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 Von 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, carry

Liberty or Death

American Flag.

From an old English engraving

Oct. 28, 1776.

ing 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

of the Battle of White Plains, 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 Historical Society, vol. ii. pp. 434, 435.

2 Pennsylvania Archives, vol. v. pp. 17, 46.

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 Reveness, 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 Squam 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 AMERICA.

1 American Archives, 5th series, vol. i. p. 173.

2 American Archives, 5th series, vol. iii. p. 637.

PART 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 FLAG OF FIFTEEN STARS AND FIFTEEN STRIPES.

1795-1818.

"Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be 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

"It is not a painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Constitution. 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.