.
In a letter to his mother, under date Georgetown, 2d September, 1814, Key writes : “ I am going in the morning to Baltimore, to proceed in a flag vessel to General Ross. Old Dr. Beanes, of Marlboro’, is taken prisoner by the enemy, who threaten to carry him off. Some of his friends have urged me to apply for a flag of truce to go and try to procure his release. I hope to return in about eight or ten days, though it is uncertain, as I do not know where to find the fleet.” This letter is now in the possession of Frank M. Etting, Esq., of Philadelphia.
2	Colonel John L. Warner, in 1867, read a paper before the Pennsylvania Historical Society, in which he says, Key “was received with courtesy on hoard the Minden, Admiral Cockburn’s flag-ship.” His account I followed in the first edition of this work, hut for obvious reasons I now give Judge Taney’s.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
723
on the day of his arrival at the fleet, apologized for not accommodating him on board his own ship [the Royal Oak] during his detention, saying it was already crowded with officers of the army, but that he and his friend, Mr. Skinner, would be well taken care of on board the frigate Surprise, commanded by his son, Sir Thomas Cochrane, to which frigate they were accordingly transferred. Mr. Key and Mr. J. S. Skinner continued on board the Surprise until the fleet reached the Patapsco, and preparations were made for landing the troops. Admiral Cochrane then shifted his flag to the frigate, that he might be able to move farther up the river, and superintend in person the attack by water on the fort; and Mr. Key and Mr. Skinner were sent on board their own vessel, with a guard of sailors and marines, to prevent them from landing. They were permitted to take Dr. Beanes with them, and thought themselves fortunate in being anchored in a position to enable them to see distinctly the flag of Fort McHenry. Mr. Key described to me with much animation the scene on the night of the bombardment. He and Mr. Skinner remained on deck during the night, watching every shell1 from the moment it was fired until it fell, listening with breathless interest to hear if an explosion followed. But it suddenly ceased before day, and as they had no communication with any of the enemy’s ships, they did not know whether the fort had surrendered or the attack been abandoned. They paced the deck for the remainder of the night in painful suspense, watering with intense anxiety for the return of day, and looking every few minutes at their watches to see how long they must wait for it; and as soon as it dawned, and before it was light enough to see objects at a distance, their glasses were turned to the fort, uncertain whether they should see there the stars and stripes or the flag of the enemy. At length the light came, and they saw thatf our flag was still there;’ and as the day advanced, they discovered, from the movement of the boats between the shore and the fleet, that the troops had been roughly handled, and that many wounded men were being carried to the ships. At length Mr. Key was informed that the attack on Baltimore had failed, and the British army was re-embarking, and that he, Mr. Skinner, and Dr. Beanes, would be permitted to leave the fleet and go where they pleased, as soon as the troops were on board and ready to sail.”
1 Lieutenant-Colonel Armistead estimated the number of shells thrown against his works at from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred, although only four hundred shells fell within the works ; and the loss of the garrison was only four men killed and twenty-four wounded.724
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
“ Mr. Key then told me that, under the excitement of the time, he had written a song, and handed me a printed copy of ‘ The Star-Spangled Banner/ When I had read it and expressed my admiration, I asked him how he found time, in the scenes he had been passing through, to compose such a song. He said he commenced it on the deck of his vessel [the cartel Minden], in the fervor of the moment, when he saw the enemy hastily retreating to their ships, and looked at the flag he had so anxiously watched for, as the morning opened; that he had written some lines, or brief notes that would aid him in calling them to mind, upon the back of a letter which he happened to have in his pocket; and for some of the lines as he proceeded he was obliged to rely altogether upon his memory; and that he finished it in the boat [the cartel] on his way to the shore, and wrote it out, as it now stands, at the hotel, on the night he reached Baltimore, and immediately after he arrived. The next morning he took it to Judge Mcholson,1 to ask him what he thought of it; and he was so much pleased with it, that he immediately sent it to the printer, Benjamin Edes,2 and
Bombardment of Fort J\ITflenry, Baltimore I8I4. A CQ7itemf\Qra.T$i-P'r i™*-•
directed copies to be struck off in handbill form. (His apprentice, Samuel Sands, who was living in Baltimore in 1878, set it in type). In less than an hour after it was placed in the hands of the printer
1	Judge Nicholson and Mr. Key were nearly connected, their wives being sisters. Though the Chief Justice of Maryland, and a judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, as a volunteer he commanded a company in Fort McHenry at the bombardment.
2	Edes was a captain in the Twenty-seventh Baltimore Regiment, commanded by Colonel Long, which had recently done good service in the battle of Nortli Point.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
725
it was all over the town, and hailed with enthusiasm, and at once took its place as a national song.”
The song oh this broadside was enclosed in an elliptical border composed of the common type ornaments of the day. Around that border, and a little distance from it, on a line of the same form, are the words, “ Bombardment of Fort McHenry.” The letters of these words are wide apart, and each one surrounded by a circle of stars. Below the song, and within the ellipsis, are the words, ‘'Written by Francis S. Key, of Georgetown, D. C.”
On the 21st of September, eight days after the battle, it was printed in the ‘ Baltimore American/ as below, preceded by the remarks we have elsewhere given.
DEFENCE OF FORT McHENRY.
Tune— ‘Anacreon in Heaven.’
Oh ! say, can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,1 2 3 O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming ?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh ! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave ?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes ;
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half2 conceals, half2 discloses ?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now’ shines in 3 the stream, —■
’Tis the star-spangled banner ; oh! long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
1	‘ Perilous fight ’ is the common version, and is given by Griswold, Dana, and the Boys’ Banner Book ; but in three autograph copies, written 1840 and 1842, he wrote ‘ clouds of the fight.’
A correspondent of the ‘National Intelligencer’ says : “Having been detained as a prisoner, — an unwilling spectator of the bombardment, — by the light of rockets and bursting shells he and his companions, to whom it seems he addressed himself in the poem, could catch occasional glimpses of the loved flag still flying defiantly over the fort that protected Baltimore.” Hence his language ‘the clouds of the fight,’ in the version here given, instead of ‘ perilous fight,’ which is the common version.
2	‘Now’ — ‘now’ (Dana).
3	‘ On’ (autograph) ; ‘ o’er ’ (several printed versions).726
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
And where is that hand1 who so vauntingly swore That2 the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should 3 leave us no more ?
Their * blood has washed out their 4 foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave $
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh ! thus be it ever when freemen5 shall stand
Between their 6 loved homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, — “In God is our trust; ” 7
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
On the anniversary of the battle of North Point, Sept. 12, 1872, the publishers of that paper, which has been continued to our day, republished the song, with the following editorial remarks : —
“ We have placed at the head of this article this now immortal national song, just as it first saw the light in print fifty-eight years ago. The inspiration of this song, as the note accompanying its publication sets forth, was the bombardment of Fort McHenry and the successful defence of its flag during the 13th of September and down to the morning of the 14th, when the British fleet finally abandoned the attack and withdrew. This song, as the form in which it is given shows, was published anonymously. The poet, Francis Scott Key, was too modest to announce himself, and it was some time after its appearance that he became known as its author. This song was brought to Baltimore and given to the publishers of ‘ The American ’ by John S. Skinner, Esq., who had been appointed by President Madison to conduct negotiations with the British forces relative to the
1	‘Band who’ (Griswold, Dana, Banner Book) ; ‘the foe that’ (autograph, 1842) ; ‘that host that’ (autograph, 1840) ; ‘the foes that ’ (General Keim’s autographic copy).
2	‘Mid’ (Griswold, Dana) ; ‘that,’ in three autographs, 1840-42.
3	‘ Should,’in three autographs ; ‘they’d’ (Griswold).
4	‘ This,’ in the Mahar autograph, 1842 ; ‘ their,’ in all the printed versions and two autographs.
5	‘Foemen’ (autograph, 1842); ‘ freemen,’ in two autographs, Griswold, and Banner Book.
6	‘Their,’ in three autographs ; ‘our,’ in Griswold, Dana, and common version.
7	‘In God we trust’ has, by act of Congress, been placed as a motto on United States coins since 1861.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
727
exchange of prisoners. In this way Mr. Skinner chanced to meet Mr. Key on the flag-of-truce boat, obtained from him a copy of his song, and he furnished the manuscript to ' The American5 after the fight was over. It was at once put in type and published. It was also printed in slips and extensively circulated. The ‘ printer’s boy,’ then employed in the office of ‘ The American,’ who put this song in type survives in full vigor, — our respected friend, the editor and publisher of the 'American Farmer,’ Samuel Sands, Esq.” 1
‘ The Star-Spangled Banner ’ was first sung, when fresh from the press,2 in a small one-story frame house, long occupied as a tavern by the Widow Berling, next to the Holiday Street Theatre, but then kept by a Captain MacCauley, a house where players “ most did congregate ” to prepare for the daily military drill, every man being at that time a soldier.
There also came Captain Benjamin Edes, of the Twenty-seventh Regiment, Captains Long and Warner, of the Thirty-ninth Regiment, and Major Frailey. Warner was a silversmith of good repute in the neighborhood. When a number of the young defenders of the monumental city was assembled, Captains Edes and Warner called the group to order, to listen to the patriotic song which Captain Edes had just struck off at his press. He then read it aloud to the volunteers assembled, who greeted each verse with hearty shouts. It was suggested it should be sung; but who was there could sing it ? The task was assigned to Ferdinand Durang, one of the group, and who was known to be a vocalist. The old air of ‘ Anacreon in Heaven ’ had been adapted to it by the author, and Mr. Edes was desired so to print it on the top of the ballad. Its solemn melody and expressive notes seem naturally allied to the poetry, and speak emphatically of the musical taste and judgment of Mr. Key. Ferdinand Durang mounted an old rush-bottomed chair and sang this admirable song for the first time in our Union, the chorus of each verse being re-
1	The venerable M. J. Cohen, of Baltimore, wrote me, Aug. 23, 1873, that he believed himself to be the only survivor of Nicholson’s Company of Fencibles, which mustered one hundred and ten strong on the morning of the bombardment, and was stationed in ‘ the Star Fort,’ the centre of the fortress, and that ‘ the flag ’ was erected on a high mast not far from the bastion ; and that he had a distinct recollection that one whole bombshell passed through it, and that it was torn by several pieces of another ; also, that it was a very large flag.
William McPherson, one of the defenders of Fort McHenry, died June, 1878, at Cockeysville, Md., aged 83. At his request his body was wrapt in an American flag, and a bomb-shell thrown at the fort by the British, which he had preserved, was placed at the foot of his grave.
2	Paper of Colonel John L. Warner before Pennsylvania Historical Society, 1867.728
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
echoed by those present with infinite harmony of voices. It was sung several times that morning. When the theatre was opened by Warner and Wood, as managers, it was sung by “Paddy” McFarland and the company nightly, after the play.1
According to a correspondent of the ‘ Historical Magazine/ 2 who says he was one of the group, and that his brother sung it, and he and the rest joined in the chorus, it was first sung by about twenty volunteer soldiers in front of the Holiday Street Theatre. He also says the singers were accustomed to congregate at the adjoining tavern to get their juleps, and Benjamin Edes brought the song around at one of their matinees. In 1872, after the republication of the song, Mr. John T. Ford, manager of the Holiday Street Theatre, wrote to the editors of the ‘ Baltimore American: ’ “ I read with rare pleasure your article about the song of ‘ The Star-Spangled Banner/ and I only regret the omission of one or two important historical facts. At an encampment on Gallows Hill, near the ropewalk, in this city, just after the battle of North Point, and when the dread of another attack was imminent, there were two young actors named Durang, who, with their father and mother, belonged to the dramatic company of this theatre (and who were alike clever in music and acting). A manuscript copy of Francis S. Key’s new national song was read. Ferdinand Durang immediately applied himself to adapt it to music. During the day he discovered a suitable tune in a favorite air called ‘Anacreon in Heaven.’ He played it over and over again, sung it amid enthusiastic shouts, and afterward, with his brother Charlie, sung it for the first time in any house at Holiday Street Theatre, and as the papers then most truthfully declare, with the most unbounded success. Kindly notice my emphatic claim thatf The Star-Spangled Banner ’ owes its glorious melody to the taste and patriotism of an actor, that it was sung first by that ‘actor, Ferdinand Durang, and first upon any stage at Holiday Street Theatre, Baltimore, by Ferdinand and Charlie Durang. Mr. and Mrs. Durang were from Lancaster, Penn. From 1808 to 1820 they and their children were employed chiefly at this theatre in the same company with the elder Jefferson, and played in 1810 with Master Payne (John Howard), who afterwards wrote ‘ Home, Sweet Home.’ ”
Another version of this fact is given by George W. Gallagher, of Glendale, Ohio, who was a cousin of Mr. Durang: —
1	The Holiday Street Theatre was destroyed by fire, Sept. 10, 1873, and was then, excepting the Philadelphia Walnut Street Theatre, the oldest in the United States, dating back to 1794.
2	October, 1864.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
729
“ Have you heard Francis Key’s poem ? ” said one of our mess, coming in one evening, as we lay scattered over the green hill near the captain’s marquee. It was a rude copy, and written in a scrawl which Horace Greeley might have mistaken for his own. He read it aloud, once, twice, three times, until the entire division seemed electrified by its pathetic eloquence.
“An idea seized Ferdinand Durang. Hunting up a volume of flute music, which was in somebody’s tent, he impatiently whistled snatches of tune after tune, just as they caught his quick eye. One, called " Anacreon in Heaven ’ (I have played it often, for it was in my book that he found it), struck his fancy and riveted his attention. Note after note fell from his puckered lips, until, with a leap and shout, he exclaimed, " Boys, I’ve hit it! ’ and, fitting the tune to the words, there rang out for the first time the song of" The Star-Spangled Banner.’ How the men shouted and clapped; for never was there a wedding of poetry to music made under such inspiring influences ! Getting a brief furlough, the brothers sang it in public soon after. It was caught up in the camps, and sung around the bivouac fires, and whistled in the streets, and when peace was declared, and we scattered to our homes, it was carried to thousands of firesides, as the most precious relic of the war of 1812.”1
There are in existence at least three autographies of the song, viz.: 1st, one presented to James Mahar, which was dated June 7, 1842, and was printed in the " National Intelligencer ’ and in the first edition of this book; 2d, the copy presented and addressed to General George Keim in 1842, and since presented to the Pennsylvania Historical Society by his son, and which was printed in the New England Historic Genealogical Register in 1874; and, 3d, the copy dated Oct. 21, 1840, a reduced autography of which illustrates this paper. It was first published in the "American Historical and Literaiy Curiosities,’ by John Jay Smith, who stated the original was then in the possession of Louis J. Cist. This copy differs from General Keim’s only in the first line of the last stanza, which reads, “And where is that host,” instead of “ Where are the foes,” as in the later autographs.
A lithograph fac-simile of General Keim’s copy was made* for the Baltimore Sanitary Fair in 1864, and a fac-simile of the first verse is in Lossing’s "Field-Book of the War of 1812,’ which Mr. Lossing states was from one in the possession of Mrs. Charles Howard, of Baltimore; but she wrote me in 1874,—
1 Harper’s Magazine.730
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
“ I do not think I ever had an autograph of ‘ The Star-Spangled Banner/ My father gave his children, from the time they could speak, the habit of committing poetry to memory, and in that way only has the song been preserved to me. Except in one or two words, Mr. Keim’s version, as you have it, is the one I have ever remembered/5
A San Francisco paper says that the only original likeness of Francis Scott Key is in the possession of his daughter, Mrs. Turner, a resident of that city, and that a life-sized bust has been made from it in plaster, — a very successful piece of work. I have a letter from Mrs. Turner’s daughter, Mrs. Browne, in which she says her mother believes her portrait to be the only likeness of her father from life extant. There is, however, a youthful portrait of him in the museum in Independence Hall, which is said to be an original.
‘ The Star-Spangled Banner5 falls short of the requirements of a national song, because, having been inspired by a special incident of war, it is not suited to all times and occasions, as a national song should be. To supply this want, additional stanzas have, from time to time, been written. Notably among these is the following stanza, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, at the request of a lady during our civil war, there being no verse alluding to treasonable attempts against the flag.1 It was originally printed in the f Boston Evening Transcript/
a jfvt Aw ¿sAiL ¿JA*,	aA
AÄc-	Ä&4-» féût (ZùuZ Afe/iafe Aex-sAy*/
AtszZA ybtfs
¿-¿lAprUA/ Jit, TkùoJUy&A
/¿¿udt, ¿ß' Ace, yzcjLr At	.
The following stanzas were printed in a Northern newspaper during the war. Our, Southern brethren also adapted words to suit their situation and sentiments.
1 I am indebted to Dr. Holmes for a corrected and amended autograph of his stanza.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
731
u Hark, hark! from the. soil of the rebel and slave The thunders of battle are fearfully raging;
Where hand of the ruffian and brain of the knave Base war on our brothers are wantonly waging.
But by liberty’s light,
And our dear country’s might,
We’ll strike down the traitors, with God for the right;
And our star-spangled banner victorious shall wave,
Still the pride of the free and the trust of the brave !
“ No more in the clamor of war may we own
What factions in peace have our passions incited;
But now for our country, our country alone,
Her honor and weal, be our hearts all united!
So by liberty’s light,
And that dear country’s right,
Triumphant we must be, with God for the right;
And our star-spangled banner victorious shall wave,
Still the pride of the free and the trust of the brave ! ”
It should never be forgotten that the war on the part of the North was for ‘ Our Country/ our whole country, one and inseparable, Union now and forever, and for the general good.
Appropriate to our centennial year and the spirit with which Great Britain entered into its celebration are these stanzas, written fifty years previous, and known to few of the present time: —
u But hush’d be that strain! They our foes are no longer;
Lo! Britain the right hand of friendship extends,
And Albion’s fair isle we behold with affection, —
The land of our fathers, — the land of our friends!
“ Long, long may ye flourish, Columbia and Britain;
In amity still may your children be found,
And the ‘ star-spangled banner ’ and 1 red cross ’ together Wave free and triumphant the wide world around.”
Benjamin Rush, Esq., for whom they were written, wrote me, in 1876: “The circumstances under which these additional stanzas to * The Star-Spangled Banner ’ came to my hand were adverted to in the Preface to my edition of my father’s book, ‘ Recollections of the English and French Courts,’ published in London in 1871. Their author was George Spowers, Esq. It is eminently due to him now, that his name should be given to the public, considering not only the beauty but the admirable sentiments of the stanzas. He had seen in my hands a manuscript copy of the original song, and asked me to lend732
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
it to him. A day or two afterwards he returned it with these stanzas. I was quite a hoy at the time, at school with my two brothers, at Hampstead, near London, while my father was residing in London as Minister of the United States. It must have been about the year 1824.”
The air adopted for ‘ The Star-Spangled Banner ’ —‘To Anacreon in •Heaven5 — is that of an old English song.1 In the second half of the eighteenth century, a jovial society, called ‘The Anacreontic/ held its festive and musical meetings at the ‘Crown and Anchor/ in the Strand. It is now the Whittington Club; but in the last century it was frequented by Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others. One Ralph Tomlinson, Esq., was at that time the president of the Anacreontic Society, and wrote the words of the song adopted by the club, and John Stafford Smith set them to music. The song was published by the composer, and was sold at his house, 7 Warwick Street, Spring Garden, between the years 1770-75.
The flag of Eort McHenry, whose broad stripes and bright stars inspired Key’s song, still exists in a tolerable state of preservation. Our illustration is engraved from a photograph taken at the Boston Navy Yard in 1874. The regulation size of the garrison flags of our forts at this time is thirty-six feet fly and twenty feet hoist. The flag of Eort McHenry, in its present curtailed dimensions, is thirty-two feet long and twenty-nine hoist. Undoubtedly in its original dimensions it was forty feet long, — the shot of the enemy, time, and marauders have combined to decrease its length. Its great width is due to its having fifteen instead of thirteen stripes, each near two feet wide. It has, or rather had, fifteen five-pointed stars, each two feet from point to point, and arranged in five indented parallel lines, three stars in each horizontal line. The union rests in the ninth, which is a red stripe, instead of the eighth, a white stripe, as in our present flag. All the flags worn by the navy and army during the war of 1811-14, and, in fact, from 1794 to 1818, were so arranged. Eor the purpose of having its frail threads photographed, the flag was stitched upon canvas. The red and blue of the flag is in a much better state of preservation than the white. This flag was exhibited in the naval department of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and again at the Old South Church, Boston, June 14, 1877, the centennial anniversary of the passage by the Continental Congress of the act adopting the star-spangled banner as the emblem of the confederated States.
1 Notes and Queries, January, 1873.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
733
There can be no doubt as to the authenticity of this flag. It was preserved by Colonel Armstead, and bears upon one of its stripes, in his autograph, his name and the date of the bombardment. It has always remained in his family, and his widow, in 1861, bequeathed it to their youngest daughter, Mrs. William Stuart Appleton, who, some time after the bombardment, was born in Fort McHenry under its folds. She was named Georgiana Armstead, for her father, and the precious flag was hoisted on its staff in honor of her birth. Mrs-Appleton died in New York, July 25, 1878, and bequeathed the flag to her son, Mr. Eben Appleton, of Yonkers, N. Y., who now holds it. It was frequently displayed at celebrations of the 13th and 14th of September, and was notably used to adorn Washington’s war-tent, which was raised at Fort McHenry, Sept. 14, 1824, for the reception of General Lafayette.
A letter from Mrs. Caroline Purdy, of Baltimore, to Mrs. Appleton, furbishes the names of the makers of this historic flag. Mrs. Purdy says: —
“ It was made by my mother, Mrs. Mary Pickersgill, and I assisted her. My grandmother, Rebecca Young, made the first flag of the Revolution, under General Washington’s directions, and for this reason my mother was selected by Commodore Barney and General Striker (family connections) to make this star-spangled banner, being an exceedingly patriotic woman. The flag being so very large, my mother was obliged to obtain permission from the proprietor of ‘ Claggett’s Brewery,’ which was in our neighborhood, to spread it out in their malt-house, and I remember seeing my mother down on the floor placing the stars. After the completion of the flag, she superintended the topping \i.e. heading] of it, having it fastened in the most secure manner, to prevent its being torn away by balls. The wisdom of her precaution was shown during the engagement, many shots piercing it, but, it still remained firm to the staff. Your father, Colonel Armstead, declared that no one but the maker of the flag should mend it, and requested that the rents should be bound around. The flag, I think, contained four hundred yards of bunting, and my mother worked many nights until twelve o’clock to complete it in a given time. I am now, in my seventh-sixth year, in feeble health.”734
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
THE AMERICAN FLAG.
BY JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
The author of this soul-inspiring poem was born in New York, Aug. 7, 1795, and died Sept. 21, 1820, aged twenty-five years.
“ ‘ The American Flag ’ was written between the 20th and 25th days of May, 1819, when the author was not quite twenty-four, and originally concluded with the following lines : —
u 1 As fixed as yonder orb divine
That saw the bannered blaze unfurled,
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,
The guard and glory of the world.*
“ These not satisfying Drake, he said to Fitz Greene Halleck, ‘ Fitz, can’t you suggest a better stanza ? ’ whereupon Halleck sat down and wrote, in a glowing burst of inspiration, the four concluding lines, commencing ‘ Forever float,’ &c., a splendid improvement on the former ending, which Drake immediately accepted and incorporated in his, perhaps, most popular poem.”1
The first four of the once celebrated series of humorous and satirical odes known as the f Croaker Pieces ’ were written by Drake for the ‘New York Evening Post,’ in which they appeared between the 10th and 20th of March, 1819, with the following caption by Mr. Coleman, the editor: “ Sir Philip Sidney said, as Addison tells us, that he never could read the old ballad of ‘ Chevy Chase ’ without feeling hi's heart beat within him as at the sound of a trumpet. The following lines, which are to be ranked among the highest inspiration of the muse, will suggest similar associations in the breast of the gallant American officers.”
After the publication of the fourth number, Drake made Halleck, then recently arrived in New York, partner, and the remainder of the pieces were signed e Croaker and Company.’ The last one written by Drake was ‘The American Flag,’ printed on the 29th of May, 1819. Drake placed a very modest estimate on his own productions. When, on his deathbed, a friend inquired what disposition he would have made of his poems, “ Oh, burn them,” he replied, “ they are quite valueless.” 2 It is believed no autograph copy of ‘ The American Flag ’ exists; at least, after diligent inquiry, I have been unable to find one.
1	Putnam’s Magazine, February, 1868.
2	Griswold’s Poets and Poetry of America.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
735
The American Flag.
I.
When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light) Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle-bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land.
ii.
Majestic monarch of the cloud !
Who rear’st aloffc thy eagle form To hear the tempest trumpings loud,
And see the lightning lances driven,
When stride the warriors of the storm, And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven! Child of the Sun! to thee ?tis given To guard the banner of the free !
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory.
hi.
Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high; When speaks the trumpet’s signal tone, And the long line comes gleaming on, Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, Each soldier’s eye shall brightly turn To where thy sky-born glories burn ; And, as his springy steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance; And when the cannon- mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall,—736
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
Then shall thy meteor-glances glow, And cowering foes shall sink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death!
IV.
Flag of the seas! on Ocean’s wave Thy stars shall glitter o’er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back, Before the broadsides reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fly In triumph o’er his closing eye.
v.
Flag of the free heart’s hope and home!
By angels’ hands to valor given;
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet
And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us.
YE SONS OF COLUMBIA.1
BY EOBERT TREAT PAINE.
Air — 5 Anacreon in Heaven. ’
Kobert Treat Paine, Jr., the author of this song, was the son of a Boston gentleman of the same name, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was born in Taunton, Mass., Dec. 9, 1773, graduated from Harvard in 1792, and died in Boston, Nov. 13, 1811. He w7as first called Thomas, but, strongly disliking the appellation of the infidel of that name, he appealed to the legislature in 1801 to give him a Christian name. He was one of those brilliant geniuses which occasionally illuminate a community in which wit combined with
1 On the 25th of March, 1813, at a festival in Boston, “ in honor of the Eussian achievements over their French invaders,” Alexander H. Everett presented an ode which was sung to this tune, and it may be that its refrains were floating through the brain of Key when he composed the exquisite cadences of * The Star-Spangled Banner,’ a year and a half later.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
737
sentiment commands a high value. He had a decided penchant for the theatre, and married, in 1795, Miss Baker, an actress. In 1794, he wrote the prologue for the opening of the Boston Theatre in Franklin Street, obtaining the prize over a number of competitors. Paine had u prolific imagination, was bold in his views, quick at retort, witty, and exceedingly sarcastic. His 'Invention of Letters,’ 1795, was greatly admired, and Washington wrote him his appreciation of its merits. He received for this poem fifteen hundred dollars, and for ' The Ruling Passion ’ twelve hundred dollars. His last famous effusion was called 'The Steeds of Apollo.’ From 1802 to 1809 he practised law in Boston, and then retired from .the profession. His writings, with a biography, were published immediately after his death, in 1812. He died in his father’s house, which stood on the west corner of Milk and Federal Streets, Boston. It was a large, brick, gambrel-roofed structure fronting on Milk Street, with gardens extending back some distance on Federal Street.
This song was at first entitled ' Adams and Liberty,’ and the first lines of the last verse, as originally written, read : —
u Let fame to the world sound America’s name,
No intrigues her sons from their government sever ;
Her pride is her Adams, her laws are his choice,
And shall flourish, till Liberty slumbers forever.”
Paine was paid seven hundred and fifty dollars for this song, or more than eleven dollars a line, which included three other stanzas (2d, 4th, and 5th), of a temporary nature, which have been omitted. Having finished the poem, Paine exhibited it to some gentlemen, at the house of a friend. His host, Major Benjamin Russell, pronounced it imperfect, as the name of Washington Rad been omitted, and declared he should not approach the sideboard on which bottles of wine had been placed, until he had written an additional stanza. The poet mused for a moment, called for a pen, and wrote the verse beginning '' Should the tempest of ivarf &c.
