According to tradition, the first flag of the United States, the Grand Union Flag ("Continental Colours"), was raised by General George Washington at Prospect Hill in Somerville, Massachusetts, on 1 January 1776, in an attempt to raise the morale of the men of the Continental Army. There was a 76-foot liberty pole situated on Prospect Hill on 22 August 1775 that "was visible from most parts of the American lines, as well as from Boston". The standard account has been questioned by modern researchers most notably Peter Ansoff, who in 2006 published a paper entitled "The Flag on Prospect Hill" where he advances the argument that Washington flew the Union Jack ("British Union Flag") and not the Continental Colours that bears 13 stripes. Others, such as Byron DeLear, have argued in favour of the traditional version of events.[1]
There is a Prospect Hill Monument that was erected in 1903 and annual flag-raising ceremonies involving American Revolutionary War reenactors are held at Prospect Hill on New Year's Day.
See main article: American Revolution, Flag of Great Britain and Grand Union Flag.
The British Union Flag featuring the crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew was introduced in 1606 to symbolise the dual status of King James I as ruler of England and Scotland. It was flown at sea as a maritime flag and from forts and royal castles. It formed the basis of the "King's colours" bestowed on army regiments. In 1801, the red cross of Saint Patrick was added to herald Ireland's entry into the United Kingdom. Beginning in the 19th century, it achieved customary use as the UK national flag when it was "inscribed with slogans as a protest flag of the Chartist movement".
The American revolutionaries continued to associate the British Union Flag with their cause before and after hostilities between the UK and the Thirteen American colonies erupted in April 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord. Colonial propaganda generally made the distinction between the Crown, to which most colonists still remained loyal, and the parliament and the parliamentary executive, which was viewed as the cause of their grievances. This sentiment finds expression in a verse affixed to the flag pole in Taunton, Massachusetts that mentions:
The reference to "the English colonies in General" points to the way the British Union Flag was seen as a protest symbol in that "its very name hinted at the idea of a union among the colonies" being "a concept that was not viewed favorably in London". Its use by the American revolutionaries was "in a sense a challenge to authority" as the concept of a national flag that represents both the government and the people is modern and did not prevail in the 18th century.
In a speech given on 27 October 1775 at the opening of parliament, copies of which reached Boston by the end of December 1775, King George III "made it clear that he had no sympathy for the distinctions made by the colonists" stating:
The Continental Congress appointed George Washington as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army on 15 June 1775 and dispatched him to Boston, where the British were under siege, to assume command of what he called "the Troops of the United Provinces of North America". He arrived at his post shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
It is not known for certain when the Continental Colours was designed or by whom. The design is nearly identical to the Flag of the British East India Company that was chartered in England in 1600 and played a pivotal role in the Boston Tea Party at the beginning of the American Revolution. It was raised for the first recorded time aboard the USS Alfred on 3 December 1775 by Senior Lieutenant John Paul Jones who referred to it as the "Flag of Freedom" and the "Flag of America". Construction of the specimen flown from the Alfred has been credited to Margaret Manny. The Continental Colours were in use until late 1777.
All three known eyewitness accounts of the flag raising on Prospect Hill state that it was the "Union Flag". Peter Ansoff posits that the terms "Grand Union" and "Great Union" were not in use during the American Revolution "but were retrospectively applied to the striped union flag by 19th century historians".
George Washington's letter to his friend and aide-de-camp Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reed, dated 4 January 1776, states that:
There appears to be no reason arising from Washington's words or the context to doubt that he was referring to anything other than the British Union Flag and that what he was conveying to Reed "was the irony of the Army's hoisting a symbol of the Crown just before receiving the King's message of hostility toward the colonies". The Continental Colors was devised in Philadelphia for use by the nascent Continental Navy. At the time of the flag raising on Prospect Hill, it had never been formally adopted, and Washington may not have even been aware of the existence of the Continental Colors by then, which is not mentioned in any of his voluminous correspondence with the Continental Congress in the period July to December 1775.
