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Most Americans can picture Old Glory — fifty stars, thirteen stripes, the flag flown over this nation for generations. But few know the flags that came before it — the banners colonists actually carried into battle before the Stars and Stripes existed.
When the Continental Congress declared independence on July 4th, 1776, the United States had no official flag, yet the fight was already well underway. With no agreed-upon design, colonial militias, naval vessels, and Army units flew whatever they could devise — handmade banners carrying symbols of defiance, faith, and a refusal to be governed without consent.
Some you would recognize. The Grand Union Flag — thirteen red and white stripes with the British Union Jack still in the corner — was the first to fly over George Washington’s army at the Siege of Boston on New Year’s Day, 1776. It marked a people not yet committed to separation, but already committed to resistance. The Sons of Liberty flag carried nine red and white vertical stripes — a challenge to the Crown that predated the Revolution itself.
Then the Moultrie flag, flown at the defense of Fort Sullivan in South Carolina — a blue field with a crescent moon and the word LIBERTY. And most famous of all, the Gadsden flag — a coiled rattlesnake on a field of yellow with the words Don’t Tread on Me. It was carried by the first Marines into their first amphibious assault in the Bahamas in February 1776. And my personal favorite, the Pine Tree Flag, bearing an evergreen and the words “An Appeal To Heaven,” used often by Washington — a declaration that their fight was not just necessary but morally legitimate.
Only about thirty flags from the Revolutionary War survive today. Seventeen are now on display at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia — a once-in-a-generation chance to see the actual banners under which this country was born. Each tells a piece of the same story. Before there was a nation, an official seal, or a recognized government, ordinary men and women fashioned symbols of their convictions and carried them into an uncertain fight. They didn’t know how it would end. They went anyway.
That is the spirit worth remembering in our 250th year. Not just the flag we fly today — but the ones that got us here.
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