Part 7 (1/2)
The Flag of Columbus--Early Settlements in North America--the Birth of the United States--Early Revolutionary and State Flags--the Pine-tree Flag--the Rattle-snake Flag--the Stars and Stripes--Early Variations of it--the Arms of Was.h.i.+ngton--Entry of New States into the Union--the Eagle--the Flag of the President--Secession of the Southern States--State Flags again--the Stars and Bars--the Southern Cross--the Birth of the German Empire--the Influence of War Songs--Flags of the Empire--Flags of the smaller German States--the Austro-Hungary Monarchy--The Flags of Russia--The Crosses of St. Andrew and St. George again--the Flags of France--St. Martin--The Oriflamme--the Fleurs-de-lys--Their Origin--the White Cross--the White Flag of the Bourbons--the Tricolor--the Red Flag--the Flags of Spain--of Portugal--the Consummation of Italian Unity--the Arms of Savoy--the Flags of Italy--of the Temporal Power of the Papacy--the Flag of Denmark--its Celestial Origin--the Flags of Norway and Sweden--of Switzerland--Cantonal Colours--the Geneva Convention--the Flags of Holland--of Belgium--of Greece--the Crescent of Turkey--the Tughra--the Flags of Roumania, Servia, and Bulgaria--Flags of Mexico and of the States of Southern and Central America--of j.a.pan--the Rising Sun--the Chrysanthemum--the Flags of China, Siam, and Corea--of Sarawak--of the Orange Free State, Liberia, Congo State, and the Transvaal Republic.
The well-known Ensign (Fig. 146) of the United States of America is the outcome of many changes; the last of a long series of National, State, and local devices.
The first flag planted on American ground was borne thither by Christopher Columbus, in the year 1497, and bore on its folds the arms of Leon and Castile, a flag divided into four and having upon it, each twice repeated, the lion of Leon and the Castle of Castile: the first red on white, the second white on red. These arms form a portion of the present Spanish Standard, and may be seen in the upper staff corner in Fig. 194. In this same year--1497--Newfoundland was discovered, but the first English settlement on the mainland was not made until Sir Walter Raleigh took possession of a tract of country in 1584, naming it Virginia, after Elizabeth, the Virgin-Queen he served, and hoisting the Standard of Her Majesty, bearing in its rich blazonry (Fig. 22) the ruddy lions of England quartered with the golden lilies of France. The Dutch established themselves, in the year 1614, in what is now the State of New York; the French, having already founded a colony in Canada in 1534, took possession of Louisiana, so called after their King Louis, in 1718, while Florida, at first French, became Spanish, and in 1763 was ceded to England. {87}
Three s.h.i.+ps, bearing the earliest Pilgrim Fathers from England to America, had already sailed from England in the year 1606, and these were followed by the historic _Mayflower_ and the _Plymouth Rock_, in 1620. While these exiles for conscience sake established for themselves a new England in the west, a colony of Scotchmen in the year 1622 took possession of a tract of land which they named Nova Scotia. Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other colonies were successively formed by parties of Englishmen--the final outcome of peaceful settlement, or the arbitrament of the sword, being that the greater part of the eastern seaboard, and the country beyond it, came under the sway of the English Crown, until injudicious taxation and ill-advised repression led at length to open discontent and disloyalty, and finally to revolution and the birth of the great Republic of the West.
So long as the Colonists owed allegiance to the British crown, one would naturally have taken for granted that they would have been found beneath the national flag, but this was not altogether the case. In the early days of New England the Puritans strongly objected to the red cross on the flag: not from any disloyalty to the old country, but from a conscientious objection to the use of a symbol which they deemed idolatrous. By the year 1700, though the Cross of St. George was still the leading device, the different colonies began to employ special devices to distinguish their vessels from those of England and of each other.[57] This, though it indicated a certain jealousy and independence amongst the colonies themselves, was no proof of any desire for separation from the old country, and even when, later on, the dispute between King and Colonists became acute, we find them parting from the old flag with great reluctance. Fig.
142 is a very good ill.u.s.tration of this; its date is 1775.
In the early stages of the Revolution each section adopted a flag of its own, and it was only later on, when the desirability of union and uniformity became evident, that the necessity for one common flag was felt.
Thus, the people of Ma.s.sachusetts ranged themselves beneath banners bearing pine trees; the men of South Carolina went in for rattle-snakes; the New Yorkers adopted a white flag with a black beaver thereon; the Rhode Islanders had a white flag with a blue anchor upon it; and, in like manner, each contingent adopted its special device.