In January, 1861, the 'New York Globe,’ a leading Democratic paper, said of this song: —
" More than half a century since, the following song, written by Robert Treat Paine, was sung at a festival given in honor of our national anniversary,1 of which it formed a principal feature. Time has not taken a single jot from its great and surpassing merit, and it
1 It was written for and first sung at the anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Tire Society of Boston, June 1, 1798. — Hon. Stephen Salisbury.
47738
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
deserves to be sung in all time to come, on all patriotic occasions. A slight alteration from the original may, however, be detected in the last verse; but it is thus stripped of a political allusion, that was never in good taste, and which, if we mistake not, was the means of consigning the whole song to disuse. As it now stands, let it be revived as a national song, and may it go down to posterity as the noblest of American strains, and worthy of being preserved in letters of gold. We would rather have our fame linked with its authorship, than with any other American paper, save and except the Declaration of Independence. Should this song meet the eye of any American who has a single traitorous thought of disunion, let him read it once more, and banish his anti-American feelings forever.”
i.
Ye sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought
For those rights which unstain’d from your sires have descended,
May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought,
And your sons reap the soil which their fathers defended:
Mid the reign of mild peace,
May your nation increase
With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece;
And ne’er may the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its waves!
ii.
The fame of our arms, of our laws the mild sway Had justly ennobled our nation in story Till the dark clouds of faction obscure our young day And enveloped the sun of American glory.
But let traitors be told Who their country have sold,
And bartered their God for his image in gold,
That ne’er will the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves!
hi.
Our mountains are crowned with imperial oak,
Whose roots, like our liberties, ages have nourished;
But long e’er our country submits to the yoke,
Not a tree shall be left on the field where it flourished; Should invasion impend,
Every grove would descend From the hill-tops it shaded, our shores to defend;
For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves!NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
739
IV.
Let our patriots destroy Anarch’s pestilent worm,
Lest our Liberty’s growth should he checked by corrosion; Then let clouds thicken round us; we heed not the storm, — Our realms fear no shock but the earth’s own explosion.
Foes assail us in vain,
Though their fleets bridge the main,
For our altars and laws with our lives we’ll maintain.
And ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves!
V.
Should the tempest of war overshadow our land,
Its bolts could ne’er rend Freedom’s Temple asunder ; For unmoved at its portal would Washington stand, And repulse with his breast the assault of its thunder ; His sword from the sleep Of its scabbard would leap,
And conduct with its point every flash to the deep !
For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves !
VI.
Let fame to the world sound America’s name,
No faction her sons from their Union can sever;
Her freedom deservedly meets with acclaim,
And shall flourish till liberty slumbers forever;
Then unite heart and hand,
Like Leonidas’ band,
And swear to the God who rules ocean and land,
That ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves!11
AMERICA.
BY SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH, D.D.
Air — ‘ God save the King*
The Rev. Francis Smith, D.D., the author of this anthem, which the War of the Rebellion made national, was born in Boston, Oct. 21, 1808, and graduated from Harvard University in the class of ’29, with Oliver Wendell Holmes. He is therefore one of “ The boys of the class of ’29.” He studied theology at Andover, and is now a professor at Newton, Mass. He has been a constant and frequent contributor from early youth to periodical literature, and the editor of one or more religious magazines. "My Country ’tis of Thee,’ and740
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
‘ The Morning Light is breaking/ are among his early productions. The first was written with no thought of its ever acquiring the national character it has attained. The air of ‘ God save the King/ to which the words of ‘ My Country ’tis of Thee ’ are adapted, has been ascribed to Handel, to Henry Carey, who composed the once celebrated song f Sally in our Alley/ to Dr. John Bull, and to others. Dr. Burney maintained it was composed for the chapel of James II. Some one else contends that the words that formed the first line, “God save great George, our King” (not great James, or Charles), indicate that it was an occasional hymn written in honor of the later and glorious days of the second George. In Germany, it is called ‘ Bundes Lied/ ‘ God save the King ’ appeared originally in the ‘ Har-monia Anglica/ in 1742, and in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for October, 1745, on the occasion of the landing of the Pretender. After much discussion, it has been settled that Dr. Henry Carey1 wrote both the words and melody, in honor of a birthday of George II., and it was performed for the first time at a dinner given on that occasion (1740) by the Mercers’ Company, of London. Dr. Arne, the author of ‘ Artaxerxes/ who arranged it in two parts, says that the air has preserved its original form, but its harmonies have been modified again and again. The words were changed on the ascension of William IV., and also on that of Victoria.
Laveller, in his c Histoire de la Maison Royale de St. Cyr/ says it was composed by Lulli, and was first sung when Louis XIV. visited in state for the first time Madame Main-tenon’s school of St. Cyr. The words by Madame de Brinon, the principal of St. Cyr, commenced thus: —
u Grand Dieu, sauveur a Roi!
Grand Dieu, vengez le Roi!
Vive le Roi!
Qu7& jamais glorienx Louis victorieux Voya ses ennemis
Toujours soumis/* etc.
There certainly must be something more than ordinarily inspiring in an air which has struck the popular heart of four nations.
As early as 1779 the tune was adapted to the necessities of the times, and a “ Dutch Song ” of ten verses, adapted to it, was published in the f Pennsylvania Packet/ at Philadelphia, as “ a song made by a Dutch lady, at The Hague, for the sailors of the five American vessels at Amsterdam, June, 1779. The following are four of the verses : —
1 Henry Carey was a natural son of George Saville, Marquis of Halifax, and Edmund Kean was descended from Henry Carey.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
741
u God save the Thirteen States ! Long rule th? United States !
God save our States ! Make ns victorious,
Happy and glorious,
No tyrants over us)
God save our States !
u 0 Lord ! Thy gifts in store,
We pray on Congress pour,
To guide our States.
May Union bless our land, While we with heart and hand Our mutual rights defend;
God save our States !”
a God save the Thirteen States ! Long watch the prosperous fates Over our States !
Make us victorious,
Happy and glorious,
No tyrants over us $
God save our States !
u Come join your hand to ours,
No royal blocks, no towers;
God save us all!
Thus in our country’s cause,
And to support our laws,
Our swords shall never pause At Freedom’s call.”
We may learn what our American national song should be, says the Hon. Stephen Salisbury, by observing what this ancient model is in its several parts.
“ The notes of ‘ God Save the King9 are emphatic as a chant, easily learned, and distinctly sounded by many, so that the singers hear and are moved by the voices of their companions ; and this effect is aided by the shortness of the words. Though the air is simple, it is fitted to rise with the strength of feeling. It appeals with power to loyalty, which in a monarchy is devotion to the king, his crown and dignity. It is suited to all the changes of national life, — to joy or grief, to peace or war, to anxiety or triumph. It has enough of the progressive character to gratify the Anglo-Saxon temper, and the attractive spice of party spirit is not wanting; and it is pervaded with an expression of742
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
religious trust that is more grateful to the mind of man than our philosophers are willing to admit.
“ A patriotic song equally adapted to our institutions would be an ornament and strength to our nation, and an untiring enjoyment to our people.” 1
The Rev. Dr. Smith has furnished me with the following history and autograph of the origin of his anthem : —
“12 Bedford Street, Boston, Mass., Sept. 12, 1872. “ Capt. Geo. Henry Preble, U. S. N. :
Dear Sir, — The origin of my hymn, 4 My Country ’tis of Thee/ is briefly told. In the year 1831, Mr. William C. Woodbridge returned from Europe, bringing a quantity of German music-books, which he passed over to Lowell Mason. Mr. Mason, with whom I was on terms of friendship, one day turned them over to me, knowing that I was in the habit of reading German works, saying, 4 Here, I can’t read these, but they contain good music, which I should be glad to use. Turn over the leaves, and, if you find any thing particularly good, give me a translation or imitation of it, or write a wholly original song, — any thing, so I can use it.’
“ Accordingly, one leisure afternoon, I was looking over the books, and fell in with the tune of ‘ God Save the King,’ and at once took up my pen and wrote the piece in question. It was struck out at a sitting, without the slightest idea that it would ever attain the popularity it has since enjoyed. I think it was written in the town of Andover, Mass., in Eebruary, 1832. The first time it was sung publicly was at a children’s celebration of American independence, at the Park Street Church, Boston, I think July 4, 1832. If I had anticipated the future of it, doubtless I would have taken more pains with it. Such as it is, I am glad to have contributed this mite to the cause of American freedom.
“Very sincerely yours,
“ S. F. Smith.”
/itJCLStc

tS 'T~cr
1 Paper read before the American Antiquarian Society, Oct. 21, 1872.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
743
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GOD SAVE OUR PRESIDENT.
BY FRANCIS DE HAES JANVIER.
“‘God Save our President’ was written in 1857, and the music was composed for it by George Felix Benkert, in 1858, and published by Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston, in the same year. It was performed at the744
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
first inauguration of President Lincoln, in accordance with the following order: —
“ 4 Washington, D. C., March 2, 1861.
44 4 Sir, —You will please direct the Marine Band to perforin, as a part of the ceremony at the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, on Monday next, immediately after the conclusion of the inaugural address, the new national air, 44 God save our President.’5
4 4 4 Respectfully yours,
4 4 4 Solomon Foot,
44 4 Chairman Committee of Arrangements.
44 4 To Dr. J. B. Blake,
4 4 4 Commissioner of Public Buildings.
44 4 1 concur.
4 4 4 J. A. Pearce.’
“ Under similar orders it was performed at the second inauguration of President Lincoln and the first inauguration of President Grant. I heard it on all these occasions, and I have been informed that it was made a part of the ceremonial at the second inauguration of President Grant, and at the inauguration of President Hayes.
“ Very truly yours,
“Irancis De Haes Janvier.
44 Rear-Admiral Preble, U. S. N.”

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YANKEE DOODLE.
Yankee Doodle is a musical vagabond, a literary Bohemian. The words are older than our Revolution, and originated in the time of Charles II. The tune is older than the words, and familiar in many countries. It can scarcely be called a national song, but it is certainly an inspiring quickstep. “ Yankee Doodle/’ says Mr. Salisbury, “ is national property, but it is not a treasure of the highest value. It has some antiquarian claims, for which its warmest friends do not care. It cannot be disowned, and it will not be disused.” In the words of one of the thousand and one verses that have been adapted to it, —
u Yankee Doodle is the tune Americans delight;
;Twill do to whistle, sing, or play,
And is just the thing for fighting/7
“ Its easy utterance (adds Mr. Salisbury) and fearless and frolicsome humor make its accompaniment welcome on fit occasions, and preserve its popularity. It exists now as an instrumental, and not as an oral performance. Its words are never heard, and would not be acceptable in America for public or private entertainments. Its music must be silent when serious purposes are entertained, and men’s hearts are moved to high efforts and great sacrifices. As a song, f Yankee Doodle’ has not a national character. Yet I do not think it will do to ignore it altogether. It certainly has not the dignified stateliness and solemnity that is required for an anthem suited to national occasions, but as a quickstep it is always inspiriting.”1
1 Hon. Stephen Salisbury, Oct. 21, 1872, before American Antiquarian Society.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
747
Whence the name and how the tune originated cannot now be clearly ascertained, but that it is older than our Revolution, and dates back to early in the eighteenth century, is certain, and perhaps even earlier. It is said that in the wars of the Roundheads and Cavaliers the term ‘ Yankee’ or Yankee’ was applied in contempt and derision to the former by the latter. There is a tradition in England, according to Professor Rimbault, a musician of eminence, of London,1 that the original song was directed at Oliver Cromwell, under the name of ‘ Nankee Doodle/ The same authority says the earliest trace of it in print is in 'Walsh’s Collection of Dances for the year 1750,’ where it is given in 6-8 time, and called ‘ Fisher’s Jig.’2 The earliest form in which the words of the nursery song of ‘ Yankee Doodle ’ appeared was the following, which still survives : —
u Lydia Locket lost her pocket;
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a bit of money in it,
Only binding round it.77
Lucy was sometimes substituted for Lydia; and another version of the third line reads, “ Nothing in it, nothing in it.” ‘ Kitty Fisher/ who doubtless gave the name to the Fisher’s Jig of 1750, was a noted demimonde of the time of Charles II., and Lucy Locket was also a well-known character in the gay world. This carries ‘ Yankee Doodle ’ well back in the wars of the Roundheads and Cavaliers. The lines are understood to have some covert allusion which has not been preserved.
There is an earlier version of the words in England, which I heard repeated by my father in my childhood days, which runs: —
“Nankee Doodle came to town Upon a Kentish pony,
He stuck a feather in his hat,
And called him Macaroni.77
As I heard it repeated, the second line was, “ Riding on a pony,” or “ Upon a little pony.”
As to the remoter origin of the music, there is testimony that, with slight variations, it has been known from time immemorial in Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, and Germany. It is probable it was introduced into England from Germany. An old Hollander told the Duyckinks 3 that the tune was familiar to him in his native
1	Notes and Queries, 1860.
2	Lippincott’s Magazine ; Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch ; Watson’s Art Journal.
3	Cyclopaedia of American Literature.748
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
land in his youth, where it was sung at harvest-time, the burden running: —
u Yanker didel, doodel down,
Didel, dudel lauter,
Yanke viver, voover vown Botermitk nnd Yauther.”
In an English opera written about the middle of the eighteenth century, by Dr. Arne, is the comic song of ' Little Dickey,’ who resents the arrogance and attempted tyranny of some older body. The last stanza runs thus : —
u Did little Dickey ever trick ye ?
No, Pm always civil;
Then why should you, for my politeness,
Wish me to the devil ?
Noodle, doodle, ugly muns !
Here’s a pretty rig, sir!
Daggers, pistols, swords, and guns!
Oh, I’ll hop the twig, sir.”
The air of the song is what we call 'Yankee Doodle,’ but it is not so called in the opera.
Toward the latter part of the eighteenth century, several printed broadsides, with music, appeared on the subject of 'Yankee Doodle;’ viz., 'D’Estaing Eclipsed, or Yankee Doodle’s Defeat, by T. Poyn-ton; ’ ' Yankee Doodle, or the Negro’s Farewell to America. The words and music by T. L.; ’ ' Yankee Doodle, or, as now christened by the Saints of New England, The Lexington March.’ Only the last, however, had the good old tune.1 According to Mr. T. Moncrieff, the author of 'Tom and Jerry,’ and countless other farces and plays, who made it the pleasure of his life to investigate the history and origin of old tunes, the air was composed for the drum and fife, about the middle of the eighteenth century, by the fife-major of the Grenadier Guards. The air was not intended for a song, but for a march, and it was long after it became familiar to the ears of the people in towns where British regiments were stationed that words became associated with it. " Probably,” says Mr. Moncrieff, " the first person who brought about the alliance between the air and the rhymes was a nursemaid fond of military display.” 2
1	Notes and Queries, 1860. These were all written, says Dr. Rimbault, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The music of the first two is original. The third is adapted to the old tune. Historical Magazine, vol. v. 123.
2	All the Year Round, Feb. 12, 1870. See English Notes and Queries, 1st series, forNATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
749
In the "Massachusetts Magazine’ for 1795, vol. vii. pp. 301, 302, there is a letter dated from “ Cambridge, Sept. 27,1728,” giving a humorous narrative of the fate of a goose roasted at "" Yankey Hastings’.”1
The introduction of the song to America has been ascribed, however, to Dr. Shuchburg, a surgeon of the regular troops in Albany in 1755, who was struck by the outre appearance of the raw colonial troops gathered for a movement against the French posts of Niagara and Frontenac. Never was seen such a motley regiment as took up its position on the left of the British army. The band played music some two centuries old ; officers and privates had adopted regimentals, each man after his own fashion, — one wore a flowing wig, while his neighbor rejoiced in hair cropped closely to his head; this one had a coat with wonderful long skirts, his fellow marched without his upper garments. Various as the colors of the rainbow were the clothes worn by the gallant band. Struck by the surroundings, Dr. Shuchburg — who was a wit, musician, and surgeon—one evening after mess produced this tune, which he commended as a well-known piece of military music to the officers of the militia, who hailed it with acclamation, and adopted it as their own march.2 Some likelihood is given to this account by the fact that about that date a Dr. Shuchburg was a surgeon in Captain Horatio Gates’s Independent Company,3 of New York. June 25, 1737, on the death of Captain Wraxall, Sir William Johnson nominated him Secretary for Indian Affairs for the Northern District, whereupon he left Captain Gates’s company; but his appointment was not confirmed, and he retired from office in 1761. Dec. 26, 1762, he was appointed surgeon of the Seventeenth Regiment of Foot serving in America, and so continued until 1768, when he again became Secretary for Indian Affairs, which office he filled until his death, in August, 1773.
The common account of the origin of "Yankee Doodle,’ which ascribes it to Dr. Shuchburg, at Albany, in 1797, was written by Nathan H. Carter, and published in the "Albany Statesman’ nearly three-fourths of a century after the event is said to have happened.4
The next notice of the song is found in the Boston "Journal of the Times,’ of Sept. 29, 1768,5 which says: ""The fleet was brought to anchor near Castle William; that night there was throwing of sky-
Yankee and Yankee Doodle : Yankee, its derivation, iii. 260, 437, 461 ; iv. 13, 344, 392; v. 86, 258, 572 ; vi. 57 ; vii. 103, 164. No notes on Yankee Doodle. 2d series : Yankee Doodle, its music, x. 426. 3d series : Yankee as an offensive term, xii. 469, 492, 511. 4th. series : Yankees, some odd, iii. 145.
1 Historical Magazine, vol. i.	2 Watson’s Art Journal.
3 Lippincott’s Magazine.	4 Historical Magazine, vol. i. p. 24.
5 Lossing’s Field-Book of the American Revolution.750
NATIONAL AND PATKIOTIC SONGS.
rockets, and those passing in boats observed great rejoicings, and that the ' Yankee Doodle Song ’ was the capital piece in the band of music.” “ The British,” says an American writer,1 “ preceding the Bevolu-tionary War were disposed to ridicule the simplicity of Yankee manners and hilarity,” and sung airs set to words having for their object to satirize and sneer at the New Englanders. When the battles of Concord and Lexington began the war, the English, when advancing in triumph, played along the road ' God Save the Kingbut, on their disastrous retreat, the Americans struck up ‘ Yankee Doodle/ 2
Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the father of the author of 'Hail Columbia/ adapted the words of his well-known song, f The Battle of the Kegs/ to the tune. David Bushnell, the inventor of the torpedo, in December, 1777, had set adrift at night a large number of kegs charged with gunpowder, which were designed to explode on coming in contact with the British vessels in the Delaware. They failed in their object, but, exploding in the vicinity, created intense alarm in the fleet, which kept up for hours a continuous discharge of cannon and small-arms at every object in the river. This was e The Battle of the Kegs/
Innumerable have been the verses that have been adapted to it, but it is believed the following were those best known and oftenest repeated by our fathers during the war of 1776, and they are said to have been sung at the battle of Bunker’s Hill in 1775. Words additional or similar were repeated to me by my father fifty years ago, as those familiar to him when a boy, during the revolutionary times. Perhaps their order of following is not correct.
YANKEE DOODLE; OR, FATHER’S RETURN FROM CAMP.
Father and I went down to camp 3 Along with Captain Gooding,
And there we saw the men and hoys,
As thick as hasty pudding.
Chorus.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy!
Mind the music and the step,
And with the gals he handy!
1 Moore’s Encyclopedia of Music.	2 Moore’s Encyclopedia of Music.
3 The verses, 4 Father and I went down to camp, ’ were written by a gentleman of Con-
necticut, a short time after General Washington’s last visit to New England. — Historical
frfagazine, vol. i. p. 92.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
751
And there we see a thousand men As rich as Squire David,
And what they wasted every day, —
I wish it had been saved.
Chorus.
The lasses they eat up every day Would keep our house all winter, —
They have so much, that 111 he bound They eat whenever they ’ve a mind to.
Chorus.
And there we see a whopping gun,
As big as a log of maple,
Mounted on a little cart, —
A load for father’s cattle.
Chorus.
And every time they fired it off It took a horn of powder,
And made a noise like father’s gun,
Only a nation louder.
Chorus.
I went as near to it
As ’Siah’s underpinning;
Father went as nigh agin, —
I thought the devil was in him.
C horus.
Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he meant to cock it
He scared me so, I streaked it off,
And hung to father’s pocket.
Chorus.
And Capting Davis had a gun He kind o’ clapped his hand on,
And stuck a crooked stabbing-iron Upon the little end on’t.
Chorus.
And there I saw a pumpkin shell As big as mother’s basin ;
And every time they sent one off,
They scampered like tarnation.
C horus.752
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
I saw a little bar ’el, too,
Its heads were made of leather;
They knocked on it with little clubs, To call the folks together.
C horus.
And there was Captain Washington, With grand folks all about him )
They says he’s grown so tarnal proud, He cannot ride without them.
Chorus.
He had on his meeting-clothes,
And rode a slapping stallion,
And gave his orders to the men, —
I guess there was a million.
Chorus.
And then the feathers in his hat,
They were so tarnal iin-ah,
I wanted peskily to get To hand to my Jemima.
Chorus.
And then they’d fife away like fun, And play on corn-stalk fiddles}
And some had ribbons red as blood All wound about their middles.
Chorus.
The troopers, too, would gallop up, And fire right in our faces;
It scared me a’most to death To see them run such races.
Chorus.
And then I saw a snarl of men A digging graves, they told me,
So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,—
They allowed they were to hold me.
Chorus.
It scared me so I hooked it off,
Nor stopped, as I remember,
Nor turned about, till I got home, Locked up in mother’s chamber.
Chorus.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
753
In Burgh’s "Anecdotes of Music’ it is stated that as early as 1797 ¡there was, in a book of instruction for the bassoon, an “air from |Ulysses” taken from the English opera of " Ulysses,’ written by Mr. John Christian Smith about 1731, which was the identical air of ‘ Yankee Doodle,’ with the exception of a few notes, which time and fancy may have added.1
Buckingham Smith wrote from Madrid to the " National Intelligencer,’ under date June 3, 1858 : —
“ The tune of "Yankee Doodle,’ from the first of my showing it here, has been acknowledged, by persons acquainted with music, to bear a strong resemblance to the popular air of " Biscay,’ and yesterday a professor from the North recognized it as being played on solemn occasions by the people of San Sebastian. He says the tune varies in those provinces, &c. . . . Our national air certainly has its origin in the music of the free Pyrenees. The first strains are identically ¿hose of the heroic " Danza Esparta,’ as it was played to me, of brave old Biscay.”
Kossuth informed a writer of the "Boston Post’ that when the Hungarians with him first heard " Yankee Doodle,’ on the Mississippi Biver, they immediately recognized it as one of the old national airs of their native land, — one played in the dances of that country; and they began immediately to caper and dance as they used to in Hungary.2
In 1868, Truman Trumbull, A.M., published a book of three hundred and forty 12mo pages, entitled " The New Yankee Doodle ; being an Account of the Little Difficulty in the Eamily of Uncle Sam; ’ which is a poetical rendering, in sixty-one chapters, of the war of the Bebellion, in the metre of " Yankee Doodle! ’ It is dedicated, “ To the Defenders of the Flag on Ship and Shore, and to all who love Freedom and Union.” Its design is better than its poetry.
THE FLAG OF OUR UNION.
BY GEORGE P. MORRIS.
The author of this song, a poet and journalist, was born in Philadelphia, Oct. 10, 1802, and died in New York City, July 6,1864. As a song-writer he achieved great popularity. It was set to music by William Vincent Wallace, sung by H. Squires, and copyrighted by
1	Historical Magazine, vol. iii. p. 22.
2	Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 280.
48754
NATIONAL AND PATKIOTIC SONOS.
William Hall & Sons, of New York, in 1851. It will be observed that it was written ten years before the commencement of our civil war.
i.
A song for our banner, the watchword recall Which gave the republic her station : i1 United we stand — divided we fall! ”
It made and preserves us a nation.
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever !
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the Flag of our Union forever and ever,
The Flag of our Union forever !
n.
What God in his infinite wisdom designed,
And armed with republican thunder,
Not all the earth’s despots and factions combined Have the power to conquer or sunder.
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever !
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the Flag of our Union forever and ever,
The Flag of our Union forever !
in.
Oh, keep that flag flying ! The pride of the van !
To all other nations display it!
The ladies for union are all to a — man !
And not to the man who’d betray it.
Then the union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever !
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the Flag of the Union forever ! 1
COLUMBIA THE GEM OF THE OCEAN.
BY THOMAS A BECKET.
This song, as sung at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia concerts, was copyrighted and published in 1843, by George Willig, of Philadelphia, under the title of ‘ Columbia the Land of the Brave, written and composed by David T. Shaw/ It is now published from the
1 Scribner’s blue and gold edition. 16mo. New York, 1868. I have been unable to find an autograph of this song.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
755
original plates (with the addition of an illustrated title), by Lee and Walker, the successors of Mr. Willig, under the title of ' Columbia the Gem of the Ocean, arranged by T. a Becket, Esq., and dedicated to John S. DuSolle.’ It has been printed in the 'Boys’ Banner Book ’ and other collections of popular songs, under the title of' The Bed, White, and Blue,’ without the author’s name attached, and is familiarly called ' The Army and Navy Song,’ from being peculiarly adapted to reunions of the two services.
With variations to suit the change, it is popular in England under the title of the ' Bed, White, and Blue,’ and ' Britannia the Pride of the Ocean.’ Some have supposed the English version the original, and ours merely an adaptation of it. Its title, ' The Gem of the Ocean,’ belongs to the Emerald Isle, rather than to Columbia, and seems more appropriate to designate an island power like Great Britain, than a continental power like the United States. While red, white, and blue have for a long time been the ranking order of the colors of British national ensigns, with us blue — the blue of the union, the firmament of our constellation of stars — claims the first place on our colors, red the second, and white the third; so that for us the song should read, 'Borne by the blue, red, and white,’ instead of 'red, white, and blue.’ These lapses are explained by the fact that the author was an Englishman by birth. It was natural he should make them. Though written by an Englishman, the song is of American inception and origin, as is shown by the following letter from the author:1 —•
“ Philadelphia, Dec. 16, 1876.,
" Dear Sir, — The following are the incidents that led to the production of ' Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.’
"In the fall of the year 1843, being then engaged as an actor at the Chestnut Street Theatre, in this city, I was waited upon by Mr. D. T. Shaw (then singing at the Chinese Museum), with the request that I would write him a song for his benefit night. He produced some patriotic lines, and asked my opinion of them; I found them ungrammatical, and so deficient in measure as to be totally unfit to be adapted to music. We adjourned to the house of a friend (Mr. B. Harford, Decatur Street), and I there wrote the two first verses in pencil, and at Miss Harford’s piano I composed the melody. On reaching my home, I added the third verse, wrote the symphonies and arrangements, made a fair copy in ink, and gave it to Mr. Shaw, requesting him not to give or sell a copy. A few weeks afterwards I left for New Orleans, and was much surprised to see a published copy, entitled ' Columbia
1 In the first edition of this work was printed a letter from the author to Messrs. Root & Cady, written in 1864, which gave substantially the same account of the origin of the song.756
NATIONAL AND PATBIOTIC SONOS.
the Gem of the Ocean, written, composed, and sung by David T. Shaw, and arranged by T. a Becket, Esq.' On my return to Philadelphia, I waited upon Mr. Willig, the publisher, who told me he had purchased the song from Mr. Shaw. I produced the original copy in pencil, and claimed the copyright, which Mr. Willig admitted, making some severe remarks upon Shaw’s conduct in the affair. I then made an arrangement with Mr. T. Osborn, of Third Street, above Walnut, to publish the song in partnership; and within a week it appeared under its proper title, viz. ‘ Columbia the Gem of the Ocean, written and composed by T. a Becket, and sung by D. T. Shaw.’ Mr. E. L. Davenport, the eminent actor, sung the song nightly in London for some weeks; it became very popular, and was published (without authority) by T. Williams, Cheapside, under the title of ‘ Britannia the Gem,’ &c. I visited London in 1847, and found the song claimed as an English composition. (Perhaps it is, I being an Englishman by birth.) During my absence from the land of my adoption, Osborn failed in business, and the plates of the song were sold to Mr. Benteen, of Baltimore. Thus it went out of my possession, much to my regret and loss.
