Anyone looking over a collection of the common pottery made from about a hundred and fifty years ago up to comparatively recent times will find that stirring contemporary events are very freely introduced—sea-fights, portraits of leading statesmen, generals, and so forth. These are often caricatures, as, for example, the hundreds that may be seen in our various museums and private collections derisive of "Boney," while others are as historically correct as the potter's knowledge and skill could compass. Anyone visiting the Corporation Museum at Brighton will find a jug bearing the head of Zebulon M. Pike, an American general; trophies of flags are grouped around this, but the only flag with any device upon it is a plain striped one. Another that bears the head of Commodore Decatur, U.S.N., has below it a cannon, on the left a trophy of flags and weapons, and on the right a ship; and a very similar jug may be seen in honour of Commodore Parry. In each of these cases the flags in the trophies and on the ships are simply striped.
On August 14th, 1777, Congress resolved "that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternately red and white, and that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing
a new constellation."[[59]] This was the birth of the national flag, "the stars and stripes," and it would appear at first sight to be a final settlement of the device, though in practice the result did not work out at all uniformly, the number of stripes being unequal. If we commence at the top with a white one, we shall have seven white and six red, whereas if we begin with a red stripe we shall get seven red and six white. Each of these renderings was for some years in use, until it was authoritatively laid down that the latter was the arrangement to be adopted. It seems a minor point, but any of our readers who will re-draw Fig. [146] and transpose the colours of the stripes, so that the upper and lower edges of the flag are white instead of red, will be surprised to note how so apparently trivial a change will affect the appearance of the flag.[[60]] In like manner the stars were sometimes made with six points, and at others with five. Even so late as 1779, we find such a striking variation as a flag bearing stars with eight points, and its stripes alternately red, blue, and white. The coins issued during the presidency of Washington had five-pointed stars on them, but later on they had six points. Nobody seems now to know why this change was made.
As nothing was said in this resolution of Congress as to the arrangement of the stars on the blue field, a further opening for variety of treatment was found. In some of the early flags they were arranged to represent the letters U.S., in others they were all placed in a circle, in others again they were dispersed irregularly, so as the better to suggest a constellation; and it was finally ordered that they should be placed in parallel horizontal rows, as we now see them.
Though the stars did not appear in the American flag until 1777, we find in a poem in the Massachusetts Spy of March 10th, 1774, on the outbreak of the rebellion, the lines—
"The American ensign now sparkles a star
Which shall shortly flame wide through the skies."
This poetic and prophetic flight is the earliest suggestion of the stars in the national flag of the United States.
It has been held that the American Eagle and the stars and stripes of the national flag were suggested by the crest and arms of the Washington family. This statement has been often made; hence we find an American patriot writing:—"It is not a little curious that the poor, worn-out rag of feudalism, as many would count it, should have expanded into the bright and ample banner that now waves on every sea." But that it should be so seems by no means an established fact. No reference is made to it in Washington's correspondence, or in that of any of his contemporaries. The arms of the Washington family are a white shield having two horizontal red bars, and above these a row of three red stars; and this certainly bears some little resemblance to the American flag, but how much is mere coincidence, and how much is adaptation it is impossible to say. These arms may be seen on a brass in Solgrave Church, Huntingdonshire, on the tomb of Laurence Washington, the last lineal ancestor who was buried in England. He was twice Mayor of Northampton, in 1533 and in 1546, and the first President of the United States was his great-great-grandson. He was a man of considerable influence, and on the dissolution of the monasteries Henry gave him the Priory of St. Andrews, Northampton. In the troublous times that succeeded, his son John went to America, and lived for some twenty years on the banks of the Potomac.