In Fig. 144, one of the flags of the insurgents at Bunker's Hill, {88} June 17th, 1775, we see that the Cross of St. George is still preserved, and it might well fly in company with Fig. 67, a flag of the London Trained Bands, except that in the corner we see the pine tree. In Fig. 145 the English emblem has dropped out and the pine tree has become much more conspicuous, and in Figs. 147 and 148 all suggestion of St. George or of the red or blue Ensigns has disappeared. This arboreal device was not by any means a new one to the men of Ma.s.sachusetts. We find a mint established at Boston as early as 1651, busily engaged in coining the silver captured from the Spaniards by the Buccaneers. On one side was the date and value of the coin, and, on the reverse, a tree in the centre and ”In Ma.s.sachusetts”
around it. It must be remembered that at the time there was no king to resent this encroachment on the royal prerogative, and no notice was taken of it by the Parliament or by Cromwell. There was a tacit allowance of it afterwards, even by Charles II., for more than twenty years. It will be remembered that on his enquiry into the matter he was told by some courtier that the device was intended for the Royal Oak, and the question was allowed to drop.
South Carolina adopted the rattle-snake flag at the suggestion of one Gadsden, a delegate to the General Congress of the South Carolina Convention in 1776. On a yellow ground was placed a rattlesnake, having thirteen rattles; the reptile was coiled ready to strike, and beneath was the warning motto, ”Don't tread on me.” The number thirteen had reference to the thirteen revolted States, as it was originally proposed that this flag should be the navy flag for all the States. As an accessory to a portrait of Commodore Hopkins, ”Commander-in-chief of the American fleet,”
we see a flag of thirteen alternate red and white stripes. It has no canton, but undulating diagonally across the stripes is a rattlesnake. The idea was not altogether a new one, as we find the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, in commenting twenty-five years previously on the iniquity of the British Government in sending its convicts to America, suggesting as a set off that ”a cargo of rattlesnakes should be distributed in St. James's Park, Spring Gardens, and other places of pleasure.” At the commencement of any great struggle by a revolting people there is often a great variety of device, and it is only after a while that such a multiplicity is found to be a danger. Hence we find that prior to the yellow rattlesnake flag, South Carolina had, with equal enthusiasm, adopted the blue flag with the crescent moon that we have figured in No. 158.[58] {89}
In the year 1775 a committee was appointed to consider the question of a single flag for the thirteen States. This ensign, though it went far towards moulding these different sections into the United States, was a curious ill.u.s.tration of that reluctance that we have already referred to, to sever themselves finally from the Old Country, as the Committee recommended the retention of the Union in the upper corner next the staff, but subst.i.tuted for the broad red field of the rest of the flag thirteen horizontally disposed stripes, alternately red and white, the emblems of the union into one of the thirteen colonies in their struggle against oppression. We have this represented in Fig. 57. It was also the flag of the East India Company.
On the final declaration of Independence, when the severance from the Old Country was irrevocable, and the colonists became a nation, the question of a national flag was one of the points awaiting solution; but it was not till about a year afterwards that a decision was come to. The vessels commissioned by Was.h.i.+ngton flew the flag we have figured in No. 147; this was approved in April, 1776, and remained in use some little time, as did also the one represented in Fig. 149. Sometimes we find the cross and pine-tree removed and the whole flag nothing but the red and white stripes.
This flag composed of stripes alone was not peculiar to the American navy, as a flag of similar design was for a long time a well-known signal in the British fleet, being that used for the red division to form up into line of battle.
Anyone looking over a collection of the common pottery made from about a hundred and fifty years ago up to comparatively recent times will find that stirring contemporary events are very freely introduced--sea-fights, portraits of leading statesmen, generals, and so forth. These are often caricatures, as, for example, the hundreds that may be seen in our various museums and private collections derisive of ”Boney,” while others are as historically correct as the potter's knowledge and skill could compa.s.s.
Anyone visiting the Corporation Museum at Brighton will find a jug bearing the head of Zebulon M. Pike, an American general; trophies of flags are grouped around this, but the only flag with any device upon it is a plain striped one. Another that bears the head of Commodore Decatur, U.S.N., has below it a cannon, on the left a trophy of flags and weapons, and on the right a s.h.i.+p; and a very similar jug may be seen in honour of Commodore Parry. In each of these cases the flags in the trophies and on the s.h.i.+ps are simply striped.
