Swarming over the city, bent on various quests, went the victorious Federals. Not so the old sailor. The revered flag, flaunting the colors so joyously above his head once more, was far too weather-beaten, he feared, to withstand long the stiff breeze blowing about the elevated site. Torn to ribbons it must not be, howsoever good the cause.
Quietly he watched and waited about the grounds until after nightfall, when, under cover of the darkness, he again ascended the dome, rescued his beloved old flag, and swung in its place a big merino one that had figured as a campaign flag in 1840, when “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” was the slogan of the Whig Party. He then carried Old Glory to his home and laid it tenderly away in the old sea locker so long dedicated to its use.
Very gradually thereafter the pleasing appellation, Old Glory, made its impress upon the speech of the populace, until, in the later nineties, the “Hoosier Poet” was moved to expression in verse:
Old Glory, the story we’re wanting to hear,
Is what the plain facts of your christening were,
For your name, just to hear it,
Repeat it and cheer it, s’tang to the spirit
As salt as a tear.
And seeing you fly and the boys marching by,
There’s a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye
And an aching to live for you always or die;
And so, by our love for you floating above,
And the scars of all wars and the sorrows thereof,
Who gave you the name of Old Glory?
James Whitcomb Riley.
But to the query the sealed lips of the old seaman answered not. For him had come the higher summons.
Captain Driver’s death occurred in Nashville in 1886. At the head of his grave, in the old City Cemetery, stands a unique monument of his own designing. Upon an old tree trunk, in stone, appears a ship’s anchor and cable. At the top of the anchor is inscribed the beloved pseudonym of his heart’s own coinage, above him here, even in his last sleep: “His ship, his country, and his flag—Old Glory.” About his body when placed within the casket was wrapped a United States flag.
A few years prior to his death Captain Driver placed his Old Glory flag in the hands of his elder daughter, Mrs. Roland, of Wells, Nev., who was then on a visit to him, saying brokenly as he resigned it: “Take this flag and cherish it as I have done. I love it as a mother loves her child. It has been with me, and it has protected me in all parts of the world.”
Worn and faded and tattered, this flag is still in the possession of Mrs. Roland; and in her far Western home it is displayed on patriotic occasions and the story of its naming repeated. Another, presumably the Whig flag herein mentioned, and that, as has been shown, also flew over the Capitol of Tennessee, was sent by Captain Driver, upon request, to the Essex Institute, of Massachusetts. Some confusion has of late arisen in the public mind regarding the identity of the two flags, it having been generally believed that the original Old Glory was the flag in the Massachusetts Institute. This impression is, however, doubtless erroneous.
Notwithstanding a somewhat brusque address and a marked individuality of speech and action, Captain Driver was a man of warm and kindly nature. Although a stanch Unionist, he lent a ready and willing hand to the suffering ones of the South. He married the first time Miss Martha Babbage, of Salem, Mass. For his second wife he espoused a Southern woman, Sarah J. Parks, of Nashville, Tenn. Two of his sons bore arms in the Confederate service. One of these gave his life for the “lost cause.”