June 14, this year falling on a Friday, is National Flag Day. While we at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse commemorate National Flag Day, our celebration is to be held at the lighthouse on Saturday June 15, with programs from 10:30 am to 2:30 pm and which will also will include a fact-filled fun and informative historic presentation at 1 pm.
In general, America’s yearly national holiday to observe our flag is sadly infrequently celebrated, often outright ignored, and generally the most unsung of all of our American holidays. A few years ago, the New York Times nailed it when they dubbed National Flag Day as “the runty stepchild among American national holidays.”
This year’s celebration, a yearly tradition at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse is even off by us by one day and might again mostly go without a mention or sparse acknowledgement, but its history is remarkably draped in national politics, patriotism, and good old-fashioned American myth-telling. It is a shame Flag Day is not given more respect or the recognition that it deserves. Flag Day’s history and story is not exactly what you would expect. Let’s explore.
In 1916, in the middle of another World War which we were not involved in yet, President Woodrow Wilson officially issued a proclamation declaring June 14 as Flag Day. It only took Congress thirty-three more years to enact a statute that officially recognized Flag Day as a national holiday. Obviously, the congress’s enthusiasm for acknowledgment and salutation for that day was not high on their list of “Must Do’s.”
The official history: Flag Day commemorates the June 14, 1777 adoption of the flag of the United States which occurred by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress. Coincidentally, that date also marks the birthday of our United States Army, then authorized as “The American Continental Army.”
Before 1916, when Wilson issued his proclamation establishing the day, some Americans had commemorated the adoption of the Stars and Stripes on that day in many fewer formal ways, including displaying the flag in the front of their home, parades, speeches by officials at civic occasions, and other patriotic rituals. Some localities and even a few states had celebrated the day a little more officially. Congress finally acted legislatively by designating the date as a national day of observance, and Flag Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1949. The law also stipulated that the president issue a Flag Day Proclamation each year.
BETSY WHO?
Popular folklore has it that in 1776, General George Washington visited with and commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Elizabeth Ross, “Betsy,” to her friends and us, to create a new flag for the new nation.
Yes, Ross was a seamstress with a shop in her home in Philadelphia. In fact, her home, or thereabouts is a Philadelphia landmark and is purported to be the place where she sewed the flag. There is no evidence that she designed the first American Flag. Ross, however, most likely did meet Washington or Martha, or a member of his household two-years-earlier in 1774, when he, or Martha, or his service people ordered bed hangings from seamstress Ross for Mt. Vernon.
Also, in 1776, Ross might have met Washington during his time attending to business with the Congress in 1776. Philadelphia was a small town in those days. Finally, earlier than the Washington/Ross myth Ross, the professional seamstress was paid for creating “ship’s colors,” which may have given more credence to the myth.
The birth or rebirth of the Ross story can be traced one hundred years later to her grandsons and the celebration of the Centennial of 1876. Before gussying up Philadelphia for the 100th anniversary, Ross’s real home containing her shop was an eyesore and was torn down. The colonial home next door, in much better shape with more parking, “became” the Betsy Ross House. Her “real” home vacant lot became a small garden space called “The Courtyard.” In 1975, in preparation for the Bicentennial, Ross and her husband’s remains were moved for the second time from the local cemeteries where they were originally interred and moved to the present Betsy Ross House Courtyard to be reinterred. During the Revolution, Ross an active patriot and in defiance of the British law, did make flags and banners surreptitiously, an outright act of treason with a death penalty attached. There is no fiction in that account.
Patriot Francis Hopkinson: The Real McCoy or “Hopkinson”
Closer to the truth, most historians believe that a New Jersey American Revolutionary patriot named Francis Hopkinson was more than just a significant contributor to the design of our original flag. He actually came up with two versions or designs of early American flags, one for the United States, and one for the United States Navy. He also designed early Continental paper money and is given some credit for the Great Seal. Oh, yeah, on his off days, he also signed the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from New Jersey, and was a member of the Pennsylvania Convention which ratified the United States Constitution. Hopkinson was the author of poems and pamphlets with wide circulation which supported the revolutionary break with Great Britain.