The second account comes from an anonymous captain of a British merchant ship that arrived in Boston on 1 January 1776. In a lengthy letter to the ship owners dated 17 January 1776, he states:
Ansoff notes that his correspondents in London would have no knowledge of the Continental Colours and that if the flag raised on Prospect Hill differed from the British Union Flag, "it seems likely the captain would have further described it". The anonymous author makes the same assumption Washington believed the British had made being "that raising the King's colours was a reaction to the King's speech". However, whereas Washington had suggested to Reed in jest that it was interpreted as a sign of submission, the captain saw it as signalling colonial unity instead.
There is a third eyewitness account contained in a letter by British Lieutenant William Carter of the 40th Regiment of Foot dated 26 January 1776, which states:
Unlike the other eyewitness accounts, Carter refers to "thirteen stripes" although he does not specify whether they are horizontal or vertical. According to Ansoff, "it seems fairly clear from his phrasing that he is talking about a Union Flag flying above another, striped flag". He speculates that if there was a flag hoisted beneath the British Union Flag, it may have been "one of the signal flags that were commonly flown on Prospect Hill". Amid the salutes and cheers, Carter may have assumed it was designed to represent the colonies. Washington may have "failed to mention it as it was not pertinent to the point he was making to Reed". Ansoff concedes that Carter may have been "giving a muddled description of a single flag with both the union crosses and thirteen stripes". However, if so, he considers it "extremely unlikely" that Washington and the anonymous ship captain would have referred to it as the Union Flag without any further qualification.
There are two secondary accounts that are frequently cited in the vexillological literature. The first appeared on 15 January 1776 in Philadelphia's Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser which states:
Ansoff thinks it "very likely" the author has Washington's letter to Reed available to them given the similarity in phrasing. It appears that it was not uncommon for private correspondence to form the basis of newspaper articles and Washington complained about this in a previous letter to Reed. Ansoff believes that this account is the source of the term "Great Union" that historians subsequently used as the name for the striped Continental Colours.
There was another secondary account that appeared in the 1776 edition of the British publication The Annual Register that states:
Although this account refers to a "flag with thirteen stripes", Ansoff points out that "it is not an original account". It was not published until 25 September 1777 which was "long after the striped Continental Flag had become known to the British" and by which time it "had been superseded by the stars and stripes". The plain ground changing to a field of thirteen stripes faithfully "recalls the transition from the British red ensign to the American Continental colors". Absent is any reference to the Union Flag and Ansoff concludes that the editors "probably conflated this with accounts of the event at Prospect Hill".
Ansoff asserts the idea that the Continental Colours was raised on Prospect Hill had originated in a footnote in a history of the Siege of Boston published by Richard Frothingham in 1849. The relevant extract which relies on several previous primary sources states that:
Schuyler Hamilton reinforces the idea that a singular flag was flown on Prospect Hill in his 1853 history of the American flag. Quoting Carter's letter Hamilton remarks:
Hamilton also refers to a Philadelphia newspaper account dated 15 January 1776 that used the term "Great Union Flag" stating:
Ansoff notes that it is "somewhat misleading" for Hamilton to say that "Great Union Flag" was the "name given to the national banner of Great Britain". The term "great union" is found in a 1768 royal warrant concerning the colours carried by British infantry regiments and applies "generically to the design of the combined English and Scottish crosses, rather than to a particular flag". The reference in the newspaper report to the "great union" flag is probably a description rather than the name of the flag and "supports the idea that it was a union flag with the combined English and Scottish crosses overall". Hamilton's statement that the flag raised on Prospect Hill "must have been a peculiarly marked Union flag, to be called the Great Union Flag" is unsubstantiated yet his "use of the term as a proper name has been perpetuated by later historians, and is often used to refer to the Continental Colors".
According to Ansoff's 2006 paper, the first reference to the Continental Colours as the "Grand Union" comes from page 218 of the 1872 first edition of George Preble's History of the Flag of the United States of America, which states:
He stated that Preble evidently substitutes the word "grand" for "great" which appeared in the letter published in the Pennsylvania Gazette on 17 January 1776 and given his work is accepted as the seminal history of the American flag "his mistake has been perpetrated in vexillological and general literature ever since".
