Flagsof our Fathers Every schoolchild in America knows what our nation’s first flags looked like: 13 white stars in a circle on a navy-blue canton (that’s flagspeak for the squarish section in the corner) and 13 alternating red and white stripes. The Betsy Ross flag! Right? Well… In the era before textile mills or factories — when flags, clothing, sails, and other fabric creations were handmade — no two flags would have looked the same. Maybe Betsy Ross did sew a flag like the one in our collective imagination. There’s actually no historical evidence for that story. But even if she did, images were not as easy to transmit back then as they are now. Seamstresses throughout the 13 colonies were on their own as they tried to interpret the June 14, 1777 directive of the Continental Congress calling for a single American flag to replace the various standards flying at the time. There was no advice on how to place the stars, or how many points they should have. There was no advice on whether to start with a red stripe or a white one. Flags were different sizes, and different ratios. Some were almost square, others long rectangles. Our second national flag, authorized in 1794 after Vermont and Kentucky had joined the Union, was supposed to feature 15 stars and 15 stripes. But once again, no direction was forthcoming about how to arrange either the stars or the stripes, so variants abounded. 28
Soon we developed textile mills and factories; slowly, flags became standardized. Thousands of individual seamstresses were replaced by a handful of manufacturers, cranking out flags that, if not identical, were pretty darn close. This is true not only for our modern flag — the 50star flag in use since Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union in 1959 — but for historical flags as well. Despite knowing full well that no two 13- or 15-star flags were alike, modern flag-makers have settled on the “Betsy Ross” version of the former and the “Star Spangled Banner” version of the latter. And why not? Everyone recognizes them and knows the stories. In the case of the Star-Spangled Banner, the 15-star, 15-stripe flag flying over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry during its September 1814 bombardment by the British inspired Francis Scott Key to write his poem “The Star-Spangled Banner.” His poem was later set to some weird borrowed music (an old drinking song called “Anacreon in Heaven”) and the result eventually became our National Anthem. And here’s the kicker: unlike Betsy’s flag, that flag definitely did exist, and still does! It can be copied. We know for a fact that there were many variations on the 15star, 15-stripe flag in use from 1794 to 1818. But the simplicity and power of the Star-Spangled Banner story has trumped the reality that every flag was different. Nowadays, anyone seeking to interpret this era can either order a flag based on the Ft. McHenry flag, or sew their
MarlinspikeMagazine.com