“ I am, sir,
“ Bespectfully yours, &c.,
“To Bear-Admiral Preble, U. S. N.”	“Thos. A Becket, Sr.
The song, under the title ‘ The Bed, White, and Blue,’ is printed in J. E. Carpenter’s ‘ New Naval and Military Song-Book,’ published in London, 1866, “as written and composed by D. T. Shaw, U. S. A.” The first line is altered to read ‘ Britannia the pride of the Ocean,’ and in the third line of the last verse the name of Nelson is inserted in place of Washington.
The name and idea of the song seem to have originated with David T. Shaw, but the words and music, as printed and sung, to have been written and composed by a Becket.
Mr. a Becket has retired from the stage, and was living, in 1879, in Philadelphia, where he was a teacher of music.
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757
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Mr. a Becket’s autograph does not give the chorus as it is always sung, viz.: —
Chorus to the first verse.
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
When borne by the red, white, and blue,758
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
Thy banners make tyranny tremble, When borne by the red, white, and bine.
To the second verse.
The boast of the red, white, and blue,
The boast of tbe red, white, and blue,
Witb her flag proudly floating before her, The boast of the red, white, and blue.
To the third verse.
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue, Three cheers for the red, white, and blue, The army and navy forever,
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue.
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.
BY FRANCIS MILES FINCH.
The author of ‘ The Blue and the Gray/ recognized by all who know him as the possessor of rare literary gifts, but modest and retiring, was born in Ithaca, N. Y., about the year 1828. His earlier education was in the schools and academy of his native village, and, entering the Sophomore Class of Yale College, he graduated with honor in 1845. After graduation he studied law, and is now a practising lawyer of excellent reputation in Ithaca. While at Yale, Mr. Finch wrote a few college songs, and on several occasions, while gathered with his fellow alumni, has delivered poems there. With these exceptions he has produced little ryhme. “ It is,” says a recent writer, “ the public’s loss that he hides his poetic light, as it was the public’s gain when he yielded once to a better impulse, and gave us f The Blue and the Gray/ ”
The following is the author’s account of its composition: —
“ In 1867, there appeared in the ‘ Hew York Tribune ’ the following item in its news column : —
“ ‘ The women of Columbus, Miss., animated by nobler sentiments than many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.’
O
“ This, coming at a time when much of the soreness of defeat and the bitterness engendered by the war remained, seemed to be the first indication of a better feeling and more generous spirit. I thought it should be at once met and welcomed in the same temper, — and out of that impulse the poem at once grew. It was sent to the ' At-NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
759
lantic Monthly/ and published in the September number of 1867 prefaced with the above extract from the ‘ Tribune/ .... A poem delivered by me before the army of the Potomac sketched a different phase of the situation, and was meant to indicate that kindness and charity should stop short of folly and injustice.”1

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e^C_NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
761
THE “JOHN BROWN” SONG.
THE SONG OF THE UNION SOLDIERS.
In 1874, there was quite a discussion as to the origin of this famous song of the Rebellion in the New York and Boston papers. A correspondent of the 4 Boston Evening Transcript ’ of June 25, who signs himself 4 J. K. T.,’ first asserted that Mr. C. S. Hall, of Charlestown, Mass., was the author, and on the 27th of June another correspondent, ‘ J. C. L.,’ says: 44 The Second Battalion of Infantry (Boston Light Infantry) was ordered to Fort Warren in April, 1861, and were the first troops to garrison the fort. It was there that a glee club was formed, and there the celebrated John Brown song emanated. The tune is a very old Methodist camp-meeting tune. The words were made up by different persons. Efforts were made to change it to Ellsworth's body, &c., but that did not seem to work, and all hands got back to John Brown. Hall’s band was the first to play it on dress parade at the fort, and Gilmore’s in Boston. The soldiers of the Twelfth Massachusetts Regiment were the first to sing it through the streets of Boston, and in New York when they marched through Broadway en route for Washington. The first notes set for the music were written by Captain James E. Greenleaf (organist of Harvard Church, Charlestown, Mass.), who was of the glee club, and the first publication was by Ditson & Co., and was dedicated to the 4 Tigers,’ or Boston Light Infantry.” This communication brought out another in the same paper on the 29th of June, from my friend Abram E. Cutter, of Charlestown, who said: “ In a small collection of war lyrics which I gathered during the Rebellion, I have two copies of this famous song. The first and earliest one issued is printed on common thin printing-paper, with an ornamental border. It has 4 Published at 256 Main Street, Charlestown, Mass.,’ in large type at the bottom. This one I think I purchased of Mr. Hall himself. The second is on a sheet of octavo note-paper, well printed, and with the music. It is headed with the American eagle, and at the head of the notes it reads, 4 Origin Fort Warren’ on the left-hand corner, and 4Music arranged by C. B. Marsh ’ at the right hand. At the bottom, 4 Published by C. S. Hall, 256 Main Street, Charlestown, Mass.;’ also,4Entered according to Act of Congress in the Year 1861, by C. S. Hall, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.’ ”
A month later, viz., July 29, Mr. Hall himself communicated to the762
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS,
* Transcript ’ the following account of his connection with the song, and placing its origin at Fort Warren. He says : —
“ When Colonel Webster’s regiment was stationed at Fort Warren in the spring of 1861, a few lively members, with their guests from the city, amused themselves by adapting the words
1 John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul is marching on/
to an air of agreeable effect; this being the only verse at that time known, which was explained to me by Professor Greenleaf, organist of the Harvard Church, of Charlestown, with a profusion of compliments on the entire success of the song several weeks subsequent to the printing of my edition of the song with notes.
“ Friend Greenleaf then said,‘ Mr. Hall, are you aware as to how that tune was brought into requisition ? ’ I replied I was not; when Mr. G. remarked, ‘ The favorite air which has since proved to be so acceptable, I found among the archives of the church to which I am organist, and being among the guests at the fort, applied this music to the verse.’ Mr. G. added that at the fort was a soldier by the name of John Brown, whose name, being suggestive of the antislavery pioneer, tended admirably to add no small degree of eclat to the episode.
“Now let me relate the circumstances under which I wrote the song, — a task I was reluctant to do. Several young men of Charlestown, who were glee singers, suggested to me that the wants of the public required a song to be started under the title of the ‘ John Brown Song,’ at the same time assuring me that it would be hailed with delight everywhere. I told them I was incompetent to conform to their wishes, but would consult with Mr. H. Partridge, of whom I had bought songs, to hire some poet to get it up; but as he declined, the singers insisted I should do my best, and the^ result is before the world. The words were then completed by me, and the five verses added to the first, which make up the song, were put to press, and thousands readily sold. A demand for music for instruments required another issue of the song with notes, which was accomplished by Mr. A. B. Kidder, School Street, Boston. Copies of this issue were left at the music-stores, and presented to each of the Boston bands, and it was also sold at the leading bookstores. Finding my humble production in such demand, I at once secured a copyright, and Mr. C. B.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
763
Marsh, of Charlestown, during two evenings’ consultation with myself, arranged the music for the song.”
On the 18th of August, 1874, the 'Boston Journal’ published a long communication, signed “ George Kimball, late Co. A, Twelfth Massachusetts Volunteers,” in which he gives the following account of the origin of this now famous song, as “ an addition to the facts and theories which have been advanced.” He says: —
“ On the evening of the 19th of April, 1861, being intensely excited by the news of the cowardly attack upon the Sixth Regiment in the streets of Baltimore, I went to the armory of what was then called the Second Battalion of Infantry (Tigers) in Boylston Hall, and joined Company B, then commanded by the late Colonel Charles 0. Rogers. In a few days we received orders to occupy Fort Warren, and, proceeding thither, spent several weeks in clearing up the rubbish which had accumulated in and around the fortress, and laboring otherwise to put it on a war footing, at the same time acquainting ourselves with drill and the duties of the soldier. The men were a merry-hearted set of fellows, and while tugging with pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow, an occupation which varied somewhat from handling a yardstick and other light employments to which they had been accustomed, sang lustily the popular songs of the day. Our evenings were chiefly spent in singing, and as there were many good singers among us, we derived much pleasure and entertainment from this source. Sacred as well as secular music was much in favor, and among the former none was more popular than the hymn called, ‘ Say, Brothers, will you meet us ? ’ One verse of it was somewhat as follows : —
1 Say, brothers, will you meet us,
Say, brothers, will you meet us,
Say, brothers, will you meet us,
On Canaan’s happy shore?
By the grace of God we’ll meet you,
By the grace of God we’ll meet you,
By the grace of God we’ll meet you,
Where parting is no more.’
Sunday evenings this hymn was sung in our prayer-meeting, which was generally conducted by members of the Young Men’s Christian Association, who visited us for that purpose. Small hymn-books containing it were distributed among the soldiers, and it became a great favorite with all. Among the leading singers of the battalion was a quartette of men having excellent voices, one member of which bore the suggestive name of John Brown! He was of Scottish nativity, a764
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
light-hearted genial fellow, full of fun and frolic, and the perpetrator of a great many practical jokes which served to make life at the fort endurable. A great many witticisms were levelled at him on account of his bearing the name of the old antislavery martyr; and the circumstance of his being thus named offeredrihe suggestion to his comrades which culminated in the grand old song of
1 John Brown7s body lies mouldering in the grave,
the air of which was derived from the hymn referred to above, and the words of the first verse (all there was in use at the time) being improvised as both a parody upon ‘ Say, Brothers, will you meet us ? ’ and as a joke upon our comrade Brown. Of course, in adapting the words of the John Brown song to the music of the hymn, it was necessary to add a few notes, and sing it in a little quicker time; but this was easily accomplished, and the music in use by the quartette named became substantially the air given the piece when published.
“ As the government would not accept our services as a battalion, we returned to the city, and the quartette referred to and the writer enlisted in the Twelfth (Fletcher Webster) Regiment, and the song was enthusiastically sung by the soldiers of that organization during their entire term of service. Who that witnessed our departure for the seat of war, July 28, 1861, can ever forget how we made the welkin ring as we passed through the crowded streets to the depot, with the stirring strains of the old John Brown song. The people of New York and Baltimore have cause to remember the Twelfth Regiment for the same reason.”
The song has always been claimed by the soldiers of the Webster Regiment as theirs, they having adopted both the song and its originators. In 1874, three of the quartette were living, — two in Boston. Poor John Brown, after proving himself to be a good and true soldier, was accidentally drowned in the Shenandoah River at Front Royal, Va., June 6, 1862. He had been upon duty on the opposite side of the river from that occupied < by the regiment, and in attempting to cross upon a raft of his own construction, — the bridge having been carried away by a sudden freshet, — was sent to a watery grave.
In reply to Mr. Kimball's communication, the ‘ Journal5 of the 20th contained a communication from James K. Moore, late of Co. K, old Sixth Regiment, M. Y. M., in which he asserts that it is a mistake to say the song originated at Fort Warren, as he heard it sung the fall previous, on the return of the Washington Light Guard, of which he was a member, to Boston from a target excursion to Lynn. HeNATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
765
says: “ As we were marching down the Tremont Street Mall of the Common toward our armory, one of the members struck up the song, which was the first time I ever heard it sung. This corps went into the army with the old Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, and we passed through Baltimore with them on the 19th of April, 1861, the date that the Second Battalion was ordered to Port Warren. We left Boston on the evening of the 17th, and the song was sung in the cars that evening on our way out. This account can be substantiated by a dozen members of the corps in Boston.”
The next day, August 21, another correspondent of the ‘Journal,’ who signed himself ‘ S. C. T.,’ says : “ Without wishing to detract from the glory due those who carried so faithfully the burdens of an afflicted country,” the words,
1 We’ll see the angels coming Through the old church yards,
Shouting through the air Glory, glory, hallelujah/
were sung by the followers of Miller in 1843, to the tune which was adopted for the John Brown song; and Lieutenant James C. Laughton, of the Boston Light Infantry, Second Battalion, at Fort Warren in 1861, still another correspondent, on the 22d August confirms the statements of Mr. Kimball, and adds the following particulars: “ The tune is an old Methodist camp-meeting one, ‘ old as the hills,’ and was revamped with the words ‘John Brown’s body,’ by a young man named Purnett, from Maine. In arranging and adding other verses he was assisted by Greenleaf, Niebuhr, Hallgreen, G. S. Brown, Tucker, Brooks, and others, good singers, privates and non-commissioned officers of the different companies of the Second Battalion.
“ Shortly after this glee club was formed, the officers were invited to the ‘ old wooden barracks ’ one evening to enjoy the singing. After a variety of songs had been sung, some one said, ‘Now give us old John Brown.’ ‘No, no,’ said others, ‘the Major won’t like that;’ but the Major said, ‘ Sing it, sing it;’ and reluctantly it was given, and repeated, with one or two other verses, over and over again, all voices joining in the glorious old chorus.
“ Major Newton was much pleased with the song, but did not like the words ‘John Brown,’ and suggested ‘Ellsworth’s body;’ but the ‘Ellsworth’ did not please so well, and John Brown was again used.” Mr. Laughton denies there ever having been any Sunday evening766
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
prayer-meetings conducted by the Young Men’s Christian Association, as Major Newton allowed no outsiders in the fort after the evening gun, and he also says the John Brown alluded to was the original Harper’s Ferry Brown, and not the Scotch private John Brown, who was not a singer.
He says also, “ The first band to play it at dress parade was the old Brigade Band one Sunday evening. The next was Gilmore’s, and when the battalion left the fort in May, Gilmore’s band was the first to play it in the city, as the battalion inarched up State Street. The Twelfth and Eleventh Regiments were left at the fort, but of course the John Brown song was not forgotten. The Twelfth had a 'field day’ granted them just prior to their departure for the war, and met their friends upon Boston Common. The Second Battalion escorted them, and this was the first time it was ever sung through the streets.”
From this accumulation of evidence it seems certain that this, ‘ The Soldier’s Battle Hymn,’ is of Massachusetts origin, at the commencement of the civil war. As has been the case with other of our patriotic tunes, verses have been added to it to meet the immediate occasion. While the words are not of a classical order, the air is of that popular kind which strikes home to the masses. The strains of it were echoed and re-echoed through our streets during the civil war, and served to cheer and inspire the Union soldiers in their camps and upon their wearisome marches through the dust and mud of old Virginia. It was just what our soldiers required at the time, and served its purpose better, perhaps, as a national air, than would a song of choicer words set to more complicated and artistic music. Few people aside from those who kept step to its strains when leaving home for the battlefield, and sang it around the smoky camp-fire during the long dull nights and days of army life, knew the extent of its popularity and the deep hold it took upon the soldier’s heart. It spread from regiment to regiment like wildfire. No song gained so firm a hold upon the troops, and it is safe to say that it wras sung by every regiment — cavalry, infantry, and artillery — of the army of the Potomac.1
It was eminently the soldier’s battle-song. The more refined and ringing words of Mrs. Howe’s ' Battle-Hymn of the Republic,’ of which it was the inspiration, gave dignity and strength to the hymn, but the more homely version maintained its place with the ' Boys in Blue.’
1 Mr. George Kimball’s communication to the ‘Boston Journal,’ Aug. 17, 1874.NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONOS.
767
THE BATTLE-HYMN OE THE REPUBLIC.
BY MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE.
Tune — 4 John Brown. ’
4 The Battle-Hymn of the Republic5 was written in Washington, under the following circumstances: Mrs. Howe, with a party of friends; had gone out some distance from the city to witness a military review. They were surprised by a Confederate raid, and for some moments the wildest excitement prevailed, as it was feared the retreat would be cut off. When, at last, the carriage containing the party of spectators was turned towards Washington, it was driven very slowly, with an armed escort on either side, while the ladies sang 4 John Brown’s Body,’ in brave defiance of their late alarm. The grand ringing tune deserved noble words, and Mrs. Howe had often wished that she might write them. This night the wish must have followed her in her dreams. She awoke in the gray dawn of the morning, and, to use her own expression, the verses began spinning themselves in her mind. Fearing to lose them should she fall asleep again, she rose, and in the uncertain morning twilight scribbled them off, not looking at the paper under her hand, — a habit she had formed to spare her eyes when writing in a dimly lighted room where her children were sleeping. She went back to bed and fell asleep, unconscious that the almost illegible scrawl was the one great poem of the war.1
The author of this stirring lyric, Julia Ward, daughter of Samuel Ward, Esq., was born in New York, May 27, 1819. In 1843, she married Dr. S. G. Howe, accompanying him upon an extended tour in Europe, which she has since several times revisited. She is at present actively engaged in forwarding measures sustaining the rights of women.

1 Sherwood Bonner, in ‘The Cottage Hearth,’ vol. ii., April, 1875.768
NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC SONGS.
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/INDEXESREFERENCE INDEX
These indexes have been prepared by Mr. Alexander M. Massie, acting Librarian and . Curator of the Naval Library and Institute, Navy Yard, Boston, Mass.
Advertiser, Weekly, 384.
Albany Statesman, 749.
All the Year Round, 90, 748.
American Antiquarian Society, paper of, 742.
Archives, 203,209, 226,228, 232, 235,237,240-241,243-244,269. Daily Advertiser, 345. Historical and Literary Curiosi-. ties, 729.
Historical Magazine, 172.
Record, 719, 722. Revolution, History of, 199. State Papers, 312-315, 329, 334. Annals, Icelandic, 166.
New York, 237.
Watson’s Philadelphia, 227. Anson’s Voyage around the World, 94. Army and Navy Journal, 446-447, 481, 486-487, 491, 531.
Atlantic Monthly, 759.
Augusta, Georgia, Courier, 354.
Maine, Newspaper, 549.
Baltimore American, 465, 476.
Telegraph, 344.
Boston Advertiser, 465, 488.
Centinel, 356.
Courier, 382.
Daily Advertiser, 164, 296, 369. Gazette, 237, 325, 384.
Globe, 577.
Herald, 589.
Journal, 498, 763, 764, 765, 766. Post, 236, 753.
Transcript, 404-405, 459, 460-461, 549, 762.
Evening, 730, 761.
Botta, extract from writings of, 199, 218. Boutell’s Heraldry, 20,112, 126, 130, 153. Boy’s Banner Book, 725-726, 755. Bradford’s Pennsylvania Journal, 214. Brentano’s Monthly, 710.
British Annual Register, 218.
Chronicle, or Union Gazette, Kelso, 304.
Naval Chronicle, 152, 341, 347. Buffalo Historical Society, 324.
Burgh’s Anecdotes of Music, 753.
Bury’s History, 86.
Camoen’s Poems, 99.
Chambers’ Book of Days, 104, 142.
Charleston Courier, 404, 426, 440.
Mercury, on the Confederate flag, 424, 432, 439, 519, 523, 529.
News, 445-446, 453.
Chicago Journal, 478.
Tribune, 645.
Coffin’s History of Newbury, 183.
Colorado Miner, 350.
Columbia (S. C.) Banner, 416.
Columbian Centinel, 295, 304-306 Congressional Globe, 401.
Correspondence, American Diplomatic, for 1863, 77.
Cottage Hearth, 767.
Curwin’s Journal, 190.
Cyclopedia of American Literature, 747.
Dion’s Voyages, 169.
Encyclopedia, London, 5.
Evening Post, 344.
Excerpta Historica, 127, 134, 137, 170.
Ealconer’s Dictionary on Salutes, 39, 702. Field-Book of the American Revolution, 199, 749.
Froissart, 27, 30, 106.
Gazette, Pennsylvania, 213-214, 218. Genealogist and Herald, 105.
Gentleman’s Magazine, 13, 197, 292, 694, 740.
Georgia Courier, 356.
Greville’s Memoirs, 297.
Griswold’s Poets and Poetry of America, 734.
Hall’s Ireland, 304.
Harleian MSS., 132.
Harmonia Anglica, 740.
Harper’s Magazine, 236-237, 276,386, 684, 729.
Heraldry, Antiquities of, 81.
Origin of the Modern System, 125.
Historic Genealogical Calendar or Chronicle, 244.
Historical Magazine, 265, 719, 748, 749, 750, 753.
History of the Royal Navy, 164.
Holmes’ Annals, 209.
Holt’s Journal, 196.
Hunt’s Universal Yacht List, 704.772
REFERENCE INDEX.
Icelandic Annals, 166.
Independent Chronicle, 271, 295, 304. Indianapolis News, 643.
Inquirer, New York, 262.
Journal of Congress, 211-212, 245. of the Convention, 499.
Royal Asiatic Society, 80. of the Times (Boston), 749.
Layard’s Discoveries in Nineveh, 54. Lippincott’s Magazine, 695, 747, 749.
Log of the Savannah, 370.
London Chronicle, 203, 212-213. Encyclopedia, 262-263.
Ladies’ Magazine, 234.
Paper, 154.
Lossing’s, 168, 175, 179, 189, 194, 199, 202, 211, 219, 220, 261, 276, 327, 335, 404, 422, 440, 457, 460, 485-486,498, 535, 663, 684, 693, 729.
Louisville Journal, 473.
Courier-Journal, 655.
Luken’s Heraldry of the American flag, 338, 691.
Lynchburg Republican, 520, 585.
Maine Historical Collections, 192. Maryland Historical Society, 9. Massachusetts Magazine, 749.
« Records, 179.
Mobile Evening News, 508.
Montgomery Mail, 507.
Moore’s Encyclopedia of Music, 750. Murray’s Handbook of Ireland, 304.
Nachitoches Courier, 635.
National Intelligencer, 348, 405, 463-464, 475,481, 498, 725, 729, 753.
Naval Chronicle, 145.
Newburyport Daily Evening Union, 338. New England Chronicle, 196, 199, 201, 271.
Historic Genealogical Register, 729.
Monthly Magazine, 139.
Orleans Delta, 376.
Picayune, 471.
Times, 515.
York Advertiser, 461.
Commercial Advertiser, 458. Courier and Enquirer, 462. Daily News, 499.
Evening Gazette, 298, 660.
Post, 421, 463, 734. Express, 475, 508.
Globe, 737.
Herald, 475, 492, 502.
correspondent, 472. Inquirer, 262.
Journal of Commerce, 367. News, 458.
Times, 457, 464, 481.
Tribune, 401, 447-448,458, 463-464, 758.
World, 481, 507.
Notes and Queries, 140, 732, 747, 748.
Panama Echo, 168.
Pennsylvania Archives, 246, 270.
Evening Post, 237, 271. Gazette, 213-214, 218, 284-285.
Journal, 271.
Journal and Advertiser, 384. Magazine, 258.
Packet, 278, 740.
Records, 270.
Penny Cyclopaedia, 141.
Philadelphia Enquirer, 411, 475.
Gazette, 635.
Newspaper, 355, 636.
Press, 140, 348, 486.
Sunday Dispatch, 1871, 213, 293.
Times, 515.
Political Magazine, 291.
Portland Daily Advertiser, xi.
Portugal, Handbook for, 100.
Poulson’s Advertiser, 719.
Prestwick’s Respublica, 139,146.
Prince’s Library, 196.
Putnam’s Magazine, 734.
Rebellion Record, 404, 419, 508.
Register, British Annual, 218.
Republique Française, 117.
Retrospective Review, 123, 127.
Richmond Dispatch, 517-519, 528.
Examiner, 510, 520-523, 528. Whig, 525.
Ricketsons History of New Bedford, 296. Ripley’s History, 373.
Royal Navy, History, 164.
Savannah, Log of the, 370.
Morning News, 508, 524-529. Republican, 433, 508.
Scribner’s Monthly, 701, 710.
Select Review, 322.
Shaw’s Journal, 298-299.
Shepard’s Life of Commodore Tucker, 204. Smith’s History of Newburyport, 180. Smythe’s Journal, Captain, 264.
Snow’s History of Boston, 295.
Springfield Republican, 401.
Stars and Stripes (a pamphlet), 244.
St. Louis Democrat, 476.
Three Historic Flags, 327.
Tudor’s Life of Otis, 195.
United Service Journal, 103, 150. Universal Advertiser, 304.
Yacht List, 704.
Vanity Fair, 443.
Washington Gazette, 345.
Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia, 227.
Art Journal, 747, 749.
Weekly Advertiser, 384.
Wilmington Daily Gazette, 578. Winthrop’s History of New England, 20. Journal, 181.SUBJECT INDEX
“ A bonne fin,” 114.
Achievement of the American squadron, first, in 1776, 240.
Act establishing the flag of the United States, 1818, 345, 349. for preservation of trophy flags, 1814, 334.
“ Adams and Liberty,” 737.
Address of the Rhode Island Continental Battalion in 1784, 286-287.
Admission of the States to the Union, the date of, 350.
Admiral of the fleet, flag of, 152.
Japanese, flag of, 79. salute of, in the Royal Navy, 7. Advertising purposes, the flag not to be used for, 603.
Algiers, pirates of, 67.
Alliance with France, celebrated, 278-279. “ America,” 739-743.
America, early discoveries of, 160.
first banner planted on the shores of, 168.
flag of United States first raised on board the, by Paul Jones, 273-275.
fleet signals, 1776, 232-233. freedom of the United States of, declared, 271. prophecy of, 158.
American bunting, 596.
first flag made of, 348. flag, the, 734-736.
the, at White Plains, 1776,
•	246.
buried, 475.
first made by Mrs. Ross, 265.
in the Military Hospital, Chelsea, Eng., 154. fleet, sailing of the first, 1776, 203, 233-234, 241. yacht club, name of the first, 704.
yacht clubs, 701-713.
list of, 713.
Anacreontic, the, 732.
Ancient remains in North and South America, 168.
Anecdotes and incidents concerning our flag since the war 1865, 1872, 588-604. Anglo-Saxon banners, &c., 121.
Application for a yacht commission, 707.
Armada, the, 93.
Arms and seals of —
Alabama, 633.
Arizona Territory, 654.
Arkansas, 636.
California, 648-649.
Colorado, 652.
Connecticut, 612-614.
Dacota Territory, 653.
Delaware, 621.
Florida, 632.
Georgia, 630-632.
Idaho Territory, 653-654.
Illinois, 644.
Indiana, 643.
Indian Territory or Cherokee Nation, 655.
Iowa, 646.
Kansas, 650.
Kentucky, 638.
Louisiana, 634.
Maine, 606.
Maryland, 622.
Massachusetts, 609-611.
Michigan, 642.
Minnesota, 648.
Mississippi, 633.
Missouri, 645.
Montana Territory, 654.
Nebraska, 651-652.
Nevada, 650-651.
New Hampshire, 606-608.
Jersey, 617-618.
Mexico Territory, 653.
York, 614-617.
North Carolina, 627.
Ohio, 639-642.
Oregon, 649.
Pennsylvania, 618-621.
Rhode Island, 611.
South Carolina, 628-629.
Tennessee, 637.
Texas, 635.
Utah Territory, 652.
Vermont, 608-609.
Virginia, 623-625.
Washington Territory, 653.
West Virginia, 625-626.
Wisconsin, 646-647.
Wyoming Territory, 654-655.774
SUBJECT INDEX.
Arms of Admiral Simon de Cordova, 94.
of Fitzgerald, 152.
London, 119.
Origin of the Savoy, 86.
Portugal, 100.
Army, United States, corps badges allowed to be worn, 681.
