07-04-2008, 11:53 AM
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Commentator
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Louisville, Kentucky
Age: 52
Posts: 1,447
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US Flag Not Always Seen As A Sacred Symbol
I think an interesting article about US history.
Quote:
American flag hasn't always been seen as a sacred symbol
July 4, 2008
BY RICK SHENKMAN
Nothing seems more natural to an American than venerating 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 worshipped them. It used to be good enough just to respect them.
Take Old Glory. 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 clear that the only reason the founders adopted a national flag was for the practical reason that the Navy needed one for identification in foreign ports. The bill providing for the establishment of the flag consisted of a single sentence. 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.
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. Because Congress never specified if the stars should be arranged in a circle or in rows, flagmakers 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 18 stripes, while the flag over the New York Navy Yard had only nine.
Many Americans were unsure of the flag's 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 13 stripes, alternately red, white and blue."
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.
Wilbur Zelinsky, reporting on a search of major catalogs of art from the Revolutionary War, says he could not find a single depiction of the American flag. The erroneous impression that Stars and Stripes was ubiquitous in the Revolution is due to the fact that it is ubiquitous in the paintings of the Revolution done in the 19th century. But the fact is, not a single land battle in the Revolution was fought under Old Glory. There was no American flag at Bunker Hill, at Trenton or even at Yorktown. The Marines did not adopt the flag until 1876; the U.S. Cavalry didn't until 1887. Forget those pictures of George Custer and the Stars and Stripes. His men never carried it.
No doubt the founders would be pleased to see that the flag is respected today. But they would not understand its being worshipped. A hundred years ago, only a few self-appointed flag defenders considered it as a sacred object.
Schools were not required to fly the flag until 1890. Americans did not begin pledging allegiance to the flag until 1892.
Flag Day was not nationally observed until 1916. The flag code, prescribing the proper way to treat and dispose of a flag, didn't become federal law until 1976.
There was a time when patriotism needed no such artificial braces. During the Revolution, when men were fighting and dying on the battlefield to establish a new nation, saluting the flag would have been regarded as an empty gesture.
The thing to do was to go out and join the fighting. That was patriotism.
If Americans did not embrace flag rituals early on, once they did, they embraced the practice enthusiastically. There seemed to be plenty of reasons. With the invasion of the "hordes" of immigrants from Europe -- hordes with strange names and exotic accents -- it was believed that flag rituals were needed to ensure the newcomers' loyalty.
Fear, then, was behind the movement to adopt flag rituals, but nobody ever remembers that. Today, it is the descendants of those hordes of immigrants who often seem the most offended by violators of the rituals.
Rick Shenkman, author of the new book, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (Basic Books, June 200 , edits the Web site History News Network.
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