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 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.

PART III.

THE STARS AND STRIPES.

THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE STARS AND STRIPES.

1774-1777.

"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 born 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 :

"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.

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

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 and elected Abraham Markoe captain. The members equipped themselves at their own

The uniform adopted by them was a dark brown shortcoat, 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 commanderin-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 States.

"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, vol. i., 1774-77, edited by William Duane, pub. Phila., 1839.