Army, United States, flags, colors, standards, &c., 680-682.
Arrangement of stars in United States flags, 846-849.
Arrival of first Pacific mail steamer in China, 589.
Artillery of United States, colors of, 680. Ascent of Mount Baker, 592.
Asiatics shipwrecked on the west coast of America, 167.
Atlanta, iron-clad, the first to hoist the second Confederate ensign, 530. Auriflamme, description of, 105.
“ Auspice Christo,” 109.
Austrian standards and flags, 95.
Banderole, bandroll, or bannerol, 17. Bangor, device of, 122.
Banner, banners.
admiral of the fleet, 24.
of France, 109.
and bannerols at funerals, 15-16. Anglo-Saxon, 119.
Arjoona, 79.
at the siege of Carleverock, 12,128. Beauchamp, 29.
Benedictine Cloister of St. Sixtus in Piacena, 15. blazoned, 16.
Brechannoch, 120.
carried by the Irish rebels of 1789, 156.
Chinese pirates, 74-75.
Christian League, 35.
Columbus, 169.
consecrated by Pope Alexander II., 28, 121.
Constantine, 59.
Cortez, 82-83.
Covenant, 469.
Covenanters’, 139, 262.
Crusaders, 126.
Denmark, 86. derivation of the name, 11. destruction of, in Hotel des Invalides, 1814, 116.
Earl of Hereford, 13.
Lincoln, 12.
Edinburgh craftsmen, 140.
Edward I., 128.
III.	, 128.
IV.	, 134.
England, 170.
English nobles, 15.
sovereigns, 125, 128. first planted on the shore of America, 168. forms of, 11. from Fort McKee, 76.
Banner, banners.
Harry Grace de Dieu (Great Harry),
Henry V., 131-132.
VI., 132.
Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, 44.
Hugh de Yere, 12.
in the fifteenth century, 19.
Jeanne d’Arc, 108 Joan, 131.
John Dreux, Earl of Richmond, 15.
Knights of the Bath, 14.
Garter, 14-15.
Masonic knighthood, 40. on board of ship, 24.
Oriflamme, 106-107, 132. origin of, 11.
Our Star-gemmed, 455. presented to Charlemagne by Pope Leo III., 103-104.
Pulaski, 9.
Queen Elizabeth, 31. removal of, from Hotel des Invalides, 1870, 116.
Richard I., 126.
Robert de la Mark, 108.
Sacred, of Clovis, 105, 107-108.
Ships, consecrated, 28.
Simon de Montfort, 15,
South Carolina, 498.
Convention, 496. Southern Confederacy, 496-497. Sovereign of the Sea, 36.
St. Cuthbert, 141.
Dennis, 107.
Edmund, 122.
Edward the Confessor, 122, 124. John of Beverly, 140.
Mark of Venice, 170.
Peter of York, 140.
Wilfred of Ripon, 140.
States or Commonwealth, the great, 139.
Trinity, 124.
Tyre, 25.
Uri, 103.
used in religious services, processions, &c., 14.
Valais, 103.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa, 89, 90. Venetian galleys, 35.
Volunteers,’of Great Britain, 153. White (cornette blanche), adoption of, 107
Wittekend, 145.
Bannerets, where first instituted, 13-14. Bannermen of China, 76.
Bannerols borne at funerals, 15-16.
Oliver Cromwell’s, 17.
Banner song of the Washington Light Im fan try, 209.
Battle-flag, the Southern, origin of, 511-512.
“ Battle-Hymn of the Republic,” 767— 768.SUBJECT INDEX.
775
Battle of the Kegs, the, 750.
of Long Island, incidents, 246. signal lor, 57, 262-263.
Baucents, 35.
Bayeux tapestry, some accounts of, 20-21, 23, 125.
Bay Islanders, 85.
Bear flag hoisted in California, 370. Beauceant, origin and description, 48. Bedford, incidents of ship, 291-295. Beginning of the war against our flag and Union, 395.
Belgian standard and flag, 97.
Bell, Adelaide, the ship, 468.
Berceau and l’lnsurgente, colors of, 332. “Blue and the Gray, the,” 758-760. Bombardment of Sumter, 417.
Boston, flags at, 1728, 190.
Bourbon flag, 112.
Brechannoch banner, 120.
British distinguishing flags, orders relative to, 152.
early standards, 119. flag blessed and hoisted in Cyprus, in 1878, 156.
Museum, 13.
surrendered at Yorktown, 178. standards sent to Rome by Julius Caesar, 119.
symbols, standards, and flags, 119. trophies in the Tower of London, 211.
Union flag, origin of, 151. vessels, flags of, at Annapolis, 332. “Bundes Lied,” 740.
Bunker Hill, flag of, 198-199.
Monument, our flag hoisted on, 465.
Burial of the stars and stripes, 510-511.
California arms and seal, 648-649.
bear flag raised at Sonoma, 370.
Camp colors, United States Army, 681. Camp d’Ourique, 100.
Cape Cod, Kiarlarness, Eurderstrandr, 165.
Cap of liberty, 254.
Capture of Louisbourg, 1771, 190-191. Caraek, Great, 33.
Caravel of Columbus, 169.
Carleverock, 128.
Carthaginians, ship of the, 24.
Castle Island, Boston, 180-181.
Caton Moor, battle of, 140.
Celebration at King’s Mountain, N. C., 602.
Celebration of first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, at Philadelphia, 1777, 271.
Centennial anniversary at Boston, 600.
Canton, China, 599.
Exhibition at Philadelphia, 599. Chaldeans, 52.
Chaplain, derivation of, 104.
Charlestown Bridge, 294-295.
Cherokee Nation, or Indian Territory, seal of, 655.
China, imperial standard of, 73.
Chinese army flag, 76. dragon, 72. national flag, 76.
pirates, flags captured from, 74-75.
repository, 77. standards, 78.
Christopher, the, 29.
Chrysanthemum, the new Chinese emblem, 78.
Church pendant, 676.
Claggett’s brewery, 733.
Coat of arms, San Salvador, 83.
Colonial flags, 175, 187.
seal of New Netherlands, 197. vessels, flag of, 1741, 186. Colonies, Grand Union or Continental Flag of the United, 223. of North America, the United, 199.
United, of New England, 181— 182.
Colorado, arms and seal, 652. Color-bearers, anecdotes of, 491.
Colored flags or banners, early use of, 5. Colors, alliance, 1779, 238.
American, presented to the French government, 310-311. among the Celts, 68. artillery, United States Army, 680. borne by ships of the fourteenth century, 28. camp, 681.
Captain Noyes’s company, 1684, 183.
Colonel Moultrie’s regiment, 1775, 209.
Dutch fleet, struck to the Eng-? lish, 37.
early use on board of ship, 29. engineers, United States Army, 681.
established by the National Convention of France, 1793, 312. French fleet, struck to the English, 38.
infantry, United States Army, 680. New York State Militia, 615. presented to the American government, 312-315. privateer Franklin, 204.
Hero, 204, 227-228. privateers, 1776, 203.
Rhode Island Continental Battalion, 1784 286-288.
Spanish fleet, struck to the English, 36.
Volunteer Company of Rangers, Georgia, 289.
“Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,” 754-758. Commander of division, flag of, 674. Commission for a yacht, 708.
Committees of Congress, on the preservation of trophy flags, 328-334.776
SUBJECT INDEX.
Commodore's broad pennant, United States Navy, 8, 673, 678.
Commonwealth of England, 187.
standard of, 138.
Company, East India, ensign of, 221. Company's flag, 176.
Confederate seal, device of, 624-525.
States of America, flag of, 507.
flag, 1776, 236.
Confederates bury a United States flag, 510-511.
dance over United States flags, 477.
Confederates', ensign (2d), 528.
(3d), 531.
(2d),hoisted on Sumter, 529.
flag at Bermuda, salute of, 245.
Havana, 508.
Congress, general, appoints a Marine Committee, 211-212. standard presented to, 1776, 216.
Connecticut, flag, arms, and seal, 612-614.
flags, condition, 556-557.
returned, 55F-567. motto on flags of, 1775, 197, 199, 201.
Connemara in 1880,156.
Continental flag of the United Colonies, 223.
navy, raising of, 1775, 211—
212.
colors of, 1775, 212. cost of, 212.
Constitution, launching of frigate, 316-317.
Contents of this book, xv.
Convoy flag, 675.
Corean flags, captured, 75.
Cornet, the, 676.
Cornette Blanche, 107.
Corps badges, United States Army, 681. Corunna, battle of, defence of the standard at, 153.
Cossack, ensigns of the, 69.
Covenanters' banner, 139.
in Philadelphia, 140. Crescent, cross and, 66.
standard, 65. star and, 66.
Crest of the blind King of Bohemia, 129.
Black Prince, 130.
Cross, Latin, 512.
Mortimer’s, 133.
St. Andrew, 150.
and St. Patrick, origin of, 147.
St. George, 150.
floats over New York, 184.
origin of, 32-33, 175-176.
used in Massachusetts, 179.
Crusaders, 22.
flag of, 126.
Curious method of carrying flags at sea. 24.
Currency, pine-tree, origin of, 189, 190.
Dacota Territory, seal of, 653.
Damascus, our flag displayed at, 373. “Dame de la Fraternite de St. George," 130.
Danes storm Stain's Castle in Scotland, 147.
under Sweyn, standard of the, 124. Danish flag in Sweden, 101.
war flag, 23.
“ Danza Esparta," 753.
Darien Expedition, our flag in, 383-384. Dead Sea, our flag on, 372-373.
Debate in Confederate Convention on the flag, 502-507.
Declaration of Independence, first celebration of the anniversary of, at Philadelphia, 1776, 271.
Declaration of Independence in 1788, 297. Declaration of Independence, signing of, 226.
Decoration of ships, 25.
Dedication of this book, v.
Delaware, arms and seal of, 621. flags returned, 578.
Denmark, Christian VIII., King of, 253. magic standard of, 86. royal standard of, 87. Derivation of the word “ flag," applied to colors, 4, 5.
Design for a national standard, 343. Despatch flag, 675.
Destruction of the brig Nancy, 1776, 268-269.
Devices for a Confederate flag, 502, 507.
seal, 524.
of the English sovereigns, 120. Black Prince, 129, 130.
Duke of York, 134.
Edward I., 127, 133.
III.	, 128-130.
IV.	, 133.
VI., 135.
Elizabeth, 135.
Henry II., 126.
III., 126-127, 133.
V.	, 131-132.
VI.	, 132.
VII.	, 135.
VIII.	, 135.
House of Brunswick, 145.
House of Orange, 140.
Imperial, Emperor of China, 78. John and Henry III., 126.
Mary, 135.
New York flags, 1775, 193, 194, Prince of Wales, 129.
Richard II., 126.
196-197.
rattlesnake, origin of, 213-214. union, 150.
1776, 264.SUBJECT INDEX.
777
“ Dia de los Reyes/’ 91.
“Dieu et mon Droit/’ 128, 132.
Dighton Rock, 166.
Dimensions of navy flags, 678.
Dioclesian, coin of, 168.
Diptote, the, a naval signal flag, 662.
“ Distantia jungit,” 108.
Distinguishing flag of admirals in reign of Edward II., 30. flags, &c., English orders relative to, 152. flags, U. S. army, 680-682.
navy, 659-679. ships, 1800,662.
Dominion and Laws of the Sea, 221.
“ Dominus Hiberniae,” 126.
“ Don’t give up the ship,” 663.
Douglass, standard at Otterburne, 141-142.
Dragon flag, 77.
of China, 72.
red, flag, at Nagasaki, Japan, 76. Dunkirk, blockade of, 37.
Dutch East India Company’s flag, 223.
fleet strike their colors to the English, 36-37.
republic, colors of the, 98. ships of war to strike colors to the English, 39. war, second, 5.
West India Company’s flag, 224. Dwight’s Prophecy of America, 158.
Eagle, as the symbol of royal power, 57. golden, of Napoleon, 112, 116-117. Russia, double-headed, 58.
Early discoveries of America, 160.
Early use of colored flags and banners, 3, 24.
East India Company, flag of Dutch, 123. East Indian standard, 71, 79.
Edinburgh craftsmen, banner of, 140. Edith, yacht, the first American yacht south of the Equator, 382.
Egyptians, standards of, 48-49.
Elba, flag of, 112.
possessor, 112.
El Iiser, battle of, 54.
Elephant and Danneborg, order of, 87. Embellishment of ships, 26.
Emblem of Leon, 128.
Massachusetts, 189.
Rajpoot warriors, 79.
Scotland, 147.
Vishnu, 79.
Emperor of China, imperial device of, 78. Empire of Germany, flag of, 101.
End of the war against the flag, 535-543. England, New, flag of, earliest symbol of the colonies, 190. flag of 1686, 181, 183. ensign of, 188. extent of, 1680, 175. united colonies of, formed, 181.
royal arms of, 118.
English East India Company’s flag, 220.
English flags, the first planted on the shores of Eastern North America, 170-171.
standard in the middle ages, 141. yachts, 1660, 702.
Ensign, American yacht, 706.
and pendants of revenue service, 32L
and standards, East Indian, 79. Anglo-Saxon, 121. all laid by Salem, 1134, 180. at Salem defaced, 1134, 179. Belgian national, 97.
Bijala, 80.
Brahma, 80.
Burman, 80.
Camdeva, 80.
Confederate, 1st described, 507.
„ 2d „	528.
„ 3d „	531.
Danish man-of-war, 87. derivation of, 20. early use of, on board ships, 24. East India Company, 1707, 188.
220-221.
Emperor Trajan’s, 120.
English, 1707, 188.
Horsa, 120.
Huns, 69.
Irish, 1707, 188.
Kent County, 120. national, 7.
New England, 1707, 188. on the Bayeux tapestry, 20-21. Persians, 80.
Portugal, 100.
Rama, 80.
Rattas, 80.
Rolla, first Duke of Normandy, 124.
royal family of Colonna, 86.
navy in 1864, 152.
Russian, 96.
Scotch, 1707, 188.
Silahara and Tadu, 80.
Siva, 80.
Slavonic, 67.
Tartars, 80.
the, honor derived, 20.
Vishnu, 80.
“ E Pluribus Unum,” origin of, 262, 340, 694-696.
European States, standards and flags of, 1.71.
Eutaw standard, 207-209.
Evacuation of Fort Sumter, 445. Expedition of Sir H. Gilbert, 1578, 173.
W. Raleigh, 173-174.
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 136.
Fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, 1795,1818, 306.
First American pilot-boat to Ireland, 367.
propellor packet to England, 366.
ship in the Thames from Nantucket, 291.SUBJECT INDEX.
778
First American steam schooner back to British India, 366. steam schooner to China, 366.
First gun at Sumter, fired by Edward Ruffin, 438.
gun for Sumter, fired by Captain Doubleday, 438.
man to raise the stars and stripes in California, 369.
treaty with a foreign power, 278. British flag captured in 1812, 335. flag of Great Britain, 5. Second, 5.
Third, fourth, and fifth, 6.
United States vessel through the Straits of Magellan, 362, 365. yacht club in America, 704.
Flag, flags.
act for the preservation of, 334. admiral United States Navy, 7, 8. admiral United States Navy, ordered, 670, 673, 677. admiral of the fleet, 152. admirals, Japanese, 79. admirals in the royal navy, 6, 7, 152. admirals in the royal navy, when displayed, 29.
admirals of the Commonwealth, 139. America, 229.
raised by Paul Jones, 229, 273-274.
raising of, on the Nancy, 1776, 267-268.
American, the, 734-736.
American, first made by Mrs. Ross, 265.
in Military Hospital, Chelsea, England, 154, 329, raised on the Alfred, 1776, 217, 229, 274. at White Plains, 1776, 246. first planted upon a fortress of the Old World, 325.
Fort Madison, 319, 320.
Austria, 95.
bear, raised at Sonoma, 370.
Belgium, 97.
Berdan sharpshooters’, 582.
Birdgee, 187.
Bon Homme Richard, 282-283. Bonnie Blue, 520.
Boston, 1728, 190.
British Union, origin of, 151.
British, blessed and hoisted at Cyprus in 1878, 156.
Bunker Hill, 199.
Burgundian, 93.
Burgher’s Corps, New Amsterdam, 183-184.
captured from Chinese pirates, 74-75. Coreans, 75.
Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, 599.
Challamette Regiment, 472.
Chinese, national, 73, 76.
of 1862, 77.
Flag, flags.
Chinese trading junks, 77. dragon, 77. worship of, 73-74. church, 676.
Colonel Gadsden’s, 216.
Colonial and Provincial, 175.
vessels, 1741, 186.
Columbus, 169.
Colonel William Vaughn’s, 191. Commodore Barney, 238. commodore’s, 673, 678. Commonwealth, 1648, 58, 138. compass, 675.
Confederate States, 1776, 236.
battle, 449, 511-513. States of America, 507, 528, 531.
States, first, 527.
second, 528. third, 531.
Connecticut, 612-614.
motto on, 1775, 197. Continental, 223. convoy, 675. cornet, 676.
Covenanters’, in Philadelphia, 140. Cowpen and Eutaw, 207.
Danish admiral’s, 87. merchant, 87. war, 23.
derivation of, 4, 5.
pointed or triangular, 67. destroyed at Cheapside, 1644, 220. dispatch, 675.
dispute at Lisbon relative to ceremony of, 39. distinctive, 1866, 675-676. division commanders’, 674.
Dutch East India Company, 223.
West India Company, 223-224. East India Company, English, 220. Elba, 112-113.
possessor of, 112. embroidery of, 87.
Empire of Germany, 101.
Expedition, schooner United States, 1861, 387.
first American, made by Mrs. Ross, 265.
first American, hoisted on the United States House of Representatives, 1818, 348.
first American, raised by Captain J. Manly, 1775, 239.
first American salute obtained from a foreign power by the Andrea Doria, 244.
first American, shown to the European world, 243.
First Brigade, Westmoreland County, Penn., 1775, 205-206.
Florida, 632.
Fort Fisher, 585.
Meigs, in 1812, 590.
Moultrie, in 1775, 209-210. McHenry, 732.SUBJECT INDEX.
779
Flag, flags.
French, 103.
regulations for the, in 1669,110. garrison, 680. general recall, 676.
General Putnam, 199.
Georgia, 630-682.
Grand Union, of Cambridge, 271. Grand Union, 1776, 223.
first unfurled, 218. United Colonies, 223.
Greece, 97.
Grinnell, of the Antarctic, 385. guard, 675. guide or pivot, 675. hexagonal, 67.
Holland, 98.
Italian, 85.
man-of-war, 86. merchant, 86.
Kentucky, 638, 655.
Light Horse, of Philadelphia, 253-258. Long Parliament, 177.
Lord Admiral of the Fleet of the United Kingdom, 6.
Lord High Admiral, 5.
salute, 6.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 6.
salute, 6.
Louisiana, 399, 400, 634. loyal, raising after the fall of Fort Sumter, 452.
Maine, 606.
Maryland, 622. manner of carrying the, 27. Massachusetts, 609-611. merchant service, 1701, 185-186.
1709, 185. vessels, 7.
Michigan, 642.
military, of Great Britain, 153. Missouri, 645.
Museum at Washington, 531. national, Chinese, 73, 76.
of 1862, 77.
national, San Salvador, 83. national, United States, 341. naval Commander-in-Chief, 659. Netherlands, 97, 223.
Newburyport, 204.
New England, 1686, 183, 189.
earliest symbol of the colonies, 190. provinces, 1680, 184. New Hampshire, 606-608.
New Jersey, 617-618.
New York, 1766, 194.
device, 1775, 193-194, 196. seal, arms, and colors, 614-617.
New Zealand, 84.
Norfolk war, 468.
North Carolina, 627. officers’, orders concerning, 668-669, 677-679.
of our Union, the, 753-754. original United States, 340.
Flag, flags.
our, at Sumter, 416.
how it was restored to South »	Carolina, at Port Royal, 481.
in Secessia, 468.
not to be used for advertising purposes, 603.
raising on Sumter, 449-452. Palmetto, 445.
Peacock, 385.
Pelican, 489.
Pennsylvania, 618-621.
Perry’s battle, 663.
Peruvian, 85. pilot, 675.
Pine tree, 201-204, 212, 227-228, 233, 236-237,239.
Pizarro, 91.
planted by Dr. Hayes, 70°, 390. Portugal, 99, 100. powder, 676.
' pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, 192.
President of the United States, 7, 671-672, 677.
Prince Henry the navigator’s, 100. protectorate, 177. quarantine, 676.
raising in New York, 1766, 193-194.
at Savannah, Ga., 1775, 201. Rear-Admiral, 7, 8.
established by law, 673, 677.
red, signal for battle, 57. revenue, of the United States, created 1799, 320-321. ^ revolutionary period, 192.
Rhode Island, 611 Royal Savage, 219.
Russia, 95-97.
Sandwich Islands, 84.
Scotch Union, 1707, 188.
Scott Legion, 409.
Secretary of the United States Navy, 7, 672, 677.
Seventh New York Regiment, 456.
Sir William Pepperrell, 1745, 190-191.
Society Islands, 84.
Sons of Liberty, 1766, 194.
South Carolina, 628-629.
Southern, in the great Rebellion, 494-531.
Southern Confederacy, 502.
Cross, 522, 527-528.
Spanish, 88, 92-94.
State, 605.
Stonington, 327.
striped, origin unknown, 245.
rising of, Cambridge, 218.
Boston, 218-219. Sweden and Norway, 100.
^PpV/1 c
Three County Troop, 182-183. three historic, 327.
thirteen United States of North America, 244.780
SUBJECT INDEX.
Flag, flags.
thirteen United States of North America, in 1777, 259-260. tricolored, in 1829, 116.
in 1830, recognized as the national ensign of France, 116.
union, 8.
1775, 197.
mottoes, 197.
union or king’s colors, 1606, 223.
Jan. 15, 1707, 223.
raised at Taunton, Mass., 1774, 196.
United Colonies, New England, 181. United States, 280, 283.
brig Enterprise, 327. established 1818, 345. United States, established 1818, first hoisted on the United States House of Representatives, 348.
United States, raised on board the Ranger by Paul Jones, 274-275. United States, raised on board the America by Paul Jones, 275.
United States, hoisted at San Francisco, 370-371.
United States, hoisted in Mexico, where preserved, 377.
Vaughn, Colonel William, 191.
Vasco de Gama, 100.
Vermont, 608-609.
Vice-Admiral, ordered, 673, 677* Vice-President of the United States, 671, 677.
Washington’s, at Trenton, 272.
Life Guard, 9.
West Virginia, 625-626. white man’s, 527.
William, Prince of Orange, 36. worn by the Dutch fleet at Camper-down, 99.
Wisconsin, 646.
Flag-oiAcer, 668.
Fleet, American, sailing of the first, 1776, 217,233.
signals for, 232, 233. Fleur-de-lis, or fleur-de-lys, 107-108.
derivation, 108. old English name of, 108.
“ Floreat Res Publica,” 177.
Florida, flag, arms, and seal of, 632-633. secedes, 398.
Flying Fish, schooner, carries our flag to 70° S. 359.
“ For me and you,” vi.
Fort Johnson, 228.
St. George, 221.
Sumter, our flag at, 416-451.
France, imperial standard, 115.
national flag of the eighteenth century, 109. tri-color of, 3, 111-114. ships of war of, not to strike colors to the English, 38.
France, standard of ancient kings of, 104. Franks, standards of, 103.
Freedom of the United States of America declared, 247.
French colors presented to the United States, 312-314.
flags, regulating the, in 1669,110. frigate compelled to salute the English, 39.
ship of war at Fayal, 38. squadron strike their colors to the English, 37.
Fringe on banners, 4.
Funerals of persons of rank, 17. Furderstrandr (Cape Cod), 165.
Galilee, our flag on the Lake of, 372. Garrison flag of Great Britain, 178.
United States Army, 680. Garter, Order of the, 130.
Gauls, standards of, 103.
General order, on representing Massachusetts flags, 545-546.
General order, relative to the repossession of Sumter, 449-451.
General recall flag, 676.
Georgia, colors of the Volunteer Company of Rangers, 289. flag, arms, and seal of, 630-632. secedes, 397-398.
State flags, 501.
Germany, flag of the Empire of, 101-102.
man-of-war and merchant flags of, 102.
Glastonbury, standard of the city of, 120.
“ God save our President,” 743-746. Golden eagle of Napoleon, 112, 116, 117. Gonfanon of William the Conqueror, 22. Gonfanons, 22, 28.
Great Britain, first and second flag of, 5.
third, fourth, and fifth of, 6. union jack of, 149. and Ireland, standard of, 143-144.
Great Carack, the, 33.
dragon, Sweyne’s ship, the 164. Harry, the, 32, 143. seal of the United States described, 691.
Greece, flags of, 97.
Greeks, standards of, 51.
Grevdon, guidon, or guydon, how derived, 18.
by whom used, 19. its dimensions, 18.
Greyhound, man-of-war, the, 187.
Guard flag, 675.
Gueux, adopted the colors of the House of Orange, 98.
Guide or pivot flag, 675.
“ Hail Columbia,” 715-718.
“ Happy Entrance,” the, 37.
Harp and trefoil of Ireland, the, 146. Hastings, Ordinance of, 36.
Hebrews, standard of, 41, 52-53.
Hector, ship, 180.SUBJECT INDEX.
781
Heraldry of the American flag, 338, 691. Hereditary banner bearer of Scotland, 13.
Hero, privateer, colors of, 1776; 204, 227, 228.
Hessian account of the battle of Long Island, 246.
Hexagonal flag, 67.
Hibernian harp, adopted by Constance Chlorus, 120.
Holland, standard and flag of, 98.
flags, suppressed by the French, 1810, 99.
fleet of, defeated in 1665, 5. war with, 1652, 38.
Holy Spirit, 23.
Trinity, 22.
“ Honi soit qui mal y pense,” 130.
“ Honneur et patrie,” 117.
Horsa, ensign of, 120, 684.
Hospitallers, banner of, 43, 44.
House of Brunswick, device of, 145.
Orange, device of, 140.
How our flag was first restored to the soil of South Carolina, 481.
Hugo, Victor, ii.
Hungary, national colors of, 95.
Huns, ensign of the, 69.
“ Icden,” 130.
Ichang, China, American flag at, 600.
Idaho Territory, seal of, 654.
Illinois, arms and seal, 644.
flags returned, 578, 579. Illustrations, list of, XIV.
Imperial arms of Japan, 1880, 78, 79. standard of China, 73.
France, 115.
Inauguration of President Lincoln, 413-415.
Incidents at Fort Pillow, 479.
Independence Hall, flag raised on, by the sailors of the Hartford, 410. Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Mr.
Lincoln raises our flag on, 411.
Indiana, arms and seal of, 643, 644. Indians, North America, standard of, 82. Indian Territory or Cherokee nation, seal of, 655.
“ In hoc signo vinces,” 35.
Insignia of the Order of Malta, 45.
Iowa, arms and seal of, 646.
Ireland, banner carried by the rebels of 1789, in, 156.
Ireland, harp and trefoil of, 146.
viceroys of, 126.
Irish ensign, 1707, 188.
Italian standard, 85.
tri color, 378.
Italy, standards of, 85.
Ivry, battle of, 110.
Jack, union, of Great Britain, 6, 93.
Japan, naval flags of, 79.
Japanese flag in American waters, first, 79.
standards, 71, 78.
Javanese standards, 71, 79.
Jerusalem, 28.
John Brown song, the, 761-766.
Kansas, arms and seal of, 650.
Kent, ensign of the county of, 120. Kentucky, flag, arms, and seal, 638, 639, 655.
Khaibab, battle of, 65.
Kiarlarness (Cape Cod), 165.
King’s colors on the Fort at New York, 1679, 184.
