Happy US Flag Day!
This was probably the first flag flown in North America.
It’s the hrafnsmerki, the raven flag of Leif Ericsson, who landed in Newfoundland around 1000 C.E. He didn’t take any selfies of it when he landed here, in the New World, but it was in general use back in Viking-land, so it’s generally thought to be his flag.
Thus, we kick off Flag Day. I’m not going to talk about “fake news” Betsy Ross much. I pledge allegiance to my blog specifically to NOT SHOW the one that we’ve all grown up thinking was the first flag. I know it makes our nostalgic hearts go pitter patter because flags have a way of doing that, but it was probably first flown outside her tourist attraction home in 1870. Meanwhile, let’s discuss some actual American flag history.
We get all worked up about these symbolic bits of cloth. Perhaps because we have separated church and state (in theory) in the U.S., we had to substitute other sacred objects as stand-ins. You know how this works. As irritated as we get at our governmental leaders and their faux patriotism, our hearts beat faster when we see Old Glory, that familiar 50-state Stars and Stripes, carried into an Olympic stadium or even plastered on a souvenir hat in Mazatlan. That’s my flag! My identity!
What were the precise set of circumstances that created that flag out of the first flags? And why June 14?
O Say Can You See Our Totem?
The raven flag, used by the Vikings on their ships, in their battles, and stamped on their coins, was meant to symbolize Odin. Odin had two ravens: Thought and Memory. They represented intelligence and wisdom, and because they were seen after battles, they were considered good omens associated with victory in war. To fly the raven was to invoke the gods and to accept that your group was divinely inspired.
The Romans put eagles (aquliae) on the top of their military poles, the battle standard, the signa. I mentioned in a previous post how the standards were blessed by priests. They represented the divine in battle, and thus might be decorated with roses on holidays. After a battle loss in Germany, when the Roman eagle standards were captured, the Emperor Augustus was extremely upset. The historian Suetonius says that he was so distraught that he refused to cut his hair for months and would walk about the imperial residence, dashing his head against the walls and doors crying, “Give me back my Eagles!”
Animals or plants were the most ancient of these symbols, known as totems. They represented the clan, the tribe, the group–sacred objects. They reflected the ancestry of the group as well as being favored by a particular god among others. We don’t know if the Egyptians or Mesopotamians put symbolic animals on flags because the cloth has not survived, but we know they put carvings atop poles.
Some of the earliest documented flags were described in ancient China, 12th century B.C.E. The founder of the Chou dynasty allegedly had a white flag attached to his chariot and flown above the palace. One story says that another prince was severely punished because he did not lower his region’s flag as the emperor’s white one approach. Thus, we have two examples of how an object signifies the monarch and the place. To lose the totem was to lose the symbol of power; to lower your own totem in front of another’s was to reflect their superior power over you. To drop the totem or flag was to demonstrate defeat.
Ahoy There Ruler of Jiwana-Kahuripan!
Colors also came to be symbolic as well. Because purple was a rare color to obtain, it was reserved for aristocrats and later royalty in Rome. In Java, it was red and white bestowed on the nobility, the Jiwana-Kahuripan. The carriage of the mother of the king in the Majapahit empire was decorated with red and white (gula-kalapa) banners and stripes to indicate she was the most exalted among the royals.
Java is the largest island in Indonesia, and its Majapahit empire, a 300 year seafaring power ruled that area from 1292 to 1527. They flew their banner atop their ships, a red-and-white striped banner… oh now you see why I went to the South Pacific!
The flag below was the one flown on the ships of the British East India Company. The BEIC and the Dutch East India Company were two of the large trading conglomerates that sent ships out around Africa and across the Indian Ocean, trading for tea, spices like rare cinnamon and vanilla, and other goods from China to India. It’s thought that the British corporation paired the red and white stripes of the South Pacific and their own Union Jack in the upper left to get favored trading status.
Flags serve multiple purposes. Flags can be symbols of power for a regional leader, and certainly had an important function representing them in battle. You rallied ’round the flag boys because that was where you needed to be on the field, near your commander. It was raised high so that you could see it. To see where a particular flag of a particular group was moving–the Duke of Gloucester, the elephant contingent of Hannibal, the Light Horse of Philadelphia–was to see how the battle played out. If a flag or standard were to fall, it meant uh-oh, there goes the Clan of Clannaidordoch.
On ships, flags were the identifier from afar. Other ships identified you by the flag. That included pirate flags. Sometimes pirates would operate covertly, masquerading under a trading or non-combatant flag until they got close, then they would raise the Jolly Roger. Another uh-oh.
This would be why the BEIC, a trading company, would develop and fly a flag, like the one above, as their communicator. Kind of like flying a Coca-Cola logo or driving an Amazon truck.
The Flags of the Colonies
The Founding Fathers, George, John, and Ben, didn’t say exactly why they selected the same design as the British East India company for the first American colonial flag, but it was selected and it was the same design. (Franklin refers to it in a 1775 speech). It was generally called the Continental Union flag, in use from 1775-1777, both a nod to England and a desire to have a banner. There’s a little dispute about where and when it was actually raised, but it was definitely documented as the flag of the Continental Congress. Vexillologists–the flag experts–like to point out that this was not quite the BEIC flag because this flag always had thirteen stripes, whereas the BEIC flag might have any odd number, from nine to fifteen. Sure, totally different.
