As if to supplement Jessie’s declaration, an Oriole gayly flaunted the Red Ensign of Great Britain with its canton quartered by the cross of St. George and St. Andrew. “This is the flag that followed Jessie’s and was necessarily adopted by the colonists as the flag of the mother country. It was called the Union flag—the two crosses signifying the union of Scotland and England, when King James of Scotland became king—and remained in use in America until the beginning of the Revolution.”
Grace, who had been impatiently waiting to float her flag, now cried, “Away with your old Johnnie Bull flags! Mine is worth a hundred of those old English rags, for it was the first distinctively American flag used by the Colonies, ‘The Pine Tree Flag of New England.’”
“But it has the red cross on the white canton just the same,” ventured Jessie, “and it is red, too.”
“Of course it has the cross on it,” quickly retorted Grace, “for at that time the Colonies still belonged to England; but if you look, my lady, you’ll see that pine in the first quarter of the canton, and that is American all through, every pine on it. It meant that the colonists, although they were English, had a right to representation in the mother country and to a symbol of their own.”
“Well,” persisted Jessie, in whose veins flowed a goodly supply of English blood, “your scrubby old pine was such a poor representation of that noble tree that Charles II asked what it represented—and was told it was an oak.”
“Come, Jessie,” laughed Helen, “that story is a back number. Every one can guess without much effort that the man who told that yarn to the king was a New Englander. He wanted to gain favor with Charles and bluffed him a bit, trying to make out it was a model of the royal oak in which his majesty took refuge after the battle of Worcester.”
“Oh, stop discussing the merits of that old pine and look at my banner,” sang out Louise Gaynor, shaking her flag furiously to and fro so as to get the attention of the girls. “This flag is the Crescent flag and stands for the bravest of the brave. Now listen, and you will all understand what true heroism means.”
The girls, impressed by the Flower’s declaration, grew silent, and gazed curiously at a red banner with a white crescent in the upper corner near the staff. “This flag was designed by Col. Moultrie of the Second Carolina Infantry in 1775. During the siege of Charleston when the flag was shot down, Sergeant William Jasper at the peril of his life recovered it, and held it in place on the parapet until another staff was found. In 1779, at the assault on Savannah, it was again shot from its holdings. Two lieutenants sprang forward and held it in position until they were killed by the enemy’s bullets. Jasper again sprang forward and held the colors up until he, too, was riddled with bullets, and fell into a ditch. As he was dying he seized the flag in his hands and cried, ‘Tell Mrs. Elliot’—she was the wife of one of the majors—‘that I lost my life supporting the colors she gave our regiment.’”
Barbara, who was usually so placid and mild, now grew quite intense as she pointed to her flag, the Cambridge flag, claiming that it was the first flag on this side of the water to float the red and white bars. It signified, she said, that although the colonists were willing to return to the rule of the English, they were a body of armed men fighting for just and equal rights with their brothers who had crossed the sea to whip them into submission. “But they didn’t,” ended Barbara with triumphant eyes. “And this flag, also known as the Union flag—meaning that the colonists stood as a man in their desire for the right—was displayed by Washington in his camp at Cambridge, January 2nd, 1776.”
“Now let me have a chance,” pleaded Nathalie, who had been impatiently waiting to show her design for some time. “My flag has a story, too.” She held up as high as she could a white flag with a rattlesnake in the center. It bore in black letters the name, “The Culpeper Minute Men of Virginia,” the snaky slogan, “Don’t Tread On Me,” and the famous words of its commander, Patrick Henry, “Liberty or Death!”