Kiri, the personal crest of the Mikado, 78. Knight banneret, 11.
Knights Hospitallers of St. John, 86. of Malta, 44.
Rhodes, 44.
St. John of Arce, 44. the Bath, 14, 132.
Garter, 14.
Thistle, 147.
Unchained Lion, 366. Templar, 35, 45.
beauceant, 47,48. dress of, 46, 47. oath of, 47. origin of, 45. standard of, 47. suppression of, 45, 48.
Labarum, the description of, 59.
derivation of, 60.
Lady of the Thistle, 147.
Lancaster, red rose of, 131.
Land of my birth, vi.
Lapses in act establishing Great Seal of the United States, 691,
Latin Cross, 512.
League, banner of the, 109.
wars of the, 110.
Leon, emblem of, 128.
Letters of Anderson, Robert, 427, 428. Andrew, J. A., 548.
Barton, W., 693.
Becket, Thomas A., 755, 756. Beauregard, G. T., 512, 513, 515, 516.
Cameron, Simeon, 433. Hancock, E. C., 515.
McGowan, J., 425, 426.
Milles, W. P., 514, 516, 517. Pickens, F. W., 427, 428. Psyster, J. L. de, 537,
Smith, Rev. S. F., 742. Snowden, A. Loudon, 696, 697. Thomson, Charles, 693.
Walton, J. B., 515.
Weitzel, G., 538.
Wells, Gideon, 434.
Wendover, P. H., 342-345. Whittier, John G., 490.
Liberty cap, 254.
pole in New York cut down, 1770, 1776, 193.
property and no stamps, 192. regimental flag, battle of Long Island, 1776, 246. tree, Boston, Mass., cut down, 1775, 196.782
SUBJECT INDEX.
Liberty tree, Charleston, S. C., cut down, 1780, 194.
License for a yacht, form for, 707.
Livery colors, 24.
London, arms of, 119.
Company, 175, 176. tower of, 211.
Long Island, incidents of the battle of, 246. parliament flag, 177.
Lord High Admiral's flag, first carried at sea, 5.
Lord High Admiral's flag, salute of, 6. Lord High Admiral, Duke of York, 5,177.
Lieutenant’s flag, 6.
Louisbourg, capture of, 1745, 190, 191. Louisiana, flag, arms, and seal of, 634,635. secedes, 400.
State flag of, 498, 499. Louisville Legion, 655.
Loyal flag raisings, following the fall of Sumter, 452-467.
Macedonian, capture of, 325.
Magic standard of Denmark, 86.
Magnetic Pole, Commodore Ross takes possession of, 391.
Magyars, king of, standard of, 69. Mahabharet, or great war, B. C. 1200, 79.
Maine, flags, arms, and seal of, 606.
returned, 549, 550 Malta, Order of, 44.
dress of, 45.
Manipulus, standard of, 56.
Mare Clausum, treatise by Mr. Selden, 37. Liberum, treatise by Hugh Grotius, 37.
Maria, the, 1859, 296.
incidents of ship, 295, 296. Marmion, flags in disuse, 10.
Marines, battalion of, raised 1775, 211, 212.
good behavior of, in action, 242. Marriage, Queen of England, 36. .
Martin, St., standard of, 104.
Maryland, flag, arms, and seal of, 622, 623.
flags returned, 577.
Masonic standards, 40, 41.
Massachusetts, flags, arms and seal, 609-611.
flags returned to the State, 544-549.
Historical Society presented with rebel flags by G. V. Fox, 586, 587. Matthew, Cabot's ship, 170.
Mayflower, flag on the, 179.
Merchant service, flag of, 1709, 187. Mexican standards, 81.
Mexico, our citizens protected by our flag, 351, 352.
Michigan, flags, arms, and seal of, 642, 643.
flags returned, 579-581.
Middle ages, vessels in the, 34.
Midway Islands, taken possession of, 594. Minnesota, arms and seal of, 648.
Minute guns for the death of J. Q. Adams fired on the Dead Sea, 372.
Mira or Mora, the, ships of William the Conquerer, 28.
Mississippi, arms and seal of, 634. secedes, 398.
Missouri, flag, arms, and seal of, 645. Montana Territory, seal of, 654.
Monterey, the Oriflamme at, 106.
Mosaic law, 4.
Moslem standards, 61.
Motto on Connecticut flags, 1775,197,199,
201.
Union flag, 1775, 196.
Mottoes on captured Rebel flags, 584.
“ Moult me tarde," 35.
Moultrie, Fort, flag of, 1775, 210.
Sergeant Jasper, at, 210. Moultrie's regiment, colors of, 209, 210-‘ ‘ Muy curioso," 383.
“My Country 'Tis of Thee," 742.
Names of American Yacht Clubs, 1872, 71.3.
Nancy, raising of the stars and stripes on the, 1776, 267, 268. blowing up of the, 1776, 268, 269. National Assembly, 1790, 111.
Convention of France, colors, 1793, 312. ensign, 7, 116. songs, 715-768.
Naval force of United States, 1812, 325. signals, 1800, 660-662. trophy flags presented to Massachusetts Historical Society, 586, 587. Navy, Continental, colors of, 1775, 233, 234.
cost of, 1775, 212. raising of, 1775, 211, 212.
uniform of, 1776, 234, 235.
distinguishing flags of, 659-679. flags, dimensions of, 678. rules and regulations respecting distinctive flags, 1803, 659-662; 1818,664; 1833, 664; 1843, 665; 1857, 665; 1865, 672; 1870, 677. vessels of the United States, 1776, 245.
Nebraska, arms and seal of, 651, 652. Nevada, arms and seal of, 651.
New Amsterdam, changed to New York,
184, 223.
flag of Burgher's corps, 183.
Newburyport flag, 204.
New England, ensign of, 1707, 188.
extent of, 1680, 184, 185. united colonies formed, 181. Hampshire, flag, arms, and seal of^ 606-608.
flags returned to the State, 550, 551.
Jersey, flag, arms, and seal of, 617, 618.
Mexico, territory of, seal of, 653. Orleans, our flag at, 468-474. Providence taken, 1778, 277.SUBJECT INDEX.
783
New York, cross of St. George floats over, 184.
flag, arms, and seal of, 614-617. flags returned, 567-573. Zealand, flag of, 84.
Ninevah, 54.
“Non nobis, Domine,” 132.
North American Indians, standard of, 82. Carolina, Arms and Seal of, 627,628. State flag, 501, 627.
Northallerton or Caton Moor, battle of, 140. Northman, vessel, a, 159.
Norway, standard and flags of, 100. Norwegian Lion, 124.
Notre Dame, France, trophies at, 116, 329. Nullification autograph, 354.
“ Nunc sidera ducit,” 263.
Ohio, arms and seal of, 639-642.
Old mill at Newport, 167.
Opdam, defeat of, in 1665, 5.
Open Polar Sea described, 388, 389, 390. Orange, House of, 140.
Oregon, arms and seal of, 649.
Order of Elephant and Dannebrog, 87. Malta, 44. the Garter, 130.
Orders by John A. Dahlgren, 450, 451.
Brigadier-General Hawley, 451. Edwin M. Stanton, 449, 450. Ordinance of Hastings, 36.
Oriflamme, 105-107, 132.
Origin of British union flag, 6,
pine-tree currency, 189.
St. Andrew’s cross, 147-148.
St. George’s cross, 32, 33, 175. St. Patrick’s cross, 147, 148. the coach-whip pendant, 659. the motto E Pluribus Unum, 696. the Southern battle-flag, 511. the stripes, 224.
the Tressure flory of Scotland, 146.
theories of the stars and stripes, 251.
Orleans, House of, device of, 121, 140. arms of, 114, 115.
Orizaba, stars and stripes on, 375-377. Otterburne flag, the, 142.
battle of, 260.
Our flag carried to 75° S., 359.
to 80° N., 390. in secessia, 468. in Switzerland, 1867 and 1872, 589.
“Our Star-gemmed Banner, 455.
“Our Union,” 544.
Pacha, title of, 64.
Pacific Mail Steamer to China, the first, 589.
Painting of ships, 25.
Palmetto flag, hoisted at Charleston, 377, 378, 397. flags, 397.
Panama flag, struck by lightning, 387.
Old, coins found at, 168.
Papas or Papar, Christian Irishmen, 160. Parisian militia, their colors, 113. Parliament, Long, flag, 177.
Passage of Stamp Act, 193.
Pavillon de Nouvelle Angleterre en Amérique, 189.
Payong or Par-a-sol, of the Javanese, 79. Peace Convention at Washington, 406. flags, 403.
“ Pedro Reinel a fez,” 172.
Pendant of the thirteen United States of North America, 244.
Pendants, ensigns, etc, revenue service, 320, 321.
to be worn only by men-of-war, 245.
Pennant tor a commanding officer of a single vessel when of lower rank than a commodore, 674.
Pennons, how formed, and by whom used, 11, 18.
of Sir John Daubernoun, 19. of St. George, St. Michael, St. Ursula, and of John the Baptist, 19.
Pennsylvania, flag, arms, and seal of, 618-621.
flags returned, 573-577. Penoncels or Pensils, 19.
Persians, standard of, 54.
Peru, flag of, 85.
Phénix, the, 78.
Philadelphia Light Horse, standard of, 252-254, 264.
Phoenicians in America, 167.
Phrygian cap, 254.
Piets, 120.
Pilot flag, 675.
Pine tree currency, origin of, 189.
flag, the, 201-204, 212, 227, 228, 233, 236, 237, 239, 264, 270. Pirates of Algiers, 67.
Plymouth Company, 174-176.
Poland, banners and national colors of, 67. black ensign of the crown of, 70. arms of, 59. eagle of, 70. king of, 67.
Polar Sea, open, 388.
Pole, liberty, cut down in New York, 1770 and 1776, 193.
Popocatepetl, stars and stripes on, 374, 375. Portugal, king of, 39.
man-of-war and merchant flags of, 100.
old East India flag of, 99. standard and ensign of, 99. Praga, battle of, 70.
Preface to first edition, xi,
second edition, vii.
Prefero, 125.
Pre-revolutionary periods, flags of, 192. Preservation, act for, of flags, 1814, 334. President’s flag, 7, 671, 672, 677.
Privateer Franklin, colors of, 1776, 204.
Yankee Hero, colors of, 1776,204, 227,228.784
SUBJECT INDEX.
Privateers, colors of, 1776, 203.
uniform of officers, 1776, 204; Processions, banners in, 15.
Prophecy of America, Dwight's, 158. Proposed standard, 1818, 339-345. Protector, flags displayed at the funeral of the, 138, 139.
Protectorate flag, 177.
Provinces, flag of, 184, 185.
Provincial flags, 175.
Prussia, arms of, 59.
Purple ribbon worn by major generals, 1775,272.
Queen’s cup, 709.
Raising our flag over the Capitol at Richmond, Va., 536-538.
Rajpoot, emblem of the, 79.
Ranger, United States flag raised on board of, by Paul Jones, 274, 275.
Rattas, emblem of the, 80.
Rattlesnake device, origin of, 213, 214. flag, 205, 206. in heraldry, 215, 216.
Rear admiral’s flags, 7, 8.
law establishing, 671, 672, 677.
Rebel flags at Annapolis, 586.
Boston, 586, 587. Washington, 582.
Rebellion, 1861-1865, our flag in, 393-531. Reichstag at Mayence in 1184, 101.
Relief of Sumter, Mr. Fox attempts, 434. Rensselaerswick, colonie of, 184.
Report of a committee on Confederate flag, 505.
Report of a committee of Congress on the flag, 1818, 341-344.
Report of a device for the great seal of the United States, July 4, 1776, 683.
Report of a device for the great seal of the United States, July 4, 1779, 686.
Report of the firing on the Star of the West, 425, 426, 499.
Reprisal, first American vessel of war to show the flag to Europeans, 243. Resolve, concerning standards and colors taken from the enemy, 1778, 329. Restoration of our flag at New Orleans, 470.
Return of the volunteer regiments, 540-581.
Revenue service, ensigns and pendents of, 320, 321.
Revolutionary period, flags of, 9, 192. Rhode Island, flag, arms, and seal of, 611. flags returned, 551.
State flags, 1784, 286-288. Richmond occupied by United States troops, 535.
Romans, standard of, 55, 58.
Rosbecq, the oriflamme at, 106.
Rose, noble, of Edward III., description of, 30.
of York and Lancaster, 135. suffrage of the, 133.
Royal arms of England, 118.
Charles, the, 5.
Cork yacht club, 702.
London, the, 5.
ordinance establishing the Union Jack, 150.
Savage, flag of, 219. standard of Great Britain, 5, 143. standard of Great Britain, when displayed, 144.
Russia, double headed eagle of, 58, 96. flag of, 96.
royal standard of, 96.
Saceseni, ancestors of the Saxon, 80. Sacred banners, 22.
Sailing of the first American fleet, 1776,241. Salem, all ensigns laid by, 1634, 180.
ensigns defaced at, 1634, 180. Salutes, 39.
manner of, by the United States, 39, 40.
of the President of the United States, and others, 7, 8, 672, 673, 677, 678.
to the royal standard, Lord High Admiral’s flag, and others belonging to the British, 5, 6, 7. Sandwich Islands, flag of, 84.
San Salvador, flag of, 83.
Savoy arms, origin of, 86.
Scandinavian navigators, 160, 167.
School girl court martialed for insulting the stars and stripes, 480, 481.
Scotland, the thistle of 147.
Scotch union flag, 1707, 188.
ensign, 188.
Sea, sovereignty of, asserted by England,
36.
claimed by England, 36, 39.
conceded to England by the Dutch, 38. disputed by France and Holland, 37.
Seal and arms of the United States, 683-700.
Departments, 697-700.
Interior, 699. Justice, 700. Navy, 697,
698.
Post Office, 697.
State, 699. Treasury.
699.
War, 698. President’s, 697.
Secessia, our flags in, 468-493.
Secession flags, 494.
Secretary of the Navy’s flag, 7, 672, 677. Seige of Carleverock, banners at, 12.
Charleston, S. C., 248. Semee-de-lis, on the banner of Philip Augustus, 108.
Senior officer presents pendant, 674.SUBJECT INDEX.
785
■Shakespeare's picture of Bolingbroke, 409, 410.
Shamrock or trefoil, the, 146.
Ship of William the Conqueror, 27, 28. Ships of United States, rules for, 39, 40. painting of, 25. embellishment of, 26.
Signal at Trafalgar, 155.
flags used before Tripoli, 1803,1804, 661.
Signals for American fleet, 1776, 232, 233. Signers of the Declaration of Independence, 226, 227.
Slab placed over birthplace of Washington, 335.
Soldier’s Trinity, a, 605.
Song, yachting, 701.
Songs, national and patriotic, 715.
South Carolina, banner of, 496.
flag, arms, and seal of, 628-630.
our flag restored to, 481. secedes, 397.
Southern flags in the great Rebellion, 494-531.
Sovereignty of the sea, 36.
Spain, royal standard of, 92.
standard of, 1492, 168, 169.
Spanish Armada, 35.
fleet compelled to strike their colors to the English, 36, 37. flags and standards, 88.
Squadron, first achievement of American, 242.
St. Michael, wreck of the, 5.
St. Paul’s Chapel, United States arms in, 694.
Stamp Act, passage of, 193.
“ Stand by the flag,” 658.
Standard or standards of the, 23, 24.
A. and A., Scottish rite, 42.
Alviano, 86. ancient Britons, 119.
kings of Prance, 104. military, 48.
and guidons, mounted regiments United States army, 681.
Assyrians, 53.
Austrians, 95.
Aztec commander, 81. battle of the, 140. bearer of the, 61.
bearer of the 10th legion (Roman), gallantry of, 60.
Belgium, 97. blue blanket, 140.
Bourbon royal, 107.
Bretwalda, 122.
Charles I., 142, 143.
III., Duke de, Burgundy, 108. Chinese, 71, 73.
Imperial, 73.
Cid, 88.
city of Glastonbury, 120. commonwealth, 138.
Cortez, 82.
Cowpen and Eutaw, 207.
Standard or standards of the, crescent, 65.
Cromwell, 138.
Danes, under Sweyn, 124. defence of the, 153.
Denmark, 87.
derivation of, 48.
design for a national, 1817, 343.
Douglas, 141, 142.
dragon, 68.
East Indian, 79.
Edilfrid, 122.
Edward III, 128, 136.
IV., 133, 134, 137.
Egyptians, 48, 49, 50.
English, in the middle ages, 141.
sovereigns, 119.
Essex, origin of, 121.
European States, 85.
Ferdinand and Isabella, 90. first military, emblazoned with the cross, 60.
First Rifle Regiment of Pennsylvania, 206.
Franks and Gauls, 103.
French, 103, 117.
insurgents of, 1792, 112. Germany, 101.
imperial of, 102.
Grand, of Masonic Knighthood, 42.
Greeks, 51.
hand on top of, 61.
Harold, 121, 125.
Hebrews, 41, 52, 53.
Henry III., 127.
IV.	, of England, 131.
V.	, of England, 131, 137.
VII.	, of England, 135, 137.
VIII.	, of England, 136. Holland, 98.
Indian Princes of Delhi, 80.
Imperial of Constantine, 59.
China, 73.
France, 115.
Guard of France, 113. Napoleon I., 115.
Italian, 85.
I. O. O. F. of the United States. 42, 43.
James I., 137, 138.
Japanese, 78.
old imperial, 78.
Javanese, 79.
Knights Templar, 40.
League, 109.
loss of, disgraceful, 57.
Manipulus, 56.
Marquis of Pescara, 86.
Mary Stuart, 137. masonic, 40, 42.
Master 1st Veil, 41.
Master 2d Veil, 41.
Master 3d Veil, 40, 41.
Mexican, 80.
Moslem, 61.
National, of Scotland, 147. Netherlands, 97, 98.
50786
SUBJECT INDEX.
Standard or standards of the North American Indians, 82.
Percy, 142.
Persians, 41, 54.
Philadelphia Light Horse, 1775. 251-258.
Philip the Bold, of Burgundy, 35. presented to Congress, 1776, 216.
the National Convention of France, 310. proposed United States, 343.
Richard II., 136.
III., 134.
Roman Imperial, 58.
Romans, 55-56. royal arch, 40-41.
of Great Britain and Ireland, 143. of Great Britain and Ireland described, in 1801, 145. of Great Britain and Ireland, when displayed, 144. of Great Britain, taken at York, Canada, 329.
Italy, 86.
Portugal, 99, 100.
Russia, 95.
sacred, of Mahomet, 61.
Sandwich Islands, 84.
Saxon, 121-122.
Scandinavian, 164.
Sieur de Aubigny, 108.
Size of, regulated by rank, 141. Slavonic, 67-69, 70, 71.
Spanish, 88,92.
St. Cuthbert, 141, 142.
St. Martin, 104.
Star and Crescent, 66.
Stephen the Saint, 69.
Sweden and Norway, 100. symbolic masonry, 40. taken at Trenton, 328.
Three County Troop, 182, 183. Tlascalans, 81.
Turkish, 61. unicorn, 138.
United Kingdom, Great Britain and Ireland, 144.
United Provinces of the Netherlands, 224.
William the Conqueror, 121, 125. William III., 140.
Winchester, 122.
Star of the West, fired at, 404. .
“ Star Spangled Banner/’ 720.
Stars and bars, recommended and adopted, 507.
Stars and Stripes, first American, ever seen in a foreign port, 268.
first appearance of, in China, 298.
first displayed in a Japanese port, 321. first displaved in Smyrna, 321.
first displayed on the Fortress of Derne, 325.
Stars and Stripes, first floated over a foreign fortress, 277, 278. first floated over the Massachusetts State House, 1824, 353. first raised in California, 369.
from the Peace of 1783 to 1795, 290. in 1777-1878, 248. in 1777-1788, 259. in 1783-1795, 290. reluctantly abandoned, 505.
the fifteen, 1795-1818, 306.
the fifteen, 1818-1861, 337
the fifteen, 1861-1872, 393.
1861-1865, 395. theories of the origin, 251. Stars in our flag, arrangement of, 347-349. State flag, Virginia, in 1833, 355. flags, 605-655.
States admitted during the war of 1861— 1865, 350-395.
of the Union, the dates of their admission, 350. secede, 397, 398, 400.
Steam bark, Edith, carries our flag to British India, 366. launch, Alpha, 382, 383. schooner Midas carries our flag to China, 366.
ship, Massachusetts, carries our flag to England, 366.
Story of Barbara Frietchie, 482-491. Streamers considered warlike ensigns, 28, 30.
size of, in time of Henry VIII.,. 32.
Street flagstaff, South Carolina, 495. Striking flags, 36, 37.
Striped flag, Grand Union, first unfurled,, 218.
origin of, unknown, 245. raising of, at Boston, 218. raising of, at Cambridge, 1776,. 218.
Stripes, origin of the, 224.
the, ordered for admiral’s flags and commodore’s pendants, 677. Sumter, our flag at, 416, 417, 420, 421, 445, 446.
Surrender of Lee’s army, 540.
Swede’s Church in Philadelphia, 273. Symbol of the colonies, flag of New England, the earliest, 190.
Symbols, 3.
Table giving dimensions of navy flags, 678.
Taillebourg, taking of, 109, 571.
Tapestry, Bayeux, 20, 22.
Targets, 29.
“ Tarleton’s Terror,” 208.SUBJECT INDEX.
787
Tassels on banners, origin of, 4.
Taunton, Mass., Union flag raised at, 1774, 196.
Tenio, or emperor, the new emblem, 78. Tennessee, arms and seal of, 637, 638. Territory of Arizona, seal of, 654.
Dakota, seal of, 653.
Idaho, seal of, 653, 654. Montana, seal of, 654.
New Mexico, seal of, 653. Utah, seal of, 652, 653. Washington, seal of, 653. Wyoming, seal of, 654. Teutonic dragon standard, 68.
Texas, flag, arms, and seal of, 635, 636. flags of, 531, 635. secedes, 400.
“ The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 767, 768.
“ The Blue and the Gray,” 758-760.
“ The Flag of our Union,” 753, 754.
“ The John Brown Song,” 761-766.
The last banneret created, 14.
The thirteen stripes and a star for every State, 1818-1860, 337, 350.
Thirteen number ridiculed, 264.
Thirteen stripes and stars, during the Revolution, 259.
Thirteen stripes and stars, unfurled at the battle of Brandywine, 277.
Thistle of Scotland, the origin, 147. Thracians, standard of, 146.
Three historic flags, 327.
Three saxes or swords of Essex, 121. Tombak pussaka or lances, Javanese, 79. Tondee's tavern, 201.
Trafalgar, signal at, 155.
Tree, liberty, Boston, cut down, 1775-1776, 196.
Charleston, S. C., cut down, 1778, 194.
“ Tremblez, tyrans! voici les sans-cul-ottes,” 112.
Trenton, flag of Washington, at, 272. Tressure flory of Scotland, origin of, 146. Tri-color of France, 111-116.
origin of, 113-115. Italian, 378.
Trinity, banner of, 124.
Holy, the, 22.
Troop, three county, flag of, 182, 183. Troops furnished by Connecticut, 567. Trophy flags of the war of 1812-1864, report of committee recommending their preservation, 328-334.
Trophy flags of the war of 1861-1865, 582, 588.
Troyes, council of, 46.
Turkish standards, 64, 65.
“ Tu-Ju-Mara,” the Japanese bark, 79. Twelfth Brigade, at Arcole, colors of, 115.
Tyre, banner of a ship of, 25.
Tyrian inscriptions in South America, 168.
Uniform of oificers of the navy in 1776, 234, 235.
Uniform of officers of privateers in 1776,
204.
the Philadelphia Light Horse Troop, 252.
Washington's Life Guard, 10.
Union device, 1776, 264.
dissolved, 398.
ensign or king's colors, January 15, 1707, 176.
flag, British, origin of, 149. motto on, in 1775, 196. raised at Taunton, Mass., in 1774, 196.
grand, 1776, 176.
Jack, of Great Britain, 6,149.
Jack, of Great Britain, a religious banner, 15.
Jack, of Great Britain, penalty for using, 152.
Jack, of Great Britain, royal ordinance establishing the, 150, 151.
of crosses, 178.
or King's colors, 1606, 176.
United colonies of New England, 181.
United States, arms and seal of, 683-700.
army, flags, colors, standards, and guidons, 680-682.
army signals, 667. flag hoisted at Monterey, 1846, 369, 370. flag hoisted at Orizaba, 1848, 375-377. flag hoisted at San Diego, 1829, 369.
flag hoisted at San Francisco, 1846, 371. flag hoisted in Japan, 1853, 380.
flag hoisted on land nearest the pole, 384.
flag hoisted on Popocata-petl, 1848, 374, 375. flag hoisted on the Dead Sea, 1848, 371, 372. flag presented to the French Convention, 310. flag struck by lightning, July 4, 1861, 387 legation at Pekin, 76. mounted regiments, standards and guidons of, 681. navy, day signals, 660. navy, distinguishing flags, 659-679.
navy, night signals, 661. navy, rules and regulations, 1818, 1843, 664; 1857, 666; 1862, 669	1865,
671.
navy signals, 1812-1814, 663; 1818,664; 1858, 665, 666; 1866, 675, 676. rules for ships of, 39, 40. schooner Flying Fish, carries our flag to 70° S.r 356-860, 362.788
SUBJECT INDEX.
United States schooner Shark carries our flag through Strait of Magellan, 362. Universal yacht list, 704.
Uri, banner of, 103.
Ushant, battle off, 111.
Utah Territory, seal of, 652, 658.
Valois, arms of, 114.
Venetian galleys, 35.
Vermont, flag, arms, and seal of, 608.
State flag of, 551.
Vessels, colonial, flags of, 186, 245. in the middle ages, 34. masters of, refusing to strike to the English flag, 36. Vice-President's flag, 7, 671.
Viceroys of Ireland, 126.
Virginia, flag, arms, and seal of, 623-625. Viziers, their insignia, 65.
War against the flag, beginning of, 395. Dutch ships of, to strike colors to the English, 36-39.
French ships of, not required to strike colors to the English, 38. Washington Territory, arms and seal of, 653.
Washington's flag at Trenton, 272.
Life Guard, flag of, 9.
uniform of, 10. West India Company, flag of Dutch, 224.
West Virginia, flag, arms, and seal of, 625, 626.
White man's flag, 527.
Plains, American flag at, 1776, 246. Winchester, standard of, 122.
Wisconsin, flag, arms, and seal of, 646, 647.
Withdrawal of members from the United States Congress, 405.
Wonderful appearances and omens, 279. Worship of the flag by the Chinese, 74. Wyoming Territory, seal of, 654, 655.
Yacht, America, 703, 709.
clubs, list of American, 713. American, 701-713. act, authorizing the licensing, 705, 706. ensign described, 706. form of application for commission of, 707.
form of commission for, 708. form of licenses, 707. first American in south latitude, 382.
Yachting song, 701.
“Yankee Doodle," 746-753.
“Ye Sons of Columbia," 736-739.
Zealand, New, flag of, 84.
squadron flag, 99.INDEX OF NAMES
Aaron, 518.
Abu, Beker, 65.
Obiedeh, 65.
Achaius, King of Scotland, 146, 148.
Adam of Bremen, 160.
Adams, Charles Francis, 590.
G. S., 491.
Hon. F. G., 650.
Hon. John, 211, 217, 235, 236, 239, 240, 241, 263, 394, 683, 693, 719. John Quincy, 263, 372, 610. Samuel, 212, 229.
Adderman, Hon. J. M., 611.
Addison, 734.
Adet, Mons., 314, 315.
Adrian, Mr., 424.
Agincourt, 105, 106, 129, 131.
Ain GJiuivier, 373.
Alabama, arms and seal, 633. secedes, 398.
State flag, 500.
Alaman, Don Lucus, 82.
