Flag Day

The creation of an American nation from the thirteen colonies that rebelled against Great Britain in 1776 was not easily accomplished. Prior to their decision to end their connection with the mother country, the colonies had enjoyed separate existences and had established few intercolonial ties. However, their common struggle against British rule brought the colonies more than independence. Gradually, the colonies came to the realization of a national identity. As a symbol of this new union, the former British colonies adopted a national flag on June 14, 1777.

During the initial battles of the American Revolution, the rebels fought under the banners of the individual colonies or even those of local militia companies. For example, colonials from Massachusetts marched under banners depicting a pine tree emblem, while some units of minutemen in Pennsylvania and Virginia gave their allegiance to a flag bearing a coiled rattlesnake and the warning “Don't Tread on Me.” Other early revolutionary flags included the banner adopted by the associators of Hanover, Pennsylvania, showing a rifleman and carrying the words “Liberty or Death “; the flag of two militia units at Charleston, South Carolina, proclaimed “Liberty” in white letters on a blue field; and the so-called Bunker Hill Flag, a British-blue flag that the colonists modified by the addition of a pine tree to the St. George's Cross.

Such a great diversity of flags reflected a similar lack of unity in the rebels' efforts against Great Britain. The first “national” flag was the Continental Colors, also known as the Grand Union Flag, and became so on a purely unofficial basis. Commander in Chief George Washington designated it to be flown to celebrate the formation of the Continental army, which was announced on New Year's Day in 1776. The flag, with thirteen alternating red and white stripes and a field bearing the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, may have been in use elsewhere as early as the fall of 1775. The Grand Union Flag, as it became known, was an appropriate selection. The colonists had not yet declared independence, and the presence of the British Union design in the field symbolized many Americans' hope of eventual reconciliation with Britain. However, at the same time, the pattern of thirteen stripes, one for each colony, was tacit recognition of the rebels' increasing unity of purpose.

The Grand Union Flag was first raised on January 1, 1776, on Prospect Hill in Somerville, near Washington's headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the months that followed, the banner, which bore no symbol associated with a particular colony or locality and which was thus a truly national design, won wide acceptance. The flag flew from colonial masts along the entire Atlantic seaboard. However, the Continental Congress's declaration of independence in July made the banner, incorporating the British Union Flag in its design, obsolete. Thus, the congress never officially accepted the flag. Nevertheless, the Grand Union Flag's significance as this country's first national flag should not be underestimated. In recognition of its importance, a granite memorial tower and observatory was dedicated on Prospect Hill in 1903. Inscribed on its side were the words:

From this eminence on January 1, 1776, the flag of the United Colonies, bearing thirteen stripes and the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew first waved defiance to a foe.

Concerned with the business of conducting the war against Great Britain, the Continental Congress did not give its attention to the matter of an official national banner until almost a year after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Then, on June 14, 1777, Congress resolved:

That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union [field] be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.

The 1777 legislation provided only the barest specifications for the new flag. It did not limit the number of points in the design of the stars, it did not set forth a particular arrangement for the stars and stripes, nor did it designate a designer for the national banner. Numerous contradictory and unsubstantiated legends attribute the creation of the first Stars and Stripes flag to such various personages as John Hulbert of Long Island, New York; John Paul Jones, the American naval hero; and Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. However, tradition generally credits Betsy Ross with making the original Stars and Stripes banner. The story of the Philadelphia upholsterer dates from 1870, when her grandson, William J. Canby, read a paper before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Canby based his report on conversations with Ross that had taken place shortly before her death in 1836. At the time of these talks, she was eighty-four and her grandson was eleven. In 1857 Canby wrote down his grandmother's recollections, and in 1870 he published her story, ninety-four years after the fact. The appealing vignette of General Washington visiting the needlewoman quickly caught the popular imagination, and Ross's name became linked with the banner of thirteen alternate red and white stripes and a blue field bearing a circle of thirteen five-pointed stars. Historians, however, have not been able to corroborate Canby's report. The only provable facts known about Ross are that she was a patriot upholsterer living in Philadelphia during the American Revolution, and that some time before May 1777 she made several Pennsylvania naval flags of unknown design.

Just as the identity of the designer and maker of the original Stars and Stripes flag is shrouded in mystery, the exact date of its first raising is also unknown. Authorities do agree that the flag gained increasing acceptance during the summer of 1777, and most believe that rebel forces first fought under the flag at the battle of Bennington, Vermont, in August 1777. The Bennington flag is recognized as the oldest Stars and Stripes banner. Its design reflects the latitude the Continental Congress allowed flag makers in its specifications. The blue field is nine stripes in width; eleven of its thirteen seven-pointed stars are arranged in an arch over the numerals “76” on the field, while the remaining two occupy the upper corners. Interesting as well is the fact that the highest and lowest of the flag's thirteen stripes are white rather than red.

Historians do not know if the Continental army regularly fought under the Stars and Stripes following its introduction on the battlefield at Bennington, but there is no doubt that the American navy consistently flew the flag from the masts of its ships. Indeed, Navy Commander John Paul Jones once wrote:

The Flag and I are twins.…So long as we can float, we shall float together. If we must sink, we shall go down as one.