However, in his response to Byron DeLear in 2015, Ansoff makes a correction that the first recorded use of the term "Grand Union" is actually by historian Thompson Westcott in 1852. Responding to a query Westcott states:
Ansoff says this "almost certainly" refers to the account in the Pennsylvania Gazette, with the word "grand" accidentally used in place of "great". Preble then cites Westcott as a source "and probably copied the quote without checking it against the original".
Byron DeLear has argued in favour of the conventional history based on a review of "eighteenth-century linguistic standards, contextual historical trends, and additional primary and secondary sources".
In his 2014 paper "Revisiting the Flag at Prospect Hill: Grand Union or Just British", DeLear lists a number of additional primary sources where the Continental Colours are contemporaneously referred to using the descriptor "union".
Dated between December 1775 and March 1776 they are:
DeLear cites further primary sources that show the term "union flag" also being applied to the British red, blue and white ensigns that all bear the British Union Flag in the canton. He argues that it was suitable for Washington and others to have referred to the Continental Colours in this way, given that "At the time of the introduction of the new striped union flag was the best abbreviated way to describe it". The three contemporary accounts cited by Ansoff might have been prompted by "the most prominent feature of the flag, the British Union Jack or by the thirteen stripes intimating the union of the colonies-or both". It is possible that Washington chose to employ the term "union" for a different reason than the other two, British eyewitnesses.
Ansoff has subsequently replied that DeLear has misrepresented the evidence of 18th-century use of the term "union flag". He notes that in seven of the eight examples given by DeLear, "the writer qualified his description to make it clear that he was not referring to a normal British union flag, but to an 'American' or 'Continental' version and/or one that contained stripes". In relation to the Wharton account book entry of 12 December 1775 that refers to a "Union Flag" without any further qualification, Ansoff cites a later invoice dated 23 December 1775 that "lists delivery to the Columbus of "1 Ensign 18 feet by 30" that "was presumably the Continental Colors for that vessel". Ansoff believes "It is quite likely that the flag mentioned in DeLear's citation was a normal British union flag, or possibly a British red ensign" noting it was a "common practice in the eighteenth century for warships to carry flags of potential opponents for deceptive purposes". Ansoff asserts that DeLear's implication the term "union flag" is "strictly modern" is questionable. He says it was more prevalent in the 18th century than it is in modern times where the term "Union Jack" is frequently used.
Concerning Ansoff's assertion that Washington "was probably not aware" of the Continental Colours that were unofficial at the time he wrote to Reed and were solely for "use by the embryonic Continental Navy", DeLear asserts that given the lack of direct evidence of its origins, the original purpose of the Continental Colours should not be narrowly confined to a maritime role. The Continental Colours was used as the garrison flag at Fort Mifflin in February 1776 and was hoisted by American forces at New York in July 1776. Whilst there is no direct evidence it was officially adopted prior to the flag-raising ceremony on Prospect Hill "its promulgation throughout the colonies is self-evident". The earliest known British reference to the Continental Colours is a letter by a British informer to Lord Dartmouth dated 20 December 1775. British spy James Brattle makes a detailed report on the Continental Navy dated 4 January 1776. He described the new Continental Colours as "English Colours But More Striped". In a message to Sir Grey Cooper dated 10 January 1776 a British spy in Philadelphia Gilbert Barkly, refers to the Continental Colours as being "what they call the Ammerican flag". DeLear states that at the very least "it is not too far of a stretch to presume-at the very least-that knowledge of that flag (and what it evidently represented) had passed from Philadelphia to Cambridge among principals of the American war effort". It was a stage in the American Revolution amid escalating British violence "with ships and stores seized, forts captured, and cities burned". DeLear argues that "notions of nationhood were clearly maturing in this exact time and space" and notes the earliest surviving documentary evidence of the term "United States of America" was written at Washington's headquarters just after the New Year's Day flag raising ceremony. DeLear notes that the latest example provided by Ansoff of the American revolutionaries still identifying with the British Union Flag is the diary entry of the British officer based in Boston dated 1 May 1775, after the battles of Lexington and Concord, but "before the bloody escalation at Bunker Hill". Along with Washington being commissioned as the army commander in chief, these were "two developments that necessitated heightened levels of military discipline, seriousness, and formality". DeLear compares the "relatively ad hoc manner" of such displays, as cited by Ansoff, with the ceremonies when the Continental Colours debuted aboard the Alfred or the flag-raising on Prospect Hill. Coming soon after the inauguration of the Continental Navy, DeLear maintains it would have been "wholly uncharacteristic" for Washington to hoist the British Union Flag to mark the establishment of the Continental Army. In what became later known as the "Revolutionary Year" the New Year's Day ceremony was the "perfect opportunity" to unveil the Continental Colours. DeLear says "it seems unimaginable that he would fly the enemy's colors on this historic occasion". Historian Pauline Maier concurs, stating "You wouldn't want a flag that was the same flag as the people [you were fighting]". That it had achieved customary use as the national flag of the thirteen American colonies was amply demonstrated in October and November 1776 when Denmark and the United Netherlands became the first respective foreign nations to perform a gun salute upon a ship wearing the Continental Colours entering port.