Alaska, formal transfer of, to the United States, 591.
Albion, first patronal god of the isle, 120. Albert, Prince, 381.
Alcaza, battle of, 109.
Aldabrand, 166.
Alden, Commodore James, 677. Alesaunder, 22.
Alexander, an artist, 496, 497.
S. J., 651.
1.,	of Scotland, 13, 127.
11.,	pope, 28, 121. the Great, 51.
Alexandria in Egypt, Bishop of, 148. Alfonzo XII., King, 95.
Alfred, ship flag of, 1776, 237, 274. the Great, 86.
Ali, 65.
Alice, Princess, 381.
Ali Pacha of Janina, 65.
Allard, Carl, 221.
Allen, Benjamin F., 632.
Sergeant Amory, 563.
Thomas S., 647.
Alleyne, 129.
Alliance, colors of, 1779, 238.
Almy, Captain, 327.
Alofsen, S., 347.
Alverado, 81.
Alviano, standard of, 86.
Alvord, Mr., 572.
America, the, 275.
yacht, 703, 709.
Americus Vespucius, 169.
Amherst, Lord, 192.
Amidas, Philip, 173.
Amurath III., 64.
Anderson, Colonel, A. L., 649.
Colonel E. C., 511.
Dr. Alexander, 285.
Major Robert, 416, 418, 419, 420-424, 427-429, 430-433, 437, 439, 440-443, 445, 446, 447, 449, 450, 452, 456-458, 536.
Anderson, Mrs. Robert, 440, 457.
Rev. E. A., 452.
Andrea Dorea, first to obtain a salute to the flag from a foreign power, 244, 275. Andrew, Governor J. A., 465, 466, 545-548, 554-556, 579.
Andrew, Governor J. A., speech on receiving flags of Massachusetts regiments, 547, 548.
Andrews, A. O., 602, 603.
Colonel, 373, 374.
Andros, Governor Sir Edward, 181, 183, 612.
Anjou, Count of, 104, 126.
Anne, of Luxemburg, 131.
Queen, 115, 143, 153.
Annebault, Admiral of France, 109.
Anson, 94.
Antrochus VII., of Syria, 24.
Appleman, Lieutenant-Colonel, 561. Appleton, Eben, 733.
Mrs. William Stuart, 733. Nathan, 600.
William.
William Stuart.
Aquetain, Lion of, 131.
Archbishop of York, 140.
Arbuthnot, Admiral, 284.
Are Marson, 160.
Arizona Territory, seal of, 654.
Arjoona, banner of, 79.
Arkansas, arms and seal of, 636, 637.
Ark Royal, of Raleigh, 143.
Armstead, Georgiana, 733.
Armistead, Lieutenant-Colonel, 723, 733. Armitage, Rev. Dr., 459.
Armstrong, General, 344, 348.790
INDEX OF NAMES.
Armstrong, John, 328.
Arne, Dr., 740, 748.
Arnold, Benedict, 219, 220.
General, 202.
Mrs. James, 489.
Arte veldt, Philip Van, 106.
Arthgal, first Earl of Warwick, 121. Arthur, aboriginal Prince of Britain, 135.
Arthur, Captain James P., 369.
King, badge assigned to, 121. Artois, Count of, 114.
Arsdale, or Orsdell, John Van, 286.
David, 286.
Ashbury, Mr. 712.
Asher, Dr., a German writer, 171. Assyrians, standard of, 69.
Athelstane, Saxon King of England, 184. Athol, Duchess of, 381.
Attica, standard of, 51.
Attila, standard of, 69.
Aubigny, Sieur de, 108.
Audubon, 499.
Augereau, flag carried by, 115.
Augustus, standard of, 57.
III., Elector of Saxony, 15. Aulef, Danish King of Northumberland, 87.
Austin, Misses Mary and Sarah, 273. Austria, Don John, of, 26, 35.
Ayeslia, wife of Mahomet, 64.
Ayres, Captain John, 203.
Bacdus, Samuel H., 649.
Bacon, 198.
Sir Nicholas, 14.
Baggely, Mr., 375.
Bailey, E. S., 595.
Bear Admiral Theodoras, 472, 585, 586.
Bainbridge, Captain William, 324-326. Baker, Miss, 737.
Mr. 353.
Senator E. D., 414, 457, 494. Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 89.
flag of, 90.
Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, 27.
II., of Jerusalem, 45.
Ball and Baldwin, Messrs., 379.
Baltimore, Lord, 622.
Bancroft, Hon. George, 201, 210, 219, 220, 225.
Bandera, Colchis, 370.
Bankhead, Lieutenant, 501.
Banks, Dr., 376.
General N. P., 546.
Bannatyne, Capt. R. W., 448.
Barbara Freitchie, story of, 482-91. Barbarossa, North German flag, descended from, 101.
Barbeoc, Captain, 247.
Barber, Hon. Mr., 603.
Barker, R. S., 701.
Sir Charles, 128.
Barlow, Arthur, 173.
General F. S., 508, 509.
Barnard, Captain, 373, 374.
Barnard, Captain, hoisted our flag on Cha-pultepec, 373.
J. F., 632.
M., 291, 292.
Barnes, Lieutenant, 282.
Barney, Captain, 310, 311.
Commodore Joshua, 238, 310-312, 733
Commodore Joshua, flag of, 238. Barnum, P. T., 285, 286.
Barrett, Thomas, 693.
Barry, Captain John, 231, 239, 240, 269, 273, 347.
Bartlett, Hon. J. R., 234,287, 611.
Lieutenant Washington A., 371. Mr., 212.
Barton, D.D., J. Rhea, 693.
Dr. (United States Navy), W. P.
C., 693, 700.
Francis, 693.
Hon. Mr., of Georgia, 504.
W., 687-690, 693, 700.
proposes a device for the United States Army, 687. Bavaria, Emperor Louis of, 86.
Bayle, Mons., 309.
Baylor, C. C., 494.
Colonel, 335.
Bean, Lieutenant, 448.
Beans, Dr., 722, 723.
Beauchamp, Richard, 29.
Beaumont, Jr., John, 188, 221.
Beauregard, General, G. T., 437, 442, 443, 445, 447, 499, 507, 511-516, 525, 530. Beaver, Colonel, 576.
Becket, Thomas A., 754-757.
Bedford, Duke of, 187.
Beecher, Henry Ward, 250, 450, 452.
on the flag, 250.
Beker, Abu, 65.
Belknap, 191.
Bell, Captain, 602, 618.
. Captain H. H., 472.
Isaac, of Mobile, 468.
Bellows, Dr., 457.
Benham, General, 558.
Benkert, George Felix, 743.
Bennett, James Gordon, 596, 710, 712.
Lieutenant-Colonel A. G., 448. Bentalon, Captain, 9.
Benteen, Mr., 756.
Bentley, Samuel, 316, 317.
Berdan, Colonel, 582.
Berkeley, Earl of, 6.
Bernard, Governor, 195. of Saints, 310.
Berry, Mr. (Master Mate), 237.
Bertling, Widow, 727.
Bertrand, General, 113.
Bess, Queen, 135.
Bessie, Captain, 383.
Bethune, Dr., 457, 458.
Bey, A., 65.
Bheesama obtains the banner of Arjoona, 79.
Biarne's expedition to New England, etc., 161.INDEX OF NAMES.
791
Biddle, Captain Nicholas, 244, 279, 282.
Owen, to provide a seal, 254. Bidwell, Sergeant William E., 564. Bigelow, Lieutenant-Commander A., 862, 365.
Bigelow, Major, 202.
Bingham, General, 578.
Bird, Lieutenant, 276.
Birgee, General, 558.
Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, 148. Bissell, Dr. E. L., 598.
Black Prince, 11,14,20, 129, 130. crest of, 130. device of, 129, 130. Blackburn, Governor Luke P., 655. Blackwood, Captain, 155.
Blagden, Rev. Dr., 460, 461.
Blake, Admiral, 139, 152.
Dr. J. B., 744.
Major Edward F., 560.
Blewer, Joseph, 270 Blodgett, Captain Samuel, 606.
Blois, Stephen of, 125.
Blunt, George W., 428.
Boewulf, 120.
Boggs, Commander, 472.
Miss Margaret, 266.
Rev. Mr., 464.
Bohemia, King of, 129.
Boker, George H., 88, 535.
Bonaparte, 20, 115.
Joseph, 94.
Boniface VIII., Pope, 29.
Bonner, Sherwood, 767.
Bonnie blue flag, the, 520.
Boomer, Corporal George C., 563.
Boothe, John Wilkes, 588.
widow of Major, 479, 480. Bordeaux, Archbishop of, 110, 126.
arms of, 126.
Borromi and Wilkinson, 24.
Bosnian, 623.
Boswell, 732.
Boturini, Don Lorenzo, 82.
Boudinot, Elias, 687, 690, 693.
Mr., 307.
Bouille, de, 109.
Bourbon, Duke de, Charles III., standard of, 108.
Bouteil, Charles, 20, 112, 126, 130, 153. Boutwell, Hon. George S., 708.
Bouvines in 1214, 106.
Boyce, W. W., 503.
Boynton, Rev. S. C., 428.
Bradbury, William B., 451.
Braddock, General, 506.
Bradford, Captain J., 231, 451.
William, 270, 287.
Bradley, Miss Helen, 563.
Bragg, Captain Henry M., 448.
General, m council with Jeff Davis, 477.
Brahma, 80.
Braley, 149.
Brand, Sergeant, 566.
Brandt, C. D., 583, 588.
Brant, Lieutenant, 276.
Brasher, Mr., a goldsmith, 696.
Brassey, Thomas, 704.
Brattalid, 160.
Bray man, Gov. William, 654. Breckenridge, General John C., 524.
Mrs. J. C., makes a flag of her wedding dress, 524. Vice-President J. C., 413. Brent, Mr., 353.
Breshwood, Captain, 398-399.
Bretwalda, standard of, 122.*
Brewer, Mr., 426.
Thomas M., 488.
Briggs, David, 296.
Bringhurst, Corporal C., 441.
Brinon, Madame de, 740.
Brooke and Nicoll, Messrs., 185.
Mr., of Mississippi, 503.
Brooks, 765.
Lieutenant William S., 477. Broughton, Captain Nicholas, 202-203. Brown, Captain John, 281.
Colonel John Mason, 638-639. David Paul, 256.
G. S., 765.
Hon. John, 639.
John, 235, 273, 761-766.
Browne, Mrs., 730.
Richard, complaint of, 179. Browning, Mrs., 378.
Brownlow, Miss, 478.
Parson, 478.
Brunet, 122, 127, 132, 148.
Bryan, Sir Guy de, 13.“
Bryant and Sturgis, 369.
Bryges, 254.
Buchanan, Admiral, 587.
James, 400-401, 415, 424, 430. James, apologizes to Tyler, 405. Buckingham, Duke of, 5, 188.
Buck, Lieutenant, death of, 210.
Bucks of America, 205.
Buddington, Captain, 380, 385.
Buehler, William, 328.
Buell, General, 478, 583.
Bulfinch, Mr., 300, 303.
Bull, Dr. John, 740.
Bullitt Cuthbert, 469.
Bunker, Captain George, 303.
Burchett, J., 186.
Burgess’s Will, map of Boston, 190.
Burgh, 753.
Burgoyne, General, 262, 277, 279, 330. Burgundian flags, 93,98.
Burgundy, Dukes, device of, 121.
Duchy of, 98.
Philip the Bold of, 35.
Burke, Captain W., 202-203.
(heraldist), 12.
Burkhardt, 65.
Burney, Dr., 740.
Burnham, Lieutenant-Colonel, 564.
Burns, Robert, 147.
Sergeant 471.
Burnside, General, 546, 554, 558, 562.
Burr, Captain, 204.
Burr’s flotilla, 325.792
INDEX OF NAMES.
Burrows, Captain, 327.
Burton and Trumbull, 296.
Bush, Dr. L. P., 621.
Bushnell, C. J., 234, 236, 285, xii.
David, 750.
H. L., 560.
Butler, Colonel Pierce, 377.
General, of Kentucky, 378.
Hon. Benjamin F., 348, 400, 470, 472-474, 546, 709, 718. Byzantium, 65.
Cabot, Mr. George, 247.
Cabots, the, 166, 169, 170, 171, 174. Cacibelan, king of Colchester, 119. Cadwallader, 135.
Caesar, 55-56, 119, 254.
Augustus, 57.
Julius, 61.
landing in Great Britain, 60.
Cahill, Sergeant J. M., 560.
Caldwell, Colonel George Alfred, 373-374. Commodore, 270.
Isaac, 373.
Lieutenant, 399.
Calhoun, John C., 496-497.
Camac, William, 256.
Camacho, Señor, nephew of Bolivar, 91. Cambridge, Richard, Duke of, 130. Cameron, Simon, 433, 620.
Camp colors of the United States army, 681.
William S. 566.
Campbell, Captain, 231.
the poet, 156.
Mrs., 205.
Can by, William J., xii, 265-267.
Cantey, General, 377.
Canute, 124-125.
Cantwell, Colonel Edward, 600-601. Cappadocia, St. George of, 148.
Capellán, Baron Vander, 230.
Caradoc, aboriginal prince of Britain, 135. Cardinal Newman, 148-149.
Carey, Henry, 740.
John, 696.
Matthew, 241.
Carpenter, Mr. J. E., 756.
Carrier, Sergeant A. J., 565 Carrington, General, 558.
Carrón family, 13.
Cartaret, Sir George, 37.
Carter, John M., 622.
Nathan H., 749.
Cassin, Commodore, 660.
Castile, King of, 14.
Caswell, Gov. Charles M., 643.
Cathcart, Lady, 381.
Cattermole, 143.
Cavendish, 365.
Cercopoly, Captain, 530.
Chadwick, John, 292.
Chamberlain, Captain, 460.
Champion and Dickason, 292.
Chandos, John, 14.
Charlemagne, 103-104, 107, 146.
banner presented to, by the pope, 103-104.
Charles I. of England, 14, 18, 34, 130,142, 177.
II.	of England, 5, 128, 177, 190, 199, 221, 702, 746-747.
III.	(Duke of Bourbon), standard of, 108.
V., 103, 114.
V.	of Spain, 93.
VI.	, 108.
VII.	and VIII., 103,108, 147.
IX.	of France, 103.
X.	of France, 112.
X.	of Sweden, 71.
XI.	of Sweden, 101.
XIV. 109, 571.
the Bald, 92. the Fair, 103, 143.
Chase, Hon. S. P., 415.
Mr., 212.
Chatelier, at the taking of Taillebourg, 109, 571.
Chatfield, Colonel, 560.
Chaucer, 16, 19.
Chauncey, Commodore Isaac, 144-145, 660. Chesnut, Colonel, 437, 442.
Chilton, Mr., 504.
Christian VIII., King of Denmark, 253. Christopher, the, 29.
Churchill, Sir Winston, 121.
Cid, standard of the, 88.
Cilley, Colonel, 606.
Cincinnatus, 114.
Cist, Louis J., 729.
Claggett’s brewery, 733.
Claghorne, George, 316.
Claiborne, Hon. John F. H., viii, 492-493, 634.
Hon. William I. H., 323.
Gov. William C. C., 323. Clarence, Duke, 703.
Clark, Thomas, 241.
Clarke, Adam, 52.
Brevet-Colonel F. N., 545. Clavigero, 81.
Clay, Henry, 345, 394, 438, 653.
against disunion, 394. Claypole, John, 265.
Claypoole, James, 257.
Clayton, Captain, 595.
Major William L., 587.
Mrs., 595.
Clemens, Hon. Mr., 401.
Cleveland, Ex-Gov., 554.
Clinton, Hon. George, 187.
Gov. 616-617.
Sir Henry, 194, 284.
Clonston, John, 229.
Clothaire, 107.
Clovis, sacred banner of, 107.
Clymer, Mr., 226, 620.
Cobb, Hon. Howell, 396, 406.
Cochrane, J. H., 606.
Sir Thomas, 723.
Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander, 722-723.
Cockburn, Admiral, 722.
Cœur de Lion, 126.INDEX OF NAMES.
793
Coffin, Isaac, 306.
Cohen, M. J., 727.
Coleman, 344.
Edmund T., 592.
Mr., 734.
Coles, Surgeon, 448.
Collier, Lieutenant, 460.
Thomas S., 534.
Colliers, Captain, 405.
Collins, T. K., 267.
Colonna, Marco Antonio, 35.
Stefano, 86.
Columbus, 93, 166-169, 171, 174.
Don Fernando, 169. flag of, 169.
Commodore Barney, flag of, 238.
Hopkins, 217, 222, 227, 229, 232-236, 238, 240-242, 245, 659.
Conan, Lieutenant, of Maximus, 13. Conant, Corporal, 571.
Cone, William H., 561.
Conga, H. N., 617.
Constance Chlorus, adopts the Hibernian harp, 120.
Constantine, coin of, 168.
labarum of, 82. motto of, 35. the Great, 59, 60,100. Conston, John, 270.
Cook, Captain James, 359.
Coombs, General Leslie, 590.
Cooper, James Fennimore, 229, 236, 239, 240, 242, 245, 280, 361.	•
Copley, John Singleton, 296-297.
Corcoran, Colonel, 463.
Cordes, Admiral Simon de, 365-366. Cordova, arms of Admiral, 94.
Corliss, Captain George W., 560. Cornwallis, Lord, 276, 330-331.
Corterals and Cabral, 173.
Cortez, 82-83, 92.
Corwin (United States Consul), 387. Corsa, Juan de la, 171.
Coste, Captain Napoleon, 423.
Coston, B. F., 666.
Cottineaux, Captain Dennis Nicholas, 280. Cotton, Mr. 181.
W. A., 595.
Count of Portugal, Affonso Henriques, 99. Courtenay, Captain, 208.
Hon. William A., VIII., 523. Cox, Lemuel, 294, 303-306.
Paul, 270.
Coyle, Patsey, 492.
Craig, General, 205-206.
Mrs. Margaret C., 205-206.
Crane, Mr. 212.
Crapo, Governor, 580.
Craven, Lieutenant, R. P., 576.
Crawford, Assistant Surgeon, S. W., 418, 439, 442, 446.
Crittenden, Mr., 475.
Croix, La, 111.
Croizer, Commander, 361.
Cromwell, Oliver, 17-18,138-139, 178,261, 265, 747.
Cromwell, Oliver, banners, 17.
body desecrated, 18. Crookback, Edward, 22.
Crooke, General, 573.
Crump, Captain M, H., 655.
Cullick, Captain, 612.
Cumberland, Duke of, 145.
George,»Earl of, 220. Cummings, Rev. Dr. Joseph, 566. Cunningham, Mr., 285.
of Dollartown, 304. Curtenius, Mr., 226.
Curtin, Governor, 573-575, 620.
Curtins, Quintus, 55.
Curtis, G. W.. 103.
Sir Roger, 661.
Cushing, Hon. Caleb, 459.
Nathan, 610.
Custis, John Park, 335.
Washington Park, 335.
Cutter, Abram E., 761.
Cyprus, King of, 44.
Cyrus, 54.
Dahlgren, Rear Admiral J. A., 450-451. Dana, Richard H., Jr., 8, 670, 725-726. Danbernon, Sir John, 19.
Dankers, Jasper, 184.
Dante, 502.
Darmand, General, 116.
Dart, 127.
Dartmouth, Earl of, 231.
Dauphin, Charles, 103.
of France, 275.
Davenport, E. L., 756.	. ,,
Richard, 169.
David, King of Scotland, 140.
Davis, General Jefferson C., 418, 592.
Jefferson, 400, 405-406, 410, 430, 445, 447, 476, 502, 536-537, 575-576.
Jefferson, inaugurated President Southern Confederacy, 400. Lieutenant, 442.
Mrs., 592.
Sergeant C. L., 559.
Thomas Frederick, D.D., 444.
Day, Mr., 285.
Dayton, Colonel, 276.
Hon. William L., 408.
D’Avezac, M., 171.
Dean, Captain Stewart, 299.
Mr., 211-212.
of Durham, Whittingham, 141.
De Benvouloir, 212.
De Bohuns, 131.
De Bouiile, 109.
De Brinon, Madame, 740.
De Bryan, Sir Guy, 13.
Decatur, Commodore Stephen, 325-326. De Costa, 160, 169, 172.
D’Estaing, Admiral, 279.
D'Eyncourt, Lord Edmund, 12.
De Graff, Dutch Governor, 275.
De Haven, Lieutenant-Commander Edwin, 379, 390.
Deming, Mrs. Colonel, 557.794
INDEX OF NAMES.
De Molay, 48.
De Mo'ntford, Simon, 15.
De Monts, settlement of, at Annapolis, 174. Denstow, William J., 614.
De Peyster, General, 541.
Lieutenant J. L., 536-538.
De Plancy, Colin, 104.
De Ruyter, Admiral, 99, 332.
De Sabla, Theodore, 386-387.
Desjardins, M., 111.
Desmond, Master John, 203.
Desmoulins, Camille, 114.
Dethon, vi.
D'Urville, Captain, 361.
Devereaux, Captain James, 298.
De Witt, Admiral, 332.
Diana, 65.
Diaz, Bernal, 81-82.
Dickenson, Mr., 226.
Dickinson, Captain L. A., 562.
Dickson, Lieutenant-Colonel, 377.
Digby, Admiral, 292.
Dioclesian, 168.
Diodorus, 50.
Ditson and Co., 761.
Dix, Dorothea, 482, 490.
General John A., 398-400.
John A., 456, 462.
Miss D. L., viii.
Rev. Morgan, 400, 634.
Dixon, Chaplain, 491.
Dr., 602.
Dobbin, Secretary, 386.
Dom Manoel, King, 100.
Miguel, 353.
Pedro, 353.
II.,	168.
Don Fernando, 169.
Juan of Austria, 26, 35.
Sebastian, King of Portugal, 571. Dorr, Mrs., 421.
Dorset, 15.
Dostie, Dr. A. P., 469.
Dote, Lieutenant Thomas, 203. Doubleday, Captain A., 418.
Douglass, Earl, 141-142.
Fred, 567.
Lieutenant Governor, 559. of Carver, 142.
Stephen A., 394, 415.
against disunion, 394.
Downes, Commodore, 660.
Drake, 251.
Francis S., 306.
Joseph Rodman, 734.
Samuel Adams, 306.
G., 190, 295, 353.
Sir Francis, 174.
Draper, J. W., 477, 497, 540.
Drayton, 15, 216.
William Henry, 630.
Dreer, F. J., 236.
Dreux, John of, 15.
Duane, Rev. D., 418.
William, 252, 431.
Dubois, Captain, 354.
Dubois, William E., 696.
Ducange., 48.
Due de Penthievre, Admiral, 111.
Dudley, Mr., 181.
Dugdale, 30.
Duke of Norfolk, Mowbray, 132. Normandy, 23.
Richmond, ¿97.
Savoy, 86.
York, Edmund Langley, 133. Dumas, Mr., 238.
Dunbar, E. E., 369.
Dunkin, Chancellor, 495.
Dunnovant, General, 443.
Dupont, Rear Admiral S. F., 411, 481, 586. Du Quesne, 110.
Durang, Charles, 728.
Fred, 727-729.
Mr. and Mrs., 728.
Durham, Bishop of, 12.
Duro, C. F., 93-94.
Durseley, Lord, 6.
Du Simitiere, 683-684, 686.
Dusolle, John S., 755.
Du Tillet, 106.
Dutton, Lieutenant H. M., 560. Duyckinks, 747.
Dwight, Timothy, 158.
Dyar, Captain Charles, 203.
Eads, Captain, 430.
Earl of Berkeley, the first to hoist the flag of Lord High Admiral, 6. of Richmond, 15.
Early, General Jubal A., 512.
Eaton, President, 459.
Edes, Captain B., 724, 727-728.
Edgerton, Rev. E. C., 209.
Edilfrid, standard of, 122.
Edinburgh, Duke of, 701.
Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, 134. Ironsides, 125. of Lancaster, 133. the martyr, 122.
Edward, I., 15, 125, 127-128,130, 133.
11.,	30.
111.,	11, 13, 29, 30, 108, 125, 128-129, 130, 143.
111.,	device of, 30, 108, 136.
IV., 133-134, 137.
VI., 17.
Duke of York, 130.
the Black Prince, 11, 20, 129.
the Confessor, 122.
Edwards, Sergeant, 562.
Edwin, King of Northumberland, 122. Edric Streone, 163.
Egbert, King of Wessex, 122.
Eleanor, of Guyenne, 126.
Provence, 133.
Elizabeth of York, 125.
Queen, 17, 31,146-147,173-175,
220.
Ellet, Mrs., 288-289.
Ellicott, Andrew, 322.
Elliot, Major Bernard, 211.
Mrs., 210.INDEX OF NAMES.
795
Ellis, 81, 84.
Governor, 424.
Elwell, Captain David, 362.
Emerson, Mr., 148.
Emmet, Robert, 704.
Emmons, Commodore George P., 229. Emperor Constantine, medal of, 59.
Paul of Russia, 44.
Endicott, Governor, 179,
Engelbrecht, Jacob, 487.
Enos, Miss Ellen E., 650.
Emma R., 650.
Entick, John, 31, 702.
Eric, King of Denmark, 166.
the Red, 160.
Ericsson, 366.
Erik, Bishop of Greenland, voyage of, 166. Erskine, Sir William, 14.
Essex, origin of the standard of, 121. Estabrook, General, 595.
Estevan, Colonel, 475.
Ethelbald, King of Mercia, 122.
Etheldred, 163.
Etting, Frank M., 722.
Eugenie, Empress of the French, 390. Eugenius III., Pope, 47.
Eusebius, 60.
Eustace, the Monk, 30.
Eve in the Garden of Eden, 123.
Everard, 13.
Everett, Alexander H., 736.
Hon. Edward, 3, 164, 459.
Hon. Edward, on the stars and stripes, 3, 164.
Hon. Edward, on Thorwaldsen, 164.
JtiVortypn QQ
Ezekiel, the Prophet, 25, 701.
Fairchild, Richard, 469.
Fairholt, 105, 108.
Falconer, William, 39, 702.
Fane, Sir Harry, 153-154.
Faneuil, Peter, 195.
Fanning, Captain Edmund, 316.
Farley, Lieutenant H. S., 438.
JFiirr C* N» 6X9
Farragut, Admiral D. G., 7, 262, 400, 410, 469, 470-471,473,499, 512, 586-587,670, 672-673.
Farrar, Mrs., 295.
Farrington, D. W. C., 348.
Faunce, Captain, 434-435.
Felkrig, Sir Simon de, 124.
Fenwick, Mr., 612.
Ferdinand and Isabella, 90.
Ferguson, Dr. Joseph, 491.
Rebecca C., 504.
Fernand, Don, 90.
Festrohoff, Captain, 591.
Field, Mr., 475.
Figuerado, Pereira de, 100.
Finch, Francis Miles, 758-760.
Fish, Hon. Hamilton, 456.
Fiske, Stephen, 710.
Fitz Gerald, arms of, 152.
Fitzode, Edward, 127.
Fletcher, Andrew, 7i5,
Captain, 434.
Governor, 185.
W. I., 637.
Fogg, John S. H., M.D., 497.
Folger, Captain Timothy, 292.
Mr., 343.
Senator, of New York, 569.
Foot, Solomon,<744.
Foote, Rear-Admiral A. H., 586.
Senator, 413.
Forbes, Corporal Ira E., 564.
Robert B., 366-367, 382.
Ford, John T., 728.
Major Collin, 480.
Forney, Colonel G. W., 411.
Forrest, French, 668.
Forster, Mr., 348.
Forsyth, John, 471.
Foss, Jacob, bequeaths money to purchase United States flags, 588.
Foster, Captain J. G., 418.
Color-Sergeant Jefferson, 491 Hon. J. W., 82-83.
