Fraternity-Testvériség, 1965 (43. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1965-05-01 / 5. szám
FRATERNITY 3 to retaliate for British injustices. The idea appealed to the patriots and by the end of the year American flagpoles were flying the famous coiled rattlesnake which defended the words, “Don’t Tread on Me”. One writer of the time exclaimed that “as the rattlesnake’s eve exceeds in brightness that of any other animal, and as she has no eyelids, she symbolizes eternal vigilance. Inasmuch as she never begins an attack, nor, once engaged, ever surrenders, she is an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.” After Colonel William Moultrie’s Charleston (South Carolina) garrison defeated a British naval force, they created the Moultrie Blag. Upon the blue of their uniforms they affixed a crescent in the upper left-hand corner and the word “Liberty” along the lower border. The insignia derived from the silver crescents inscribed “Liberty or Death” which they had worn on their caps. Over the battlefields of Brandywine, Trenton and Yorktown flew the flag of maritime Ithode Island. It bore a white anchor, thirteen stars and the word “Hope” against the now familiar blue field. Though the patriots fought under different flags, their loyalty was to the same America. And so their flags gradually evolved into similarity and finally into the simple design that became at once their goal and their inspiration. From the Moultrie, Ithode Island, Continental and Bunker Hill flags came the red, the white and the blue. The design, it is claimed but not verified, originated with the banner so gallantly defended by the Green Mountain Boys at the Battle of Bennington. The Bennington flag featured thirteen alternating red and white stripes surrounding a blue field in the upper lefthand corner. In this section was an arch of eleven white stars over the figure “76” with a wdiite star in each upper corner. If the Bennington flag is not whole-heartedly acknowledged as “Old Glory’s” forerunner, which flag, then, was? The Stars and Stripes began when, “out of compliment to the United Colonies, General Washington hoisted the Grand Union flag at Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the standard of the Continental Army. It carried the now traditional thirteen alternating red and white stripes, but, instead of stars, the blue field carried the Union Jack of England. The stripes symbolized both the Americans’ separation and emanation from their Mother Country. On June 14, 1777, the United States of America removed England from our national
