THE ORIGIN OF THE STARS AND STRIPES.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.")
Sta,—I trust that I shall not seem ungracious in taking exception to a single statement in your friendly and generous article on "Anglo-American Peace" in your issue of December 21st, in which, speaking of Sulgrave Manor, you say, "On the walls of the house may still be seen the Washington coat-of-arms which was the origin of the Stars and Stripes."
That theory of the origin of the American Flag had at one time some vogue in this country, but is now almost universally discredited, on grounds which seem quite convincing. There is not a shred of evidence to support it. It is true that the Washington escutcheon does display a device of several bars with three pierced molets, and thus may be imagined to hear some resemblance to the shield in the American coat-of-arms ; but this resemblance is no proof of origin, and any inference which may be drawn from it is far too slight to withstand the force of positive testimony to an entirely different origin of the Stars and Stripes.
If resemblances are to be regarded, it may be observed in the first place that the British and American flags are of the same colours—red, white, and blue ; and in the second place that the British flag was the first, or the first important, flag in the world to be formed with a canton—or union—in one corner of the field, that that design was imitated in the Massachusetts "Pine Tree Flag " and other colonial emblems before the revolution, and that it was adopted in the Stars and Stripa% which was thus the second national flag in the world to be thus arranged. These two circumstances are suggestive, but still stronger evidence remains.
In the fall of 1775, after the battle of Bunker Hill bad been fought under the Pine Tree Flag, and it was apparent that further and more serious military operations were impending, the Continental Congress chose George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the united forces of the thirteen colonies. At the same time it was felt that a new flag was needed for that army. Thitherto each colony had had its own flag—Massachusetts the Pine Tree, South Carolina the rattlesnake, &c.—and the troops of each had used its own flag in whatever military operations they bad engaged in. But a united army needed a common flag, which would be recognized as the standard of all the colonies. A committee, of which Benjamin Franklin, who had designed the Rattlesnake Flag of South Carolina, is said to have been chairman, was constituted to prepare such a flag, and the result was the "Grand Union Flag" which Washington raised at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on assuming command of the army, on January 1st, 1776. This historic flag displayed the Union Jack of Great Britain in its canton, but had a field of alternate red and white stripes, thirteen in number, precisely like that of the present American flag. The committee had simply taken the British flag and drawn six white stripes across its red field. That was the first American flag, and it formed a most obvious and unmistakable connecting link between the British flag and the Stars and Stripes. It was called the Grand Union Flag, and retained the Union Jack, because even at that date Washington, Franklin, and, indeed, most of the colonial leaders still hoped to preserve the Union with Great Britain. That flag, with the Union Jack in the canton and thirteen stripes in the field, was carried through the campaigns of 1776 on Long Island, on Manhattan Island, across New Jersey, and at Trenton and Princeton.
Then, independence baying been declared, it was thought desirable to get rid of the Union Jack, which had become meaningless, and to have a flag which would denote separation from Great Britain, or at least would retain no denotement of the union which no longer existed. In the early spring of 1777 Congress appointed as a committee to revise the flag George Washington, Robert Morris—the financier of the revolution—and Colonel George Ross. Washington himself, being an accomplished draughtsman, prepared the design. The thirteen stripes in the field needed no change. They well represented the thirteen colonies. Moreover, they were familiar and favoured in the Rattlesnake Flag of South Carolina, which had been adopted as the naval flag of all the colonies, and which consisted of a field of thirteen stripes, with a rattlesnake diagonally extended across it. Washington therefore contented himself with removing the Union Jack from the canton and putting in its place a "new constellation" of thirteen white stars in a circle on a blue ground. This design was made in fabric by Mrs. Elizabeth Ross, sisterin-law of Colonel Ross, and was adopted by Congress on June 14th, 1777, and thereafter was the national flag of America, for all uses, in army and navy and elsewhere. Later, when the first two new States were added to the Union, it was changed in 1795 to a flag of fifteen stripes and fifteen stars, and remained in that form for many years. It was that flag of fifteen stripes which was borne in the war of 1812, the centenary of which is now being celebrated, and it was upon it that Francis Scott Key wrote the national song, "The StarSpangled Banner." In 1818, however, the design was changed back to that of thirteen stripes, with as many stars as there were States—now forty-eight.
These facts should be sufficient proof that the Stars and Stripes came not from the Washington shield but from the British flag. But two more items to the same effect may be adduced. One is that Washington, in reporting the design to Congress, in June 1777, is said explicitly to have declared that such was its origin. "We take the red from our Mother Country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her." This sentiment, by the way, was copied by the revolutionists of New Granada, or Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, under Miranda and Bolivar, when they adopted a flag of red, blue, and yellow in horizontal bars ; saying that the red and yellow—the Spanish colours-el represented Spain, and the blue stripe between them represented the ocean which separated the revolted colonies from her. The second item is this, that it is quite incompatible with all that we know of Washington that he should have adopted, or permitted the adoption of, his own family emblem as the standard of the new nation, and that he should have dissembled the fact. Washington was modest, not vain, and sincere, not deceitful. The theory that he copied the Stars and Stripes from the Sulgrave shield would imply that be sought to magnify himself and his family, and that he was guilty of duplicity. Such imputations upon him would be intolerable.
Permit me to trespass further upon your space in order to make the suggestion—though perhaps the point is sufficiently obvious without it—that there could be no more gratifying reflection than this, that just as the American Republic is a direct offspring of Great Britain, so the American Flag is a direct derivative from the British Flag. The Stars and Stripes must thus be regarded as a perpetual token of the origin of the nation and a perpetual tribute to Great Britain as America's Mother Country. That is infinitely better than having the flag a mere reminder of a single man or family, no matter how illustrious.—I am, Sir, &c.,
WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON. Firleigh, Hall, New Providence, N.J., U.S.A.
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