Even so, this flag was not carried around by George Washington during the military campaigns. During the Revolutionary War, the soldiers came from specific states or regions, and they flew their own flags. For example, during the Battle of Trenton, when Washington crossed the Delaware and surprised the sleeping Hessians on Christmas Day, the flag below was carried by the Light Horse of the City of Philadelphia.
The company was cavalry, thus, the horse. On the left is an indigenous American representing the colonies with 13 feathers in hair, with not a hint irony, oh no. On the right is an angel, trumpeting victory, a symbol of the divine. The motto below reads FOR THESE WE STRIVE, these ideals, this region, these gods. Originally, this flag’s canton, that section in the upper left, had the Union Jack, but the Light Horse replaced it in 1776 with the stripes (red has faded to blue, ha!) to represent the 13 colonies.
When battles were fought, there would be a multiple of these banners which the generals would place. They didn’t seem themselves as one place, other than “the place independently breaking away from mean old King George.” But they thought of themselves as a loose group of cities and states fighting for a common cause. They didn’t think of themselves as America, even if their document said US of A on it.
Hopkinson Brings the Stars
In the early summer of 1777, the Continental Congress met to figure out how they would govern–without a King! for sure! but … how else? They’d declared independence as a group of independent states, powerful regional groups with shared economic interests and borders. They started writing on the Articles of Confederation, which would loosely define their rules relative to each other, but not much else. Meanwhile, the British were marching around, winning battles, and hungrily eyeing Philadelphia (and eventually would take the city, forcing Congress to flee to Baltimore).
In the middle of their debate, they stopped to pass a curious resolution: creating a new United States of America flag: “Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” Other than the British breathing down their necks, it’s not why they picked June 14, 1777. They did want to have a single flag to fly on ships, even if they didn’t plan to carry this flag into the Revolutionary battles.
Stars, also known as mullets, were very well known in heraldry. Since they had officially broken off their engagement with Britain, they wanted to replace the Union Jack up in the canton, so why not blue and white? Arguably, they already had the blue from the Union Jack, but just didn’t want to keep the Xs and +s pattern. There probably wasn’t all THAT much debate about why blue with white stars. At the time, they didn’t specify how the stars should be arranged.
Francis Hopkinson, a member of that Congress, is credited with creating the first flag design. He didn’t draw it, so the illustration above is a guess. He gets credit because he sent them a bill. There are no remaining physical flags that he created (no “smoking gun flags” so to speak), but there was back and forth about payment in more than one primary source. Congress didn’t pay him, actually, but historians think that’s because Congress thought that being an aristocrat and one among them, that he should have done it for free. Like, if you’re rich, you don’t need to bill us (Are you listening Elon?)
Commemorative Truth
One bit of “evidence” on this early flag scholars mention is in the above painting. This the Death of General Mercer, a Scots-American commander of the 3rd Virginia Regiment, in the failed battle at Princeton, January 1777. But it’s a curious inaccuracy, invented by painter John Trumbull in 1795, since the flag design with the stars had not been adopted until six months after the events of this painting. The academics call this “commemorative truth,” like the painting of the “Apotheosis of Washington” in the Capitol, where George W. ascends sails through the Pearly Gates. It’s symbolic, baby! Don’t think too much. Just feel the patriotism!
Notice the absence of any circles in any of these designs. You also may “feel” something when you see what’s called the Betsy Ross flag, that other one with its circle of stars and the stripes. But she never sewed no flag for these United States, nope! The facts are: she was a seamstress and may have sewed a flag of the US. But Washington never mentioned it; Congress never mentioned it; no one ever mentioned it until 1870. That’s when Betsy’s grandson claimed she did it and created a very convincing story to attach to her house, which he turned into a historical attraction, tickets five cents please. Eventually, he did admit that he had no evidence, and historians in the 1890s roundly laughed about it. But such is the power of tourism! If you ask people today to name famous Americans, excluding those who were presidents, first ladies, or military figures, Betsy Ross’s name will crack the Top Five. Tourist marketing: only slightly less powerful than commemorative truth!
By 1795, the Constitution with its first Ten Amendments was the law of the land, Washington was presiding, and the country was beginning to transform from a loose collaboration of surly expatriates with shared economic interests into a group that considered itself one. A collective identity was forming, one which would be forever reinforced by symbolism and commemorative truth. The flag began to take on those divine attributes bugled by the angel in the Light Horse banner.
This one is the Star-spangled Banner that flew above Fort McHenry in Baltimore when Francisco Scott Key wrote a poem, sung to the tune of a popular drinking song. It ought to give you the goose-bumps as it is real and hangs in the Smithsonian.
Today, plenty of people may want to tell you who and how and what this flag means to Americans, but, if you’re American, it means what you want it to mean. It stands for the freedom to make this land your own and to have your own ideas. That’s lot to celebrate.
And long may it wave.