Jones was true to the flag. When the commander sailed his sloop, the Ranger, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on November 1, 1777, the national banner went to sea for the first time. When French men-of-war saluted the ship as it left Quiberon Bay in France on February 14, 1778, foreign vessels acknowledged the Stars and Stripes for the first time.

Although many flag “firsts” are associated with exploits of the American Revolution, it was the winning of independence in 1783 that made the Stars and Stripes the legally recognized banner of the United States. With nationhood, however, some changes were effected in the flag; for as the young republic matured and expanded, its flag reflected its growth. In January 1794, shortly after the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union, Congress made the first of several alterations in the flag legislation of 1777. Yet, like similar enactments that have followed during the course of American history, the 1794 law (which added two stars and two stripes to the banner to represent the two new states) did not change the flag's basic design of stars and stripes.

The 15-star and 15-stripe flag approved in 1794 served as this country's banner from 1795 to 1818, and is perhaps best remembered as Francis Scott Key's inspiration for the national anthem. The circumstances surrounding Scott's writing were quite dramatic. Harsh fighting took place between British and American forces during the War of 1812, and a particularly bitter battle occurred from September 12 to September 14, 1814, when the British attacked Baltimore, Maryland. Key was aboard a warship in the city's harbor throughout the conflict, and at the break of dawn on September 14 he sought some assurance that the enemy had not penetrated the American defenses. The sight of the national flag flying over Fort McHenry quickly quieted his fears, and his elation upon seeing the flag prompted him to write the famous verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In 1931 Congress officially adopted Key's song as the national anthem.

Upon the admission of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union, two new stars and two new stripes had been added to the flag. However, in 1818 so many new states carved from the Old Northwest Territory were either applying for statehood or about to do so that Congress realized it would no longer be practical to increase the number of stripes in the flag. For this reason, Congress passed a third law affecting the national banner. The measure, which went into operation on July 4, 1818, fixed the number of stripes in the flag at 13 and provided for the automatic addition of a new star for each state entering the Union thereafter.

Following the adoption of the 1818 legislation, Congress approved no significant flag law for almost one hundred years. During the remainder of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, flags were made according to the prescribed stars and stripes design, but there were still no official specifications regarding the placement and proportions of the stars and stripes. Then in 1912 President William Howard Taft issued two executive orders that ended the latitude previously allowed flagmakers. Taft's orders established the proportions of the height and width of the flag and its field, and the proportionate width of each stripe and diameter of each star. Also beginning in 1912, the government began to standardize the arrangement of the stars on the flag's field.

As the visible symbol of the nation, the Stars and Stripes rapidly won the respect of American citizens. Slower to gain popular acceptance was the establishment of formal ceremonies centering around the banner. In fact the first Flag Day observance did not take place until June 14, 1861, almost a century after the official adoption of the flag. It occurred then only because the people of Hartford, Connecticut, wished to express their support for the Union during the opening days of the Civil War. In 1877 Congress ordered that the flag be flown over public buildings every June 14.

During the final years of the 19th century, observances of Flag Day on June 14 won only gradual recognition. In 1889 George Bolch, the principal of a free kindergarten for the poor in New York City, decided to hold patriotic exercises on June 14. The ceremonies at Bolch's school attracted considerable attention, and within a short time the New York State legislature passed a law providing that:

It shall be the duty of the State Superintendent of Public Schools to prepare a program making special provision for observance in the public schools of…Flag Day.

In accordance with this act the superintendent ordered that the flag be displayed on every public school building beginning at nine o'clock in the morning, and that appropriate patriotic exercises also be held.

Citizens in other areas of the nation also worked to promote Flag Day. William T. Kerr, who resided first in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later in Philadelphia, is recognized by many as the Father of Flag Day. As a schoolboy, Kerr began to urge the observance of the day, and his enthusiasm never waned. Interest was also shown by Bernard J. Cigrand of Chicago, a navy officer and flag historian. Cigrand had a leading role in persuading the American Flag Day Association, which was founded in his home city in 1894, to schedule its observances on June 14 rather than on the third Saturday in June as had been its original intention. Still another person closely associated with establishing Flag Day was Joseph H. Hart, a businessperson in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Hart led a campaign to urge that a special flag day be set aside, and as a result of his efforts the Allentown Flag Day Association was formed in 1907.

Because of the work of Kerr and the others, the desire to celebrate Flag Day came to the attention of the American public. As early as 1893 the mayor of Philadelphia ordered that the flag be displayed on all city buildings on June 14. Four years later, the governor of New York similarly commanded that the flag be flown over all public structures on that day. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation asking the nation to observe June 14 as Flag Day, and President Calvin Coolidge acted similarly in 1927. It was not until August 3, 1949, however that Congress finally agreed to a joint resolution, and President Harry S. Truman officially designated June 14 as Flag Day. Programs on the day traditionally center around the “Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag,” which was written by James B. Upham and Francis Bellamy in 1892.

Loehrke, Janet. "What Is Flag Day? A Visual Guide to the Meaning and History of the June 14 Holiday." USA Today, 10 June 2023, www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/06/10/flag-day-2023-celebration-explained/70273035007/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

"Today in History--June 14." Library of Congress, 14 June 2023, www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-14/. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

Wolters, Claire. "Flag Day's Long-and-Surprising History Explained." National Geographic, 14 June 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/06/10/flag-day-2023-celebration-explained/70273035007/ . Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.