Ansoff says that DeLear's analysis of the primary sources ignores key contextual factors firstly being the official stance of the United Colonies with regards to the King and the parliamentary executive and secondly Washington's propensity to follow the lead of the Congress in regards to political matters.
Reed is the author of one of the few known flag directives of the period in a message to Colonel John Glover and Stephen Moylan dated 20 October 1775. He suggests the Pine Tree Flag be used so that "our vessels may know one another" describing the "particular colour" as being a flag "with a white ground, a Tree in the Middle, the motto (Appeal to Heaven)[.] This is the Flag of our floating Batteries". This reveals that Washington and Reed did concern themselves with deciding what flags the Continental forces were flying. When Washington relayed the news of the Prospect Hill flag-raising ceremony to his aide-de-camp, "it can be safely assumed that Reed knew to what Washington was referring to" and that "Their close working relationship on these matters may have obviated the need for additional clarifying detail". In his Standards and Colors of the American Revolution, flag historian Edward W. Richardson states that Washington does not describe the flag to Reed and "He speaks of it only as 'the union flag' which indicates that Reed knew the design".
Washington, in his surviving letters to Reed, mentions additional prior correspondence, the whereabouts of which are unknown. His personal secretary was Tobias Lear V, who served Washington from 1784-1799 and was there to record his famous last words, "tis well". Lear has been accused of mishandling Washington's papers, for which he had custody for a year after Washington's death. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall then took possession of these documents from Lear after volunteering to write a biography of Washington. Marshall eventually discovered that "swaths of Washington's diary were missing, especially sections during the war and presidency, and that a handful of key letters has also vanished". In a letter to Marshall, Lear denied culling any of Washington's papers. However, in a letter to Alexander Hamilton, he refutes his own denial. "There are as you well know," Lear states, "among the several letters and papers, many which every public and private consideration should withhold from further inspection". Lear asks Hamilton if there are any documents of military significance that he would like removed. DeLear speculates that among "the twelve missing Reed letters from November to December 1775" and other items from Washington's archives that "may have been suppressed" there could "very plausibly" have been more information about the origin and proclamation of the Continental Colours.
DeLear finds Lieutenant Carter's eyewitness account illuminating as it is the only primary source that mentions a flag with thirteen stripes. Carter said that "they hoisted an union flag (above the continental with the thirteen stripes)" at Prospect Hill. As opposed to Ansoff who takes it to refer to two separate flags, DeLear gives contemporary examples where such terms were used as a "positioning convention" where the field of a flag is seen as below the canton or upper hoist quarter to argue that it refers to a single flag being the Continental Colours. In any case Ansoff says that Carter's description is "the earliest known reference to a striped Continental flag in the Boston area" a month after the flag raising ceremony on the Alfred. Ansoff acknowledges that "Carter's description is undeniably ambiguous" and that, taken on its own, there "would be a stronger case that the flag might actually have been the Continental Colors". However, Ansoff argues that "the cumulative evidence provided by all three [primary] accounts would appear to make this unlikely". Carter did not publish his letter until 1784 when the war was over and Ansoff thinks "It is conceivable that he edited them retroactively to include information that was common knowledge by then".
DeLear concludes that in addition to all modern accounts of the event on Prospect Hill that have the Continental Colours flying there, all secondary sources "report the same conventional history, and, if erroneous, nowhere were they later corrected until Ansoff".