A Bit on Old Glory

With all the hoopla about amending the Constitution so that burning the American flag becomes a crime as heinous as murder and the constant stream of conservatives attempting to align this country with what they perceive to be the intentions of the Founding Fathers, I found these bits by Richard Shenkman to be of interest. They come from his book, I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not and are reproduced here.

Nothing seems more natural to an American than to venerate the patriotic symbols that represent America. They are virtually sacred. Scornful as we are of the candidate who wraps himself in the flag, it is often the candidate who fails to do so who loses. But if Americans cherish their symbols of patriotism, they haven't always worshiped them. It used to be good enough just to respect them.

Take Old Glory, that "emblem of unity, of loyalty to home and to kindred, and to all that is sacred in life." The early adoption of the flag by the United States has been considered proof of its early acceptance as a sacred symbol of the United States. But that seems not to have been the case. Milo Quaife, in his exhaustive history of the flag, concluded that the generation that gave us the national flag remained astonishingly indifferent to it.

From early congressional debates, for instance, it is quite clear that the only reason the founders adopted a national flag was for the practical reason that the navy needed one for identification when sailing into foreign ports. The bill providing for the establishment of the flag consisted of a single sentence, just twenty-nine words long. The first verse of the Star-Spangled Banner is longer (fifty-two words). When in 1794 someone introduced a bill to add two stars to the flag to take into account the admission into the union of Vermont and Kentucky, many members objected that the matter wasn't worthy of their attention. It is "a trifling business," said one, "which ought not to engross the attention of the House, when it was their 'duty to discuss matters of infinitely greater importance." The Vermont representative agreed. In the end, says Quaife, the members approved the bill "as the quickest way of terminating" debate about it.

The existence of great varieties of flag designs demonstrates the profound carelessness with which it was treated. Some stars came with five points, some with six. Some stars came in white, some came in silver. Because Congress never specified if the stars should be arranged in a circle or in rows, flag makers stitched them both ways. On the eve of the Civil War it became fashionable to put them in an oval. Even the number of stripes seems to have varied by whim, though it was established by law. At one point the flag over the capitol had eighteen stripes, while the flag over the New York Navy Yard had only nine. The flag is a particularly poor example of an early sacred symbol, as many Americans--including top government officials--were unsure of its appearance. More than a year after its adoption by Congress, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, in a joint letter to the king of Naples, said it "consists of thirteen stripes, alternately red, white and blue."

They may be forgiven for their ignorance. For Americans in our early history seldom got the chance to see the flag. It did not fly from buildings. It was not put in the schools. It was never reproduced in the newspapers. And painters did not make pictures of it.