The June 14, 1776 flag resolution came from the Continental Marine Committee and its Navy Board both of which were chaired by Hopkinson. He is recognized as a designer of the Flag of The United States, and the Journals of the Continental Congress support this based on a series of his designs completed the previous years. All Hopkinson designs contain a shield of seven red and six white stripes on with a blue field. Unfortunately, no known sketches of the early Hopkinson flags, U.S. or Navy exist today, however the evidence is overwhelming. Thirteen stripes, red and white? Pointed stars in a blue field? According to the research, he’s the man.
FLAG CHANGES
To date, there have been twenty-six official versions of the flag. Interestingly, the arrangement of the stars varied according to the flag-maker’s preferences until 1912 when President Taft standardized the then-new-flag’s forty-eight stars into six rows of eight. We had a forty-nine-star flag in 1959-1960, as well as a fifty-star flag, and they have had standardized star patterns. Our current flag dates to July 4, 1960 with the admission of Hawaii on August 21, 1959.
For more than 248 years the United States flag has acquired quite a wide scope of symbolism. However, the flag wasn’t by any means at the earliest times crafted to be an emblem of patriotism or allegiance. Just ask Marla Miller, a professor of American History at the University of Massachusetts and author of
Betsy Ross and the Making of America.
“Flags were seen as vital articles of military equipment that were essential first and foremost for identification and communication.” Frequently up to the 1800’s, combatting armies wore similar uniform colors and, even worse, overlooking crowded battlefields with poor visibility, a commanding officer might have problems distinguishing friend of foe. The unit standard bearer, carrying the division’s flag and its number or symbols, was the first to die.
Flag makers like Ross, and she was by no means the only woman flagmaker in Revolutionary Philadelphia, thought of themselves as uniform makers, and suppliers of military goods, “said Miller.
MORE PATRIOTISM AND FLAG AS A SYMBOL IN THE CIVIL WAR
“People associate our love of the flag with 1776 and the American Revolution, but it actually has more to do with 1861 and the Civil War,” Miller concluded.
The Flag Day Holiday was originally proposed by editor Charles D. Warner in June 1861 in an editorial of the Hartford Evening Press. Warner was the co-author of The Gilded Age with Mark Twain, which was published some ten years later. His editorial title, “The Stars and Stripes shall be Recognized Wherever the American flag floats,” became famous and was certainly related to the Northern States’ response to the attack on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War two months before.
“It was a moment when the American Flag had the biggest transformation in it’s history,” Warner said. “It went from the flag as or was a minor patriotic symbol and a marker of Federal territory, buildings and ships and military use, to something that was now really widely used as a cherished and representative banner to ordinary Americans as well.”
And others pointed out, there was a commercial element, too. The Civil War was a godsend to manufacturers who were making a fortune on flags and bunting. The Flag Day Holiday was first proposed in New England, the very center of the American textile industry and received enormous support from there. New technologies made it easier to mass produce flags of any size, with greater ease. Flags could now be printed in different colors on single pieces of fabric. Prior to that, each star and stripe had to be individually sewn or stitched together onto the fabric. It was really something new.
“Flag Day began, like a lot of holidays, as something that was sort of sporadic. Some years celebrated, and some years less, until it gradually became a national thing. In 1916 on the eve of our eventual entry in the First World War, when there was a lot of concern about socialism and anarchism, it was finally recognized. It was a moment of hyper-patriotism, just as 1861 had been, and more recently 2003 and the beginning of the Iraq War,” said Miller.
In honor of Flag Day here are few facts:
- The flag always flies at the White House, Fort McHenry, and the Iwo Jima Memorial.
- There are still five American flags on the moon, but they all are probably bleached white due to the radiation from the sun.
- When two or more flags are flown from the same pole, the Stars and Stripes must be at the top
- The colors of the flag are symbolic and universal. Red symbolizes hardiness and valor, White is purity and innocence, and Blue represents diligence and justice.