Foulke, Count of Anjou, 104, 126.
William Parker, 388.
Fournier, in 1643, 98.
Fowle, George W., 649.
Fox, Gustavus V., 348, 428, 432-436, 586.
Mr. Gilbert, 716.
Frailey, Major, 727.
France, Dauphin of, 275.
Francis I., of France, 33,103, 172.
Fuller, 161-.
Joseph, 704.	,
Franklin, Benjamin, 213-214, 217, 243, 384, 683, 685.
General, 558.
Lady, 384, 390.
Sir John, 378-379, 380, 384. Fraser, General, 204.
Frazier, Captain, 461.
Frederick the Great, sword of, 116.
II., Emperor of Germany, 127. VII., of Denmark, 391.
Wilhelm II., 102.
Freilgrath, 102.
Fremont, John C., 370, 648.
hoists a flag with one star, at Sutter’s Fort, California, 370. French, Major B. B., 414.
Freneau, 281.
Frietchie, John C., 483.
Mrs. Barbara, 482-491.
Froissart, 27, 30, 106.
Frontin, Mrs., 592.
Frontenac, Count, 323.
Frothingham, 201.
Fyffe, Commander Joseph, 600.
Fyler, O. R., 559.
Gadsden, Christopher, 194, 211-212.
Colonel, flag of, 216, 234, 237. Rev. G. P., 495.
Gage, General, 196, 198.
Gallagher, George W., 728.796
INDEX OF NAMES.
Gallagher, Private William, 585.
Gallway, Edward, 445.
Gama, Vasco de, 100.
Gansevoort, Colonel Peter, 276, 614. Garda, Pietro, Alessandro, 113.
Gardar, the Dane, 160.
Gardner, Dr. A. K., 190.
Garges, Father, 368.
Garibaldi, 113.
Gates, Major-General Horatio, 234, 277, 749.
Gayoss, Governor, 322.
Gemmill, William D., xii.
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, 126.
Barcelona, 92.
George I., 144-145.
11.,	630-631, 740.
111.,	145, 193, 297.
the first to relinquish the title of “ King of France,” 145,193. Mr., 88.
Gerard, Pierre, 44, 279.
Germany, Crown Prince of, 596.
Gerolt, Von, 374.
Gerry, Elbridge, 202, 239.
Gertv, Simon, 213.
G’huivier, Ain, 373.
Gibbs, Hon. Richard, 91.
Gibbes, Lieutenant Wade Hampton, 438. Gierlow, Rev. Mr., 595.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 173.
Gildea, James, 156.
Giles, Mr., 308, 314.
Gill, Lieutenant John, 203.
Gillis, Commander, 434, 445.
Gilmore, Major-General, 448, 450 P. T., 460, 761, 766.
Gist, Governor, 496.
Glennie, 374.
Gloucester, Humphry, Duke of, 130.
Thomas of, 130.
Glover, Colonel, 203, 227.
Goldsmith, A. F., 598.
Gomez, Gonzalez, Count of Candespina,
88.
Gonsales, Feran, Count of Castile, 88. Goodhue, Mr., 307.
Gosnold, Bartholomew, 174.
Gove, N. W., 608.
Graham, Major, 602.
Grant, General Ulysses S., 476, 535, §39, 540-541, 593, 744.
Graves, Major E. E., 537.
Gray, Captain Robert, 300-303.
James, 397.
Lieutenant, 210.
Greeley, Horace, 729.
Green, Benjamin, 369.
Captain John, 298.
Dr. Ezra, 275.
John A., 636.
Thomas, 267.
Greene, Colonel Jacob L., 554.
General Nathaniel, 225-226. George W., 369.
Governor William, 287.
Greenleaf, Captain James E., 761-762, 765.
Greenup, Mr., 307 Greenwood, I. J., 284.
Grenville, Sir Richard, 174.
Griffin, Mr., 519.
P. Midshipman, S. P., 379. Grinnell, Henry, 378-379, 384-385.
Moses H., 456,705.
Griswold, 734.
Captain John D., 562.
Rev. RufusW., 715-716, 725-726. Gross, Baron, 374.
Grotius, Hugo, writes treatise Mare Liberum, 37.
Grymes, Mr., 335.
William, 335.
Gudreda, widow of Thorstein, 165-166. Guiart Guilaume, 105.
Guillien, 689.
Guión, Isaac, 322-323.
Guise, Cardinal of, 109.
Duke of, 109.
Gunhilda, 163.
Gunnbjorn, 160.
Hackett, Lieutenant John, 449.
Haines, Adjutant-General John M., 551. Hakluyt, 169, 171.
Halé, Colonel, 606.
Hon. John P., 396.
Halford, John, 531.
Halifax, Earl of, 631.
Hall, David, 214.
Captain C. T., 385, 391.
C. S., 761-762.
F. A., 466.
John A., 617.
Lieutenant, 440.
Senator, 464.
William, & Son, 754.
Halleck, Fitz Greene, 734.
Hallgreen, 765.
Hallock, Captain, 243.
Hambleton, Purser Samuel, 663.
Hamilton, Governor, 354.
Lieutenant, 326.
Paul, 326.
Schuyler, 259, 263-264.
Hamlet, 518.
Hamlin, Hon. Hannibal, 413.
Mrs. 416.
Hammet, Mr. 291.
Hampden, 506.
Hampton, Lieutenant-Colonel Wade, 207 Hamtramack, Colonel John F., 323, 493. Hanaford, Mrs. P. A., 295.
Hancock, Edward C., 512, 514-515, 517. John, a sailor, 268. Major-General, 578.
Mr. John, 199, 205, 293.
Hand, Lieutenant-Colonel, 206.
Handel, 740.
Hanford, Levi, 285	?
Hanover, Duke of, 145.
Hanson, 344.
Hardee, General, 513.
Hardhitch, Mr., 296.
Hardman, Colonel Thomas, 602.INDEX OF NAMES,
797
Hardway, Adjutant, 376.
Harford, Miss, 755.
Mr. R., 755.
Harland, Adjutant-General, Edward, 553, 558.
Harlow, Sir Robert, 220.
Harold, 23, 121, 125.
Harper Brothers, 236-237, 276, 383, 418, 423, 454, 540, 684.
Harriman, Governor, 550-551.	,
Harris, F. L. 387.
Hon. Mr., of Mississippi, 504.
Mr., 316.
Rev. Matthew, 451.
Harrison, General Thomas, 531.
Lieutenant-Commander Napoleon B., 472.
Mr., 217.
Harry, Grace de Dieu, 31-32.
Hart, Lane S., 267.
Sergeant Peter, 440-441, 452. Thomas, 234, 236.
Hartranft, General, 575.
Hartridge, Hon. Julian, 524.
Hartstene, Captain Henry J., 381, 386, 432, 443, 445.
Hartt, Mr., 316.
Harvey, Captain A. C., 451.
James A., 497, 588. Hastings, John de, 12.
Hatfield, R. G., 167.
Havemeyer, William T., 456.
Haven, C. C., 262, 276, 281.
Haversham, 186.
Hawkins, Sir John, 172.
Hawley, Brigadier-General J. R., 451, 553-555, 558.
Mrs., 557.
Haye, La, 1737, 189, 221.
Hayes, Captain Patrick, 347.
Dr. 1.1., 384-385, 387-391.
hoists our flag at Upper-navick, 387.
hoists our flag in lat 81° 25' N., 388, 390. Midshipman Thomas, 347.
Mrs. Patrick, 273.
Hay ley, Mrs. George, 292, 294.
Hazewell, E. H., 605.
Head, General Natt., 550.
Mr. John, 231.
Headly, Mr., 383-384.
Healy, Colonel, 561.
Heard, Sir Isaac, 261.
Heath, Major-General, 328.
Hedwega, 69.
Ileemskirk, 98.
Heller, Captain I. S., 587.
Hemmock, Mr., 463.
Henault, 106.
Hen gist, 120, 684.
Hennessy, Major J. A., 448-449. Henriques, Affonso, Count of Portugal, 99.
changed his arms, 100. Henry II. of England, 126, 143.
device of, 126.
III.	of England, 125-127.
Henry III. of England, device of, 127.
IV.	of England, 131.
device of, 130.
V.	of England, 124, 131-132, 143.
banner of, 131-132, 137.
VI.	of England, 13, 124, 132.
banner of, 130.
VII.	of England, 31, 125, 135, 137, 169, 170-171, 173.
VIII.	of England, 32, 35, 126, 135-136, 146-147, 173.
VIII. of England, standard of, 136.
II.	of France, 103.
III.	of France, 103, 109.
IV.	of France, 98, 103, 109.
Henry, Mayor (of Philadelphia), 409, 464-
of Metz, 105. of Navarre, 110.
Prince, the navigator, 110. Herculano, 100.
Heriulf, 160.
Herman, Augustin, 183.
Herodotus, 54.
Hersey, Major William, 323.
Hewes, Mr., 211-212.
Hewison, Sergeant James, 560.,
Heywood, 34.
Higgins, Captain, 376.
Hildebrand, C. D., 719.
Hill, General, 490.
Hilliard, H., 644.
Hinks, Major-General, 545.
Hinman, E., 235.
Mr., 219, 613.
Hoadley, Charles J., 551, 612-613.
Hoar, George F., vi.
Hobart, John Sloss, 616.
Hodgkjnson, Miss F., 650.
Hoffman, Ogden, 704.
Hofman, Olof, 101.
Hollingsworth, Levi, 254.
Hollwell, Captain John, 39.
Holmes, Captain, 327.
Colonel Samuel, 557, 565.
Hon. John, 204. Lieutenant-Colonel, 545. Lieutenant N., 471.
Oliver Wendell, 588, 683, 730, 739. Holt, Mr. (Secretary of War), 430.
Homer, George, 460.
Homes, H. A., viii, 614, 616, 694.
Hone, Robert S., 705.
Hooper, Mr., 596.
Hopkins, Mr., 211-212.
Commodore Esek, 217, 222, 227, 232-236, 238, 240-242, 245,659. Commodore, engraving preserved at Annapolis, 234.
Hopkinson, Francis, 617, 715, 750.
Hon. Joseph, 715-716, 719.
Hoppo, 298.
Hopwood, Miss Mary, 490.
Horsa, 120, 684.
Ilospinan de Orig, 86.
Hough, David, 445.
Prof. F. B., 605.798
INDEX OF NAMES.
Hough, L. B., 192.
Houston, Colonel, 602.
of Georgia, 685.
Howard, Chauncey, 553.
John, 728.
Lord William, 36.
Mrs. Charles, 729.
Howe, Captain Tyringham, 242.
Dr. S. G., 767.
Lord, 112, 296.
Major-General, 198.
Mrs. Julia Ward, 766-768. Howgate, Captain, 385.
Hubbard, Ex-Governor, 554.
Samuel C., 566.
Sergeant Thomas J., 561. Hubert, Father, 499.
Hue, M., 298.
Huddy, William, 255.
Hudson, 223.
Captain (of the navy), 284. Lieutenant, 436.
Huguemie, Major, 449 Hull, Captain Isaac, 326.
General, 642.
Humboldt, 502.
Baron, 170, 375.
Hume, Lieutenant, 210.
Humphries, Joshua, 316.
Major-General, 539.
Hungar and Hubba, 87.
Hungus, King of the Piets, 148.
Hunter, General, 561.
Gov. Robert, 186-187. Huntington, Earl of, 16.
Hutchinson, 292.
Hutton, 135.
Ide, Commandant, 370.
Indian Hanuman, 79.
Infreville, M. d", 110.
Ingolf, 160.
Ingraham, Captain, 320.
Irving, Washington, 65, 169.
Isabella of France, 131, 143.
Jackson, Colonel, 480.
General Andrew, 354-355, 511, 588, 664, vii.
General Stonewall, 482, 486-489, 565.
General Henry, 300.
Jacobs, Mr., 620.
Jagillon, Duke, 69.
Jal, M., 26, 93.
James I. of England, 14, 36, 135, 137, 140, 143, 149, 174-175, 178, 183, 187, 220.
II.	of England, 147, 740.
II.	of Scotland, 147.
III.	of Scotland, 140.
IV.	of Scotland, 108.
Captain George, 438.
Duke of York, 177.
Mr., 155.
Janin, Ali, Pacha of, 65.
Janvier, Francis de Haes, 743-744, 746.
Jarvis, Mr., 342.
Jasper, Sergeant, 210, 441.
at Fort Moultrie, 1775,
210.
death of, 211.
Jay, Hon. John, 212, 464, 616.
Our flag, 604.
Jeanne d’Arc, 108.
Jefferson (an actor, 1820), 728.
Thomas, 226, 261, 683-684. Jeffries, Dr. B. Joy, 284.
John, 284.
Jenkins, Commodore Thornton A., 672. Jerusalem, 28.
Jewell, Ex-Governor, 554.
Joan of Arc, 109.
Joan, the fair maid of Kent, 131.
John, King of England, 36, 126, 127. of France, 103. of Gaunt, 129, 133.
Johnson, Brevet Major-General, 480. Captain, 242.
Captain Nicholas, 293.
Dr., 732.
Hon. Reverdy, 462.
Mr., of Georgia, 396.
Sir William, 749.
William, 293.
Johnston, General Joseph E., 373-374, 511— 512, 541, 565.
Johnstone, Colonel, 602.
Jones, Commodore, 369.
General Charles R., 600.
John Paul, 229, 230-231, 235-239, 240-241, 243, 273-275, 280-282. Major D. R., 443.
Sergeant E. B., 560.
Sir William, 80.
Thomas K., 292.
William Hemphill, 398-399.
Jonge, J. C. de, 98.
Jonson, Ben, 129.
Josiah, Captain, 293.
Josephus, 372.
Juanna, Donna, 90.
Julius Caesar, British standards sent to Rome by, 119.
Junkin, Rev. Mr., 488.
Justice, Alexander, 188.
Kamara (Mars), 79.
Kane, Colonel Thomas L., 575.
Dr. Elisha Kent, 384-387, 390.
Dr. Elisha Kent, carries our flag nearest the North Pole, 384. Katherine, daughter of Charles YI. of France, 132.
Kauffman, Dr., 449.
Kean, Edmund, 740.
Keefe, Corporal, 565.
Iveim, General George, 726, 729, 730.
George M., 719.
Keith, Lawrence M., 396.
Kellogg, Sergeant-Major Robert H., 564. Kempton, Thomas, 293.
Kendall, Amos, 354.
Kendrick, Captain John, 300.INDEX OF NAMES.
799
Kendrick, Captain John, death of, 301. Kennedy, Captain John, 676.
J. P., 384.
Major E. D., 583.
Keppel, Captain, 380.
Key, Francis Scott, 600, 720-728, 730, 732, 736.
Kidder, A. B., 762.
Kieffer, Antoine, 375.
Kimball, George, 763-766.
King, General Adam, 578.
David, 141.
Dr. Rodney, 289. of Cyprus, 44. of Poland, 67.
Philip, 183.
Kiramgori, 597.
Kirk, Governor, 407.
Kissick, Lieutenant William, 203.
Knorr, G. F., 390.
Knox, General Henry, 285.
Koah, the blacksmith, 54.
Kohl, J. G., 167.
Kohn, Abra, 406.
Kohter, Mons., 589.
Koran, 67.
Kossuth, 753.
Krossaness, 164.
Krusenstern, Admiral, 353.
Kulan, 74.
Kung, Prince, 77.
Kuskol, Captain, 592.
Lacedemonians, 641.
La Croix, 111.
Ladd, Mrs. C., 503.
Lafayette, 9, 114, 353, 394, 466, 733.
against slavery, 394.
La Haye, 189, 221.
Lally, Major F. T., 600.
Lamar, Lieutenant, 539.
Lambert, Major W. H., 454-455. Lancaster, Earl of, 22.
red rose of, 131.
Landais, Captain Pierre, 280.
Landis, Captain, 236,
Lane, General Joseph, 600.
Langdon, Captain, 537-538.
Mr. John, 211-212, 239, 240. Lansing, Mrs. Abraham, 614.
Lapoint, Colonel, 581.
Larochefoucault, Count, 104.
Latimer, A. R., 480-481.
Miss Emma, 480.
Sergeant Francis, 564.
Laughton, J. K., 95, 99, 112.
Lieutenant James C., 765. . Laurens, Henry, 272-273.
Laveller, 740.
Lawrence, Colonel, 463.
Laws, Commander J. (Royal Navy), 84. Layard, 54.
Leake, Sir John, 6.
Learned, Colonel Ebenezer, 219.
Leasure, Colonel Daniel, 576.
Leathers, Captain John H., 655.
Leavitt, S. D., 606.
L’Egalite, 115.
Lee, Arthur, 272.
and Walker, 755.
Bishop, 578.
Captain, 442.
General Robert E., 482, 487, 489,535,
538-539,	540-
541.
surrender of, 540.
Hon. Arthur, 693.
Major-General Charles, 234, 237, 251-252
Mr. John, 321.
R. H., 211-212, 624,697. LeFevre, Seigneur de St. Henry, 124. Leicester, Earl of, 15.
Leif, son of Eric the Red, voyage of, 161, 164.
Leifsbudir, 162, 164.
Lempriere, Clement, 228.
Leo III., Pope, 103-104.
Leonard, Rev. Mr., 201.
Letcher, Governor, 445, 474.
Leutze, 198, 277.
Lewis, Captain, 335.
George W., 366.
Mr., 212, 335.
Mrs., of Virginia, 261.
Samuel, 335.
Lieber, Dr., 694.
Lincoln, Abraham, 387, 395, 397-398, 400,
406-416, 431, 433, 437, 450, 463, 477, 492, 507, 527, 536, 577, 588-589,	595,
620, 644, 740. elected President of the United States, 395. journey from Illinois to Washington, 406-408.
raises our flag on Independence Hall, 411. Bishop of, 29.
Earl of, 5.
banner of, 12.
Thad, 584.
Lindsay, D. W., 638.
Lindsley, J. Berrien, 637.
Linn, John Blair, 206.
Lipsius, 70.
Lispenard, 252.
Littleton, Vice-Admiral, 6.
Livingston, Charles L., 704.
Dr. David, 596-598.
Livy, 24.
Lloyd, Color-bearer, 571.
Locke, Captain, 369.
Private, 579.
Lodebrock, 87.
Lomax, Captain, 376.
Long, Colonel, 724, 727.
Longfellow, Henry W., 159, 167, 290, 543. Longstreet, General, 489.
Lord, Captain Samuel A , 79.
High Admiral, Duke of York, 5, 177.800
INDEX OF NAMES.
Lord, Miss Abbie A., 648.
Lorenzard, Don T. A., 81.
Lorenzo, Pasqualigo, 170-171.
Lorillard, George, 710.
Lorraine, colors of, 109.
Lossing, B. J., xii, 168, 175, 179, 189, 194, 199, 202, 211, 219, 220, 261, 276, 327, 335, 404, 422, 440, 457, 460, 485-486, 498, 535, 663, 684, 693, 729.
Lothaire, 107.
Lothrop, Rev. Samuel K., 546.
Louis VII., fleur-de-lis on the seal of, 108. VIII., 103.
XII., 103,108.
XIV., 103,109, 740.
XVI., 111.
XVIII, 112.
Le Gros, 106. of Bavaria, Emperor, 86.
Philippe, 112-113.
St., 103.
Loutherbourg, painting by, 112,
Lovelace, Lord, 186.
Lovell, of Virginia, 685.
Low, Mr., 243.
Lowden, James, 293.
Luce, Major-General Charles, 199. Luh-ying, green-banner army, 77.
Lukens, Charles J., xii, 253-254, 256, 338,
691.
heraldry of the American flag, 338, 691.
Lulli, 740.
Lund, Rodney, 608.
Lunt, Ezra, 201.
Hon. George, 156.
Lieutenant Paul, 201.
Luxemburg, Anne of, 131.
Lydgate, 122, 124.
Lyle, Colonel Peter, 576.
Lyman, Mr., 307, 440.
Lynch, Lieutenant, 371-373.
Mr., 217.
Lynd, Bishop, 444.
Lyndhurst, Lord, 296.
L}mn, General, 650.
Governor Caleb, 654.
Macaulay, 129,140.
MacCauley, Captain, 727.
Macedon, Philip of, 65.
Mackenzie, J. Sliddell, 229, 238. Mackleroth, Major, 284.
Madison, Mr., 308.
Mrs., 326.
President, 726.
Madonna di San Sisto, 15.
Magellan, Ferdinand, 365.
Mahar, James, 729.
Mahomet, 61-65.
Alay, 63. black eagle of, 65. earliest standard of, 64. sacred standard of, 61.
description of, 62.
Mahomet, sacred standard of, its presentation in 1768, 63.
the address when displayed 61.
where deposited, 61-62.
yellow flag of, 65.
II., standard of, 66.
Maintenon, Madame, 740.
Major, 169.
Makesatoff, Governor, 592.
PrinppQs
Malcolm I., of Scotland, i47.
Manigault, Major, 376.
Manley, Captain John, 203, 235, 239, 284.
first American flag hoisted by, 1775, 239.
Mann, Mr., 325.
Manning, Mrs., 199.
Rev. J. M., 460.
Mansell, Sir Robert, 37.
Mansfield, General, 566.
Mrs. General, 557, 566. Mantchoo force, 77.
Manteo, 174.
Marcel Etienne, 114.
Marco Antonio Colonna, 35.
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 68.
Marcy, Hon. William L., captures the first British flag, 1812, 335.
Mare Clausum, treatise by Mr. Selden, 37. Liberum, treatise by Hugo Grotius, 37.
Margaret, daughter of Henry III., 127. Maria Pochoco, 295.
Marineo, 90.
Marius, Roman Consul, 57.
Mark, Robert de la, banner of, 108. Markham, Commander (Royal Navy), 391. Markoe, Captain Abraham, 251-253, 255-256.
Marlborough, Duke of, 115, 149.
Marmion, 10.
Marsh, C. B , 761, 763.
Marshall, Charles H., 324, 429.
Christopher, 252.
Marson, Are, 160.
Martgne, Chevalier, 275.
Martin, Eugene S., 587.
Marvin, Corporal James B.,563.
Mary, Queen, 140.
of England, 5, 17, 36.
Mason, Governor Stevens T., 642.
Hon. George, 261, 624.
Lowell, 742.
Miss Fanny, 371-372.
Mr., 352.
Mather, 618.
Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror, 20, 28.
Matthew, Cardinal, 46.
Matthieu, A., 311.
Maxentius, 60.
McAllister, General, 540.INDEX OF NAMES.
801
McAllister, John A., xiii, 251, 272. McCall, General, 620.
McCane, E. J., 375.
McCauley, Commodore Charles S., 665. McClean, William, 539.
McClellan, General, 487.
McCulloch, Secretary, 470.
McDougall, Colonel, 228.
McEwen, Mrs. Hetty, 583.
McEwin, Mrs., 478.
McFarland, Paddy, 728.
McFeeters, Captain, 576.
McGinness (seaman), 383.
McGowan's, Captain John, report of the firing on the Star of the West, 425-426, 499.
McGuire, Captain, 367.
McKeen, Judge, 226.
McLaughlin (a laborer), 304.
Mr., 458.
McMahon, President, 117.
McMakin, Andrew, 255.
McNeil, Captain William, 245, 275. Hector, 235.
McPherson, William, 727.
McVicker, Jonathan, 705.
Meade, Lieutenant R. K., 418.
Major General, 539, 540, 573-574. Meadows, Captain, 204.
Mears, Lieutenant, 302.
Meigs, Henry, 599.
Memminger, Mr., speech on a confederate flag, 502.
Menage, 48.
Mendenhall, Captain Thomas, 268. Mercer, Captain Samuel, 433-436. Merriam, Mr. G. C., 563.
Meserve, Governor, 192.
Mesroud, Ibu Mesiera, 65.
Mewar, 79.
Meyler, James, 281.
Middleton, Mr. Henry, 687, 690.
Mifflin, Thomas, 697.
Miles, Colonel William Porcher, 418, 442, 443, 503-507, 512, 514-517.
Rev. James B., 465.
Miller, Colonel H. L., 559.
James D. (M. D. United States Navy), 693, 700.
Thomas, 650.
Mills, Captain Edward, 445.
Sergeant Thomas J., 563.
Milton, 24.
Mitchell, Captain J. K., 386-387.
D., 186.
Mix, Hon. John, 197.
Molineaux, Lieutenant, R. N., 371. Moncrieff, Mr. T., 748.
Monk, Admiral, 139.
Monroe, James, 308-309, 311-312, 314. Monson, Sir William, 36.
Montacute, Lord John, 16.
Montague, Lord Viscount, 136.
Monte, Marc Antonio, 86.
Montesquieu, xii.
Montgomery, Captain Hugh, 267-269. General. 332.
Montgomery, Miss Elizabeth, 267-268.
Rear Admiral J. B., 370. Monts, Captain, 433.
Monwyah, 65.
Mooers, Captain William, 291-292, 294-295.
Moore, Captain E. Lewis, 451.
Ensign, 154.
Frank, 279, 480, 519.
Governor, 297-298, 634.
James K., 764.
Morgan, General Daniel, 198.
Moroques, le Vicomte, 111.
Morris and Croffet, 453.
Captain, 349.
H. W., 470.
Commodore Richard V., 661. George P., 753.
Governor Lewis, 616, 697.
John, 234.
Lieutenant, 1636, 180-181.
Mr., 212.
Robert, 230, 266-267, 299. Morrison, Captain, 398.
J. G., Jr., 465.
Morse, Professor S. F. B., 259, 402-404,517. Morse, Professor S. F. B., proposes a flag for a Northern and Southern United States, 403-404.
Morse, Professor S. F. B., propositions for a peaceable disunion, 402-403.
Mortimer, 133.
Morton, A., 457.
Hamilton, 705.
Mr., 384-385, 387. of Florida, 504.
Moseley, William D., 633.
Motley, John Lathrop, 224.
Motte, Benjamin, 188.
Moultrie, Colonel, 209.
colors of, 209, 210. Mouton, President, 498, 634.
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, 132.
Moylan, Colonel Stephen, 203, 227.
Mudge, Alfred, 461.
Muley, Abbas, 67.
Mumford,> William B., 471-474.
hung at New Orleans, 473. *
Munroe, Colonel, 277.
Munsell, J., 284.
Murphy, Eustace, 377.
Myers, Major Albert J., 666.
Myrick, Dr., 22.
Naddod, 160.
Nanfan, Lieutenant-Governor John, 186. Napoleon I., 20,102, 112-113,115-116,481.
eagle on regimental standards by, 116.
golden eagle of, 112.
Imperial standard of, 115.
III., 116, 701.
eagle on regimental standards revived by, 116. Navarre, Henry of, 110.
Necker, 114.
51802
INDEX OF NAMES.
Nelson, Admiral Lord, 154-155, 332, 663, 756.
signal at Trafalgar, 154-155.
Newcastle, Duke of, 187.
Newcomb, Hon. 0., 457.
Newman, Cardinal, 148-149.
Newton, 87, 108, 148.
Major, 765-766.
Nichols, Captain, 242.
Francis, 187.
Nicholson, Commodore Samuel, 316. Colonel J. P., viii.
Judge, 724, 727.
J., 188.
Nicolas, Sir Harris, 105, 149, 155, 164. Nicolls, Colonel Kichard, 184.
Niebuhr, 765.	'
Niles, Mr., 225, 231, 307.
Norcross, Daniel, 648.
Norfolk, Mowbray, Duke of, 132. Normandy, Duke of, 23.
North, Lord, 216, 229, 506.
Northmen, 160-161.
Northumberland, Earl of, 37.
Noteman, C. W., 650.
Noyes, Captain Thomas, 183.
Mr., 559.
Mrs. William Curtis, 556, 559. Nuckols, J. P., 655.
Nye, Gideon, 599.