On August 14th, 1777, Congress resolved ”that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternately red and white, and that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing {90} a new constellation.”[59] This was the birth of the national flag, ”the stars and stripes,” and it would appear at first sight to be a final settlement of the device, though in practice the result did not work out at all uniformly, the number of stripes being unequal. If we commence at the top with a white one, we shall have seven white and six red, whereas if we begin with a red stripe we shall get seven red and six white. Each of these renderings was for some years in use, until it was authoritatively laid down that the latter was the arrangement to be adopted. It seems a minor point, but any of our readers who will re-draw Fig. 146 and transpose the colours of the stripes, so that the upper and lower edges of the flag are white instead of red, will be surprised to note how so apparently trivial a change will affect the appearance of the flag.[60] In like manner the stars were sometimes made with six points, and at others with five. Even so late as 1779, we find such a striking variation as a flag bearing stars with eight points, and its stripes alternately red, blue, and white. The coins issued during the presidency of Was.h.i.+ngton had five-pointed stars on them, but later on they had six points. n.o.body seems now to know why this change was made.
As nothing was said in this resolution of Congress as to the arrangement of the stars on the blue field, a further opening for variety of treatment was found. In some of the early flags they were arranged to represent the letters U.S., in others they were all placed in a circle, in others again they were dispersed irregularly, so as the better to suggest a constellation; and it was finally ordered that they should be placed in parallel horizontal rows, as we now see them.
Though the stars did not appear in the American flag until 1777, we find in a poem in the _Ma.s.sachusetts Spy_ of March 10th, 1774, on the outbreak of the rebellion, the lines--
”The American ensign now sparkles a star Which shall shortly flame wide through the skies.”
{91}
This poetic and prophetic flight is the earliest suggestion of the stars in the national flag of the United States.
It has been held that the American Eagle and the stars and stripes of the national flag were suggested by the crest and arms of the Was.h.i.+ngton family. This statement has been often made; hence we find an American patriot writing:--”It is not a little curious that the poor, worn-out rag of feudalism, as many would count it, should have expanded into the bright and ample banner that now waves on every sea.” But that it should be so seems by no means an established fact. No reference is made to it in Was.h.i.+ngton's correspondence, or in that of any of his contemporaries. The arms of the Was.h.i.+ngton family are a white s.h.i.+eld having two horizontal red bars, and above these a row of three red stars; and this certainly bears some little resemblance to the American flag, but how much is mere coincidence, and how much is adaptation it is impossible to say. These arms may be seen on a bra.s.s in Solgrave Church, Huntingdons.h.i.+re, on the tomb of Laurence Was.h.i.+ngton, the last lineal ancestor who was buried in England. He was twice Mayor of Northampton, in 1533 and in 1546, and the first President of the United States was his great-great-grandson. He was a man of considerable influence, and on the dissolution of the monasteries Henry gave him the Priory of St. Andrews, Northampton. In the troublous times that succeeded, his son John went to America, and lived for some twenty years on the banks of the Potomac.
Another theory that has been advanced is that the blue quarter was taken from the blue banner of the Scotch Covenanters, and was therefore significant of the Solemn League and Covenant of the United Colonies against oppression, while the stripes were a blending of the red colours used in the army with the white flags used in the navy. We give the theory for what it is worth, which we venture to say is not very much; but as it was advanced by an American writer, we give it place.
Should our readers care to consider yet another theory, they may learn that the genesis of the star-spangled banner was very much less prosaic. Prose has it that a Committee of Council, accompanied by General Was.h.i.+ngton, called on Mrs. Ross, an upholstress of Arch Street, Philadelphia, and engaged her to make a flag from a rough sketch that they brought with them, that she in turn suggested one or two practical modifications, and that at her wish Was.h.i.+ngton re-drew it there and then, that she at once set to work on it, and in a few hours the first star-spangled flag was floating in the breeze; but the poet ignores the services of Mrs. Ross altogether, and declares that {92}
”When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of Night And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure celestial white With streakings of the morning light: Then from his mansion in the sun She called her eagle-bearer down And gave into his mighty hand The symbol of her chosen land.”
This view was expressed by another great American in the words:--”As at the early dawn the stars s.h.i.+ne forth even while it grows light, and then, as the sun advances, that light breaks out into banks and streaming lines of colour, the glowing red and intense light striving together and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent, so on the American flag stars and beams of light s.h.i.+ne out together. Where this flag comes, and men behold it, they see in its sacred emblazoning 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!”