Postcard from the Past: Red, White and Blue
by Dick Perue
From the June 13, 1924 issue of the Hudson Herald comes the following inspirational message honoring Flag Day.
It’s your flag and my flag,
and, oh, how much it holds –
your land and my land.
Secure within its folds!
Next Saturday, June 14, is Flag Day – the 147th anniversary of the birth of the American flag.
On June 14, 1777, Betsy Ross of Philadelphia finished making the first American flag, with 13 white stars in a blue field, seven red and six white stripes and a new emblem of Liberty was swung to the breeze.
It first flew over a military post at Fort Schuyler, now the city of Rome, NY; it was first hoisted in the Navy by John Paul Jones over the “Ranger” and it was first carried into battle on the banks of the Brandywine. All of these events were in the year of its birth.
Since then, it has gone around the world, has been smiled upon by the sun of every clime, kissed by all the winds that blow, and everywhere it has gone the harbinger of freedom, of liberty, justice and right.
It has inspired many poets and produced many panegyrics, none more worth of memory than that of Henry Ward Beecher, who said, “The American flag means, then, all the Fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all the Declaration of Independence meant. It means all the constitution of a people organizing for justice, for liberty and for happiness means. The American flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings.”
“Beginning with the colonies and coming down to our time, in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea – divine right of liberty in man,” Beecher continued. “Every color means liberty, every form of star and beam of light means liberty – liberty through law and law for liberty. Accept it then, in all of its fullness of meaning, it is not a painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the government. It is the emblem of the sovereignty of the people. What wonder, then, that with the poet, we instinctively throw up our hats and shout wild hosannas as the glorious old ensign of our republic passes by?”
Purity speaks from your folds of white,
truth from your skies of blue.
Courage shines forth in the crimson stripes
and leads to victories new.
Today, the red in the stripes is a little deeper, for it has the hue of the added sacrifice of heroes fallen, that it might forever wave. Its blue has deepened also, as truth is firmer entrenched, and its white is ever purer, because of our longer experience with an enriched devotion to the eternal principles of justice.
Forty-eight stars now gleam from the field where first there were but 13, emblematic of new sisters in the group which stand firm for all the old flag means.
And, as we stand today under the Stars and Stripes, we realize more than ever the meaning of the words:
And half the world around
Old Glory hears our glad salute,
and ripples in the sound.