O’Bannon, Lieutenant, 325.
Obeidah, Abu, 65.
Odin, 23.
Odnozola, Colonel Manuel de, 91. O’Donnel. Mr., 458.
Ogilby, Lieutenant Nicholas, 203.
Oglivy, Mr., 592.
Olds, F. A., 627.
Olea, 88.
Olin, William M., 610.
Olney, Jeremiah, 287.
Joseph, 235.
Omar, 65.
Orange, William, Prince of, flag of, 36. Oranje boven, 98.
Orsdell, John Van, 286.
Orvilliers, M. d', 111.
Osborne, T., 756.
Osgood, Dr., 457.
Samuel, 697.
Osman, Caliph, 62.
Ossian, 121.
Othman, 65.
Owen, Moses, 549-550.
Sir David, 16.
Tudor, 135.
Paca, Mr., 212.
Paddleford & Fay, 366.
Paddock, A. S., 651.
Page, Captain, 367.
John, 624.
Paine, Brigadier-General, 476.
Colonel William IL, 540.
Dr. Etta, 447.
Paine, Robert Treat, 736-737.
Paleo, Crystie, 391.
Palliser, Mrs. Bury, 108.
Palma, Señor Ricardo, 92.
Palmer, Captain, 180-181.
Colonel William, 575.
Doctor, 517.
N. B., 353.
Surgeon J. C., 356.
Parry, Sir Edward, 391.
Parsons, Captain Tyler, 353.
William C., 347, 411.
Parton, James, 470, 472, 474.
Partridge, Mr. H., 762.
Pascal II., Pope, 44.
Pasco, Captain, 155.
Pasqualigo, Lorenzo, 170-171.
Paul Jones, flag of America raised by, 229.
United States raised on board the Ranger, 274. United States raised on board the America, 275. Paul, Emperor of Russia, 44.
Payne, Master, 728.
Paynes, Hugues de, 46.
Pavón, 19.
Peale, Edmund, 9.
Mr. Charles Wilson, 263, 272.
Titian R., 272.
Pearce, J. A., 744.
Peck, Israel C., 566.
Pedraza, Gomez, 351.
Pembroke, 186.
Penn, Admiral, 139.
Mr,, 186.
Pennington, Sir John, 37.
Pennycrick, 140.
Penthievre, Due de, French admiral, flag of, 111.
Pepperell, Sir William, flag of, 1745, 190-191.
Pepys, Thomas, 702.
Percy, Earl of, 141.
Perez, Don Juan, 368.
Perkins, Colonel T. H., 466.
T. H., Jr., 366.
Perry, Commodore M. C., 380.
O. H., 642, 663-664.
Persepolis, 55.
Pescara, Marquis of, 86.
Peschal, 173.
Peter the Great, 95.
Petit, General, 113.
Petts, Phineas, 702.
Peyrins, Beneton de, 104.
Peyster, Lieutenant Johnston Livingston de, 536-538, 541.
Pezet, General, 91-92.
Pfiffer, Colonel, 79.
Phenix, the, 78.
Philip Augustus, 103, 108. of Macedón, 65.
VI. of France, 128-129. of Orleans, 115.
the Bold of Burgundy, standard of* 35, 103.
II. of Spain, 36.INDEX OF NAMES.
803
Phillips, Hon. Wendell, on disunion, 401. Phittiplace, Lieutenant Edward, 203. Phraates, the Parthian king, 57.
Phyla, Professor, 719.
Pickens, Governor F. W., 427-428, 480, 432, 437, 444-445.
Pickering, Hon. Timothy, 314, 316. Pickersgill, Mrs. Mary, 733.
Pierce, Franklin, 401.
Pike, General, 144.
Pillow, General, 373-374.
Pitt, Mr., 193.
Piquet, Admiral La Motte, 274.
Pizarro, flag of, 90-91.
Planche, Mr., 107, 133.
Plancy, Collin de, 104.
Plantagenet, 126, 133.
Pliny, 25.
Plumbly, Sir Richard, 38.
Poindexter, Mr. 343.
Poinsett, Hon. Joel R., displays our flag in Mexico, to protect American citizens and others, 351-352.
Polk, Bishop General, 477, 513.
President, 376.
Pollard, E. A., 226.
Poor, Captain William, 366.
Pope, Alexander II., 28,121.
Boniface VIII., 29.
Joseph Dane, 628.
Lieutenant, 322.
Popham, 174-175.
Popple, Mr., 186.
Porter, Admiral David D., 435,472,587,672. Captain, 642.
Commodore David, 317-319, 320. Portugal, King of, 39.
Posted, Captain William Ross, 524. Pouchet, 192.
Povey, John, 186.
Powell, 198.
Powers, Stephen, 696.
Pownall, Governor Thomas, 192.
Poynton, T., 748.
Pratt, John H., 565.
Preble, Captain Edward, 317, 661.
George Henry, 513, 515-517, 524, 724, 744, 756. Prescott, William H., 81-83, 85.
Preston, Hon.E. J.,on the American flag,604.
William B., 379.
Prestwick, Sir John, 693.
Price, William, 195.
Prince of Wales, 144, 381, 701.
device of, 130.
Mayor, 600.
Prior, Sergeant, 565.
Proctor, Captain, 270.
Colonel John, 205^206.
Proudhon, xi.
Pryor, Colonel, 442-443.
Pulaski, Count, 8, 9.
Purcell, Archbishop, 460.
Purdy, Mrs. Caroline, 733.
Purnet, from Maine, 765.
Putnam, Major-General, 199, 205, 226, 264, 565.
Putnam, Rev. Doctor, 460.
Quadra, the Spanish commandant, 302. Quantrill, Mrs. Mary A., 488-489, 490-491.
Queen Anne, 115, 143, 153, 178.
Bess, 135.
Elizabeth, 17, 31, 146, 173-175.
Mary, 5, 17, 36, 140.
Mary Stuart, 137.
Victoria, 145, 361, 381, 701, 740. Quincy, General S. M., 548.
H. G., 327.
Quintard, Bishop, 524.
Quintus Curtius, 55.
Quitman, General, 537.
Rafn, Professor, 160.
Ragland, P., 633.
Rahl, Colonel, 246.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, expeditions of, 173-174.
Randolph, Edmund, 308.
Raphael, painting by, 15.
Rapine, Father, 458.
Rathburne, Captain John, 277.
Ray, John, 30.
Raymond, Mr., 407, 412, 441.
Read, Commodore George C., 347.
General, 373.
Mr., 212, 226, 241.
Ready, Dr. James, 470.
Recot, Captain Philip Nicolas, 280.
Reed, Captain J. S., 649.
Thomas, 299.
Colonel, 202-203.
of Uxbridge, Mass., 695. James, 471.
Joseph, 218, 257.
Reid, Captain S. C., design for our flag,
839, 340, 342-343, 345-346, 348, 350. proposed standard, 1818, 343.
Mrs. S. C., 345-346, 348.
Reigart, Col. J. Franklin, 233, 267. Reinagle, Mr., 716.
Reinel, Pedro, 172.
Reno, General, 487.
Reveness, Captain, 247.
Revere, General Joseph W., 648.
Paul, 195.
Rey, 111.
Reynolds, Captain William, 594. Lieutenant, 376.
Sir Joshua, 732.
Rhett, Robert Barnwell, 396.
Richard I., 20, 125-126, 186.
11.,	16, 124, 130-131, 136.
111.,	134-135.
Duke of Cambridge, 130. Richards, Captain William, 246, 270.
Ensign, 219.
Richardson, D. S., 376.
Mrs., 375.
Richetts, Colonel, 187.
Richmond, Duke of, 297.804
INDEX OP NAMES.
Richmond, Earl of, 15.
Ricketson, 296.
Riedesel, Baroness, 330.
General, 330.
Rimbault, Professor, 747-748.
Ringold, 69.
Lieutenant-Commanding, 361. Rittenhouse, Mr., 620.
Ritzema, Colonel Rud, 226.
Robert de la Mark, banner of, 108. Roberts, Captain, 320.
M. O., 425-426.
Sergeant Otis C., 585.
Robertson, Adjutant-General John, 581. Captain, 244, 275.
Lieutenant, 378.
Mr., 343.
Robeson, George M., 679.
Robinson, Captain, 244.
John, 642.
Lieutenant Noah, 606. Rochambeau, Count, 493.
Roche, Lieutenant John, 203, 235. Rockwell, Captain William W., 493, 587. Judge, 493.
Rodgers, Rear-Admiral John, 349,481, 586, 663.
Rodman, J., 292.
Samuel, 296.
Rodney, 111.
Hon. Daniel, 289.
Rogers, Colonel Charles O., 763.
Robert Clay, 376.
Rolfe, Captain, 166.	*
Rolla, first duke of Normandy, ensign of, 124.
Rollo, 26.
Roman Emperor, 59.
Rooke, St. George, 39, 152.
Roos, Admiral Sir John, 29.
Root and Cady, 755.
Sergeant Orlow J.
Ross, Betsy, 267.
Colonel George, 265-266. Commodore James Clark, 391. General, 722.
Mr., 226.
Mrs. Elizabeth, 270.
Mrs., first American flag made by, 265.'
Mrs. John, 265-266.
Sir James, 361-362.
Rotch, Benjamin, 295.
William, 291-292, 295.
William, Jr., 292-295.
Roth, Philip, 719.
Rous, John, 29.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 311.
Major-General, 591.
Mr. George Lovell, 591.
Rowan, Commander, 434.
Rear Admiral S. C., 435-436, 672. Royal Princess, 381.
William, 144.
Ruffin, Edmund, 438, 445.
Rufus, William, standard of, 125.
Rush, Benjamin, 731.
Rush, Mr., 226.
Rushworth, 176.
Russell, General, 573.
Major Benjamin, 737.
Russia, Emperor Paul of, 44.
Rut, John, 171.
Rutledge, Governor, 210.
Mr. Edward, 687, 690.
Ruyven, Secretary Van, 184.
Ryngeborne, John de, 29.
Sabla, Theodore de, 386.
Sadler, Sergeant, 549.
Sagahan, Spanish historian, 81.
Saint Philippe, 110.
Salisbury, Earl of, 16, 29.
Hon. S., 719, 737, 741, 746 Salle, Chevalier de la, 323-324.
Salter, Lieutenant Erancis, 203. Saltonstall, Captain Dudley, 229, 230-231, 235, 237.
Hon. Nathaniel, 183.
Samuels, Captain, 710.
Sanders, Samuel, 213.
Sands, Mr. Robert C., 229, 237.
Samuel, 724, 727.
Sanford, F. C., 293, 303.
San Martin, General, 91.
Sargent, General Horace Binney, 548.
M. L., 326.
Sarmiento, 224, 259.
Saturnius, 254.
Sauter, Sergeant Englebert, 562.
Savage, John, 463.
Mr. (United States Consul), 508. Saville, George, Marquis of Halifax, 740. Sawyer, Captain Daniel, 321.
Miss, 375.
Samuel, 606.
Schaack, Peter Van, 292.
Schofield, Major-General, 451, 554, 558. Schoolcraft, M., 166.
Schoonover, Lieutenant-Colonel, 540. Schott, Captain John, 184.
Schouler, W., 467, 544, 546, 548.
Schuyler, Major-General Philip, 219, 251-252, 264.
Scipio, 24.
Scott, General Winfield, 367, 373,394, 413, 419, 429, 430, 432, 465, 537. General Winfield, on the flag, 394. Lieutenant James, 229. of Virginia, 658.
Sir Walter, 10, 19, 146.
Scribner, Mr., 701, 710, 754.
Scrimgeour, 13.
Scudder, Mr., 285.
Sears, Hon. David, 195.
Sebastian, Don, 109, 571.
Seburg, Will., 30.
Selden, Mr., writes treatise “Mare Clausum,” 37.
Selman, Captain John, 202-203.
Semmes, Admiral, 508-509.
Sergeant, Jasper at Fort Moultrie, 1776,
210.
death of, 211.INDEX OF NAMES.
805
Serra, Tr. Junepera, 368.
Seward, William H., 463, 492.
Seybert, Mr., 328-334.
Seymour, Captain Truman, 418, 447. Governor, 568-569, 572.
Sir Francis, 381.
George, 371.
Shakespeare William, 16, 20, 134.
picture of Boling-broke, 409-410.
Shaw, Commodore, 325.
David T., 754-756.
Shearer, Sergeant M. A., 566.
Shepherd, C., 234.
Shepley, General George F., 536-538 Sheppard, 234.
General, 600.
Sherburne, H., 275.
Sherman, General William T., 394, 450, 469, 546, 585, 593.
Mrs. Roger, 288.
Roger, 289.
Sheridan, General, 582.
Shorter, of Alabama, 504.
Shryock, Lieutenant, 386.
Shubrick, Captain William Banford, 668. Shuchburg, Dr., 749.
Sibley, J. L., 191.
Sicard, Lieutenant-Commanding Montgomery, 594.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 734.
Sill, Deacon, 464.
Simms, Lieutenant Charles S., 386.
Simon de Montfort, 15.
Sinclair, A. D. Mollie, 504.
Sinn, Miss Martha, 489.
Sin-to-ism, 78.
Skilton, George, 375.
Skinner, Governor, 608.
J. S., 723, 726-727.
Miss Fanny, 371-372.
Sloat, Commodore, 370.
Sluyter, Peter, 184.
Smith, Buckingham, 753.
Corporal Daniel L., 560.
General G. W., 512.
General, 343.
of Connecticut, 554.
H. M., 598.
John Christian, 753.
John Jay, 729.
Stafford, 732.
Lieutenant Heber, 560.
Mr., 226, 308, 314, 463.
Newell, 461.
Rev., 188.
Rev. Mr., 475.
Samuel Francis, 739, 742-743. Richard, 617.
Senator, of New York, 569. Sergeant William P., 560.
Sir John, the last banneret created, 14.
William H., 639-641.
Smythe, Captain, 264.
Snorre, 165-166.
Snowden, A. Loudon, 696-697.
Snyder, Lieutenant G. W., 418, 440, 442-443, 445.
Sobieski, John, 71.
Somerset, Earl of, 133.
Sonntag, Dr., 374, 390.
Soule, Sergeant D. E., 559.
Southampton, Earl of, 5.
Southey, 163.
Southwortli, Mrs., 482, 490.
Spain, King of, 39, 98.
Sparks, Jared, 252, 265.
Sparrow, Mr., of Louisiana, 504.
Speed, Captain George K.
Spelman, Sir John, 87.
Spofford, Hon. A. R., viii.
Spowers, George, 731.
Sprague, Adjutant-General, 567, 569, 570.
Governor, 463.
Spring, Gardner, D.D., 457.
Sprint, S. & G., 188.
Spruance, William C., 578.
Squires, H., 753.
St. Andre, 312.
Andrew, 6, 95, 138-139, 140, 147-152, 176, 205, 219, 220, 223, 233, 247, 512, 513, 516, 524, 702.
Bernard, 46.
Botolph, 28.
Columb, 120.
Cuthbert, 141.
Danneborg, 87.
Denis, 105-107.
Edmund, 123-124.
Edward, banner of, 124.
Edwin, 122.
George, 6, 19, 28, 29, 31-32,35, 95, 122, 124-125, 130-131, 135-137, 139, 143, 149, 150-152, 175-179, 182-189, 205, 219-224, 232-234, 247, 375, 526. George, cross of, floats over New York, 184.
origin of, 32-33, 175. used in Massachusetts, 179.
of Cappadocia, 148.
England and Russia, 148. Gratian, 104.
James, 90.
John, 45.
of Beverly, 140.
Louis, 106.
Margaret, 108.
Mark, 22, 35, 170-171.
Martin, 104-105.
Michael, 19.
Nicholas, 28.
Oswald, 120.
Patrick, 6, 146-149, 151-152, 178.
Paul, 88, 694.
Peter, 104.
of York, 140.
Philippe, 110.
Sebastian, 70.
Sixtus, 15.
Stephen, 69, 70.
Thomas, 29.
Ursula, 19.806
INDEX OF NAMES.
St. Vincents, 332.
Wilfred, 140.
of Ripon, 140.
Stafford, Captain Philip, 282.
James Bayard, 281-282.
Miss Sarah S., 237, 273, 281-282. Stanley meets Dr. Livingstone in Africa, 596-598.
Stanton, Hon. E. M., 450.
Steel, Captain, 369.
Steele, J. B., 463.
of East Fairhaven, 404.
Steers, George L., 709.
Henry, 710.
Steiner, Dr., 488.
Steinmetz, Andrew, 113.
Stephen, of Blois, 125.
the Saint, King of the Magyars, 69.
Stephens, Alexander H., 502, 504, 511. Stevens, Commander Thomas H., 587. Edward A., 705.
John, 704.
C., 709.
Major Atherton Hough, 537. Robert L., 704.
Stevenson, 122.
Stewart, Captain Charles, 325-326, 411,
668.
Ensign, 154,
Stibben, Elizabeth, 187.
Stiles, President Ezra, 289.
Lieutenant Richard, 203.
Stirling, Lord, 225, 264.
Stockton, Commodore Robert F., 371. Stodert, Benjamin, 698.
Stone, Captain John, 294.
Lieutenant, 375.
Stormont, Lord, 275.
Storrs, Dr. R. S., 452.
Story, Judge, 394.
Stow, 20.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 465.
Strain, Lieutenant Isaac N., 383.
Stratton, Thomas, 592-593.
Street, Alfred B., 262, 544, 569, 573. Streone, Edric, 163.
Strickland, Henry F., 561.
Thomas, 13.
Striker, General, 733.
Stuart, Gilbert, 466.
Queen Mary, 137.
Sturges, Russell, 429.
Stuyvesant, Governor, 183-184.
Suaine, Captain, 384.
Suffolk, Countess of, Isabel, 16.
Sullivan, General, 225.
George, 467.
William, 466.
Summer, Mayor, 553.
Sumner, Hon. Charles, vi, 237, 504.
Major-General, 446.
Sussex, Lord Lieutenant of, 297.
Swan, John Otto, 571.
Swartwout, Captain Abraham, 276. Sweyne, or Swaen, 163-164.
Sydney, Algernon, 610.
Talbot, Governor, 610.
Lieutenant T., 418, 428-429.
Sir Gilbert, 16.
Talegas, Mexican, 81.
Taney, Chief Justice, 414-415, 721-722. Taylor, Colonel Stuart M., 710.
Corporal Sherman D., 560. General Zachary, 370.
Mr., 226, 344.
Rev. Father, 467.
Temple, Robert, 608.
Sir Charles, 190.
Tennant, Mr., 592.
Tennessee, Governor of, in 1865, 637. Terry, Major-General A. H., 587.
Miss, 375.
Test, Assistant Engineer Henry M., 448. Tew, Sergeant H. S., 208.
Thatcher, Dr. James, 260.
Mr., 307.
Thomas, Ichabod, 292.
of Gloucester, 130.
General, 456.
Thompson, A. B., 607.
Captain, 369.
William, 235. Charles, 199.
Jacob, 396.
Private Isaac, 585.
William T., 501, 508, 512, 524. Thomson, Charles, 259, 687, 693, 700. Thomtinson, 234.
Thorfinn, 165-166.
Thorhall, 165.
Thorncroft, Sergeant David, 565. Thornton, of New Hampshire, 226. Thorstein, voyage of, 165.
Thorwald, 162, 164;
voyage and death of, 164-165. Helgason, 166.
Thorwaldsen, 164.
Thosmes II., 68.
III., 68.
Tien Hoang and the Dragon, 72.
Tiffany, C. L., 601.
Messrs., & Co., 492, 565.
Tilden, W. P., 259, 339.
Tiley, Lieutenant John, 203.
Tilghman, Mr., 240.
Tibet, 106.
Tillinghast, Colonel, 230.
Tobey, Lieutenant Timothy, 229.
Tod, Colonel, 72.
Todd, Captain, 491.
Tolt, Baron de, 64.
Tombs, 504.
Tomlinson, Ralph, 732.
Tooke, William, 710.
Torry, Sergeant George F., 565.
Toucy, Hon. Isaac, 666, 668-669. Townsend, General E. D., 450, 452, 576. Tracy, Captain, 204.
Lieutenant Charles W., 448. Trajan, Emperor, 120.
Trapier, William H., 523.
Travers, Sergeant C. P., 559.
Treasurer, Mr., 624.INDEX OF NAMES.
807
Trumbull, Colonel, 198, 263, 272. Governor, 276, 328.
Truman, 753.
Truxton, Captain Thomas, 299.
Tryon, 252.
Tsung-tuh, Governor-General, 77.
Tucker, 765.
Captain Samuel, 203-204, 228. Tuckerman, Henry T., 663.
Tudor, Henry, 135.
Owen, 135.
Tufts, William, Jr., 191.
Turner, Major, 579.
Mrs., 730.
Tussaud, Madame, 112-113.
possessor of the flag of Elba, 112.
Tyler, A. 0., 405.
John, 405.
Lieutenant Robert O., 436. Professor Samuel, 487.
Wat, 131.
Tyng, Rev. Dr., 478.
Tyrker, 162.
Underwood, Judge, 486.
Upshur, Hon. A. P., 665.
Urban II., Pope, “ Dieu le veut,” 125. Sylvanus, 695.
Uther, aboriginal prince of Britain, 135.
Valais and Uri, Swiss Cantons, 103. Valentine, 190, 194, 223.
Valentinian III., Emperor, 120.
Van Buren, Martin.
Van Cleve, H. P., 648.
Vancouver, Captain, 300-301.
Vanderveldt, 34, 150.
Van Dorn, Colonel, 426.
Van Dorp, Vice-Admiral, 37.
Vane, Governor, 180-181.
Van Ruyvin, Secretary, 184.
Van Schaack, Peter, 292.
Van Tromp, Admiral, 37, 99, 152, 332, 659.
Varage, Captain Joseph, 280.
Vasco de Gama, 100.
Nunez de Balboa, 89, 90.
Vaughn, at capture of Louisburg, 1745, 190-191.
Mr., 230.
Vension, Mrs. W. G., 635.
Verplanck, Samuel, 704.
Verrazano, 171-172.
Vespucci, 169.
Vestynden, Ralph, 134.
Vexin, Counts of, 106.
Vickery, Captain, 279.
Victoria, Queen, 145, 361, 381, 701, 740. Villaret, Filles de, 86.
Vincent, 279, 280.
Vinland, 162-163.
Virgil, 262.
Virginia, Governor of, in 1833, 355, 623. Virgin Mary, 107.
Vishnoo or Vishnu, 79, 80.
Vladislaus VII., 69.
Von Merbach, General, 246.
W., Mrs., 478-479.
Wace, 23.
Wagden, Private William, 477.
Waldemar II. of Denmark, 87.
Wales, B. Read, 468.
Prince of, 129-30, 144, 701.
device of, 129-130.
Walker, Lieutenant William M., 356-360. L. P., 437, 445.
Mr. Hartwell, 635.
Sergeant, 561.
William, 635.
Wallace, General, 476.
William Ross, 658.
William Vincent, 753.
Walton, Colonel J. B„ 512, 514-517. Wanchese, 174.
Ward, General, 219.
M. E., 595.
Mr., 179.
Samuel, 767.
Warner and Wood, 728.
Colonel John L., 722, 727.
H. A., 560.
Oliver, 609.
Warren, Dr., 199.
General, 198.
of Connecticut, 558. Hon. George Washington, 465. Warwick, Earl of, 29, 30, 130, 133.
his great streamer, 29. his great streamer, cost of; 30.
Washington, George, 10, 199, 201-203, 205,
218, 225-227, 237, 240-241, 251-252, 257, 260-262, 264-266, 269-272, 276-279, 297, 308, 312-313, 331, 335, 462, 505, 524, 584, 602, 620, 694, 715, 719, 733, 737, 750, 756, his flag at Trenton, 272.
stone placed over his birth-place, 335. Life Guard, 9.
uniform, 10.
Lady, 252, 264.
Mrs. Jane, 207-209.
William, 207.
Waters, Captain Daniel, 203.
Watson, Elkanah, 296-297.
John F., 237-238, 241.
Wayne, General, 642.
Polly, 264.
Webb, Charles R., 367.
Colonel D. B., 205.
General, 540.
Joseph, 270.
William, 270.
Webber, Rev. Mr., 459.
Webster, Col. Fletcher, 465-467, 762, 764. Hon. Daniel, ii, 394.808
INDEX OF NAMES.
Webster, Noah, 662.
Weddell, Captain, 356, 359.
Weitzel, General, 537-538.
Welles, Hon. Gideon, 434, 586, 671.
William V., 375.
Wellington, Duke of, 115, 149.
Wendover, Hon. Peter, 339, 341-343.
Hon. P. H., letters about the flag, 343-345.
Wensler, Sergeant Charles, 576.
Wessells, Leverett W., 553.
West, Benjamin, 259.
Mrs. Julia Houston, 600.
Westbrook, Mr., 463.
Westcott, Thompson, 279, 328, 330. Weston, Dr., 458.
Weymouth, Captain George, 174.
settlement of, 174.
Wheeler, Mr., 627.
Sergeant, H. S., 560.
Sir Francis, 6.
Whipple, Abraham, 233, 235.
White, Captain, 376.
A. H., 366. man's flag, 527.
Whiting, Captain Gardner C., 475. Whittier, Col. A. C., 538-539.
J. G., 482-485, 490. Whittingham, Dean of Durham, 141. Wickes, Captain Lambert, 220, 243, 269. Wickham, William C., 508.
Wigfall, General, 441-443.
Wignall, Mr., 716.
Wigglesworth, Lieutenant John, 203. Wilcox, Major-General O. B., 580. Wilhelm II., Frederick, 102.
Wilkes, Captain, 390.
Commodore, 360, 362, 385, 390. John, 292, 294.
Wilkinson, General James, 323, 325.
Sir G., 24, 50.
Willett, Colonel Marinus, 276.
William II., 223.
III.	, of England, 128, 143.
IV.	of England, 115,145, 391, 703, 740.
Emperor, in 1873, 102.
Lord Douglas, 260.
Prince of Orange, flag of, 36. Bufus, 125, 143.
the Conqueror, 22,27, 28,121,125. Williams, Job, 196.
John Foster, 229.
Williams, Lieutenant-Commander, 450.
R., 451.
Roger, 179.
T., 756.
Williamson, Joseph, 161.
Willig, George, 716, 754-756.
Willson, John, 375.
Wilson, Hon. Henry, 412.
Mrs. Clarissa, 266.
Sergeant Joseph, 565. Winthrop, Governor, 292.
Hon. R. C., on the flag, 394. Mr., 610.
Wise, Henry A . 396.
Withers, Mr., 507.
Witherspoon, John, 697.
Wolfe, General, 506.
Wolseley, Sir Garnet, 156.
Wood, Captain David, 367.
Major Charles O., 591.
Mrs. Major, 592.
Woodbridg^, William C., 742. Woodbury, Hon. Levi, 664.
Woodfolk, Mr., 476.
Woodford, Colonel Stewart L., 451. Woodhouse, Col., 559.
Woodland, Sir Walter, 20.
Woods, Dr., 171.
Wooster, Madame, 288.
Wrangle, Admiral, 391.
Wraxall, Captain, 749.
Wright, Captain, 561.
Colonel Dexter R., 552. Governor, 202.
Judge, 595.
Wynkoop, Colonel, 219.
Wythe, Mr. George, 624.
Xenophon, 54.
Yates, Governor, 644.
Yeatrs, Jasper, 206.
Yerlon, 610.
Yonge, Charlotte M., 100.
York, Archbishop of, 140.
Duke of, 5, 183, 134.
yacht of, 150.
Edward, Duke of, 130.
Young, Admiral, 280.
Young, Brigham, 652.
Commodore, 38.
Rebecca, 733.
Yturrigaray, Madame, 351-352.