Today, the Star Spangled Banner Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin remembers when the Continental Congress on Saturday, June 14, 1777, resolved the flag of thirteen stars and stripes.
From the Congressional Record of 1917, an excerpt of the address by the Hon. Frederick C. Hicks of New York providing the history of the flag on June 14, 1917:
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The origin of the first flag, distinctly colonial and representing a union of the Colonies, is shrouded in mystery.
In October, 1775, the Continental Congress, then in session in Philadelphia, sent a committee to Cambridge to confer with Washington on military matters. It has been stated that this committee suggested the design for a flag, but there are no records to substantiate the assertion.
Neither in Washington’s correspondence nor in the report of the committee to Congress is there any reference to a new flag. Who designed the flag which Washington raised at Cambridge on January 2, 1776, is not known, but there and then was displayed the Stripes emblematic of the union of the Colonies.
The standard consisted of 13 red and white stripes, with the “union” or “king’s colors” in the canton—the familiar combination of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. It was a peculiar flag, half American and half British, for while the Colonies still acknowledged their allegiance to England they were determined that their rights should be respected even at the point of the sword.
It was not until the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, that a complete separation was decided upon, so the Cambridge flag with its 13 stripes represented the union of the Colonies in their protest against taxation without representation, while the union of crosses acknowledged their allegiance to the mother country.
This flag was variously designated as the union flag, the grand union flag, and the grand striped flag, but is now referred to as the Cambridge flag, and it seems most probable that the banner officially adopted in 1777 was copied, at least so far as the stripes are concerned, from the flag Washington unfurled the year previous.
While having no bearing on the design of the Stars and Stripes, it may be of interest to note another flag, the Eutaw flag, to which is attached a sentimental story.
Col. William Washington, a kinsman of Gen. Washington, in 1780 was ordered to Charleston, S. C., and while there fell in love with a Miss Elliot. Learning one day when the colonel was paying her a visit that his troop was without a flag, Miss Elliot, so it is related, with her scissors cut off a portion of a large damask curtain, which she afterward fringed and attached to a curtain pole and presented to him for a standard.
This flag was carried in the Battle of the Cowpens and at Eutaw Springs and is now the property of the Washington Light Horse Infantry, of Charleston.
Another flag which has a romantic history is Pulaski’s banner, now in the possession of the Maryland Historical Society.
Count Pulaski, the son of a Polish nobleman, was a soldier of fortune who, at the age of 24, found himself outlawed and his estates confiscated.
At the beginning of the Revolution he volunteered in the American Army and in 1778 was commissioned an officer in the cavalry force. Congress authorized him to raise what is known as Pulaski’s Legion, and while recruiting his corps, the Moravian Single Sisters, of Bethlehem, Pa., presented him with a banner.
It is of yellow silk, with the letters “U. S.” in the center and in a circle around them the words, in Latin, “Union makes valor.” On the reverse side, surrounding an eye, is the motto, also in Latin, “No other governs.” This banner was carried in the Battle of Savannah, when Pulaski commanded both the American and French cavalry.
The flag of Proctor’s brigade, of Westmoreland, Pa.. should also be mentioned. It is a crimson flag, cantoned with the British union jack. In the center of the field a coiled rattlesnake with 13 rattles is represented, with the familiar words “Don’t tread on me.” It is claimed that this flag was carried in the Battle of Trenton.
At the Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, the American patriots fought under a banner made of red damask on which was the word “Liberty.”
The Second New Hampshire Regiment had a buff flag in the center of which was a golden disk with 13 rays surrounded by a chain of 13 links. The disk bore the motto, “We are one.” In the canton were two crosses somewhat similar to the king’s colors.
Reference should also be made to a banner known as the “Flag of the Bucks of America,” a yellow flag with a pine tree in the center. Beneath the branches of the tree stands a deer. The canton is blue, on which 13 yellow stars are painted. It is claimed that this flag was carried in the Revolution by a regiment of Massachusetts colored troops.
The first authoritative action to establish a flag for a new sovereignty is fraught with peculiar interest, and it is regrettable that we know so little as to the origin of the Stars and Stripes.
While the Cambridge flag had the 13 stripes, there is no evidence that any flag bearing the union of stars had been in public use prior to the resolution of 1777, and it will probably never be known who designed or suggested this beautiful, distinctive, and emblematic feature of our banner.
The records of Congress are silent upon the subject and no authentic reference to it has ever been discovered in the correspondence, papers, or diaries which have been examined. It is claimed in popular tradition that the honor of making the first flag combining the Stars and Stripes belongs to Betsy Ross, a Quaker upholsteress who resided in Arch Street, Philadelphia.
It is asserted by her descendants that Congress appointed a committee composed of Gen. Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross, the latter an uncle of Mrs. Ross’s late husband, who called upon her in May or June, 1776, and commissioned her to make a flag from an imperfectly drawn design embodying the stripes and the union of 13 six-pointed stars.
As the six-pointed stars were peculiar to the British, it is said Mrs. Ross suggested that a star of five points would be more symmetrical and appropriate, and the committee at once adopted the new design.
While this story is interesting and I hope may be well founded, there is unfortunately little evidence to support it. It rests on the traditions of the Ross family and upon affidavits made by Mrs. Ross’s descendants as to their understanding of the particulars as related by Mrs. Ross herself, or by those to whom she told the story.
Unfortunately the annals of Congress make no reference to the appointment of a flag committee, and yet so important a matter must have been under consideration previous to the final adoption of the flag.
In Washington’s correspondence and writings no mention is made of a visit to Mrs. Ross’s house or when or by whom the first flag was made. Neither do any of the historians of the Revolutionary period or any contemporaneous writers, so far as I have been able to discover, throw light upon the subject.
The principal argument against the story has been that the flag evidently was not used during any portion of 1776 and was not adopted until a year after Mrs. Ross is supposed to have made it.
It is further claimed by those who discredit the story that Washington when he caused the Declaration of Independence to be read to his troops in New York, on July 10, 1776, would have raised this new flag had such a flag been in existence, instead of the Cambridge banner, which was unfurled.
Those who have had experience in congressional matters will not be convinced by the argument of delay in not adopting the new flag at once, and had Mrs. Ross made the flag it is not probable that Washington or anyone else would have used it until Congress had approved it.
Whatever uncertainty may exist as to the true origin of the Stars and Stripes, we know that Congress, on June 14, 1777, adopted the following resolution:
Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be 13 stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.
This is the first legislative action of which there is any record establishing a national flag for the sovereign United States of America declared independent July 4, 1776, and proclaiming the official birth of a new constellation as the symbol of their Union.
Thus was born the Stars and Stripes, which through all the ages shall be the emblem of liberty and justice for all mankind.
The following description has frequently been referred to as a quotation from Washington’s writings but I have been unable to verify it.
“We take the star from heaven, the red from the mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing liberty.”
It has been said that—
Every nation has its symbolic ensign 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 unum. 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 Covenanter’s banner in Scotland, significant also of the league and covenant of the United Colonies against oppression, incidentally 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.
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.
I doubt if these poetic and fanciful descriptions, however, have any basis other than the imagination of the writer.
While the flag was adopted June 14, 1777, it was not until September 3 following that Congress officially promulgated the design.
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The Star Spangled Banner Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin shows with a modern image of the thirteen stars and stripes waving in a breeze.
