


I Pledge Allegiance to
the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it
stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
National
Symbol
The flag is the symbol of our
national unity, our national endeavor, our national aspiration.
The flag tells of the struggle for independence, of union preserved, of
liberty and union one and inseparable, of the sacrifices of brave men and
women to whom the ideals and honor of this nation have been dearer than
life.
It means America first; it means an undivided allegiance.
It means America united, strong and efficient, equal to her tasks.
It means that you cannot be saved by the valor and devotion of your
ancestors, that to each generation comes its patriotic duty; and that upon
your willingness to sacrifice and endure as those before you have
sacrificed and endured rests the national hope.
It speaks of equal rights, of the inspiration of free institutions
exemplified and vindicated, of liberty under law intelligently conceived
and impartially administrated. There is not a thread in it but scorns
self-indulgence, weakness, and rapacity.
It is eloquent of our community interests, outweighing all divergencies of
opinion, and of our common destiny.

Evolution
of the United States Flag
No one knows with absolute certainty
who designed the first stars and stripes or who made it. Congressman
Francis Hopkins seems most likely to have designed it, and few historians
believe that Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress, made the first one.
Until the Executive Order of June 24,
1912, neither the order of the stars nor the proportions of the flag was
prescribed. Consequently, flags dating before this period sometimes show
unusual arrangements of the stars and odd proportions, these features
being left to the discretion of the flag maker. In general, however,
straight rows of stars and proportions similar to those later adopted
officially were used. The principal acts affecting the flag of the United
States are the following:
On
June 14, 1777, in order to establish an official flag for the new
nation, the Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act:
"Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen
stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars,
white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation."
Act
of January 13, 1794 - provided for 15 stripes and 15 stars after May
1795.
Act
of April 4, 1818 - provided for 13 stripes and one star for each
state, to be added to the flag on the 4th of July following the
admission of each new state, signed by President Monroe.
Executive
Order of President Taft dated June 24, 1912 - established proportions
of the flag and provided for arrangement of the stars in six
horizontal rows of eight each, a single point of each star to be
upward.
Executive
Order of President Eisenhower dated January 3, 1959 - provided for the
arrangement of the stars in seven rows of seven stars each, staggered
horizontally and vertically.
Executive
Order of President Eisenhower dated August 21, 1959 - provided for the
arrangement of the stars in nine rows of stars staggered horizon tally
and eleven rows of stars staggered vertically.

Francis
Scott Key
1780-1843
Francis Scott Key was a respected
young lawyer living in Georgetown just west of where the modern day Key
Bridge crosses the Potomac River (the house was torn down after years of
neglect in 1947). He made his home there from 1804 to around 1833 with his
wife Mary and their six sons and five daughters. At the time, Georgetown
was a thriving town of 5,000 people just a few miles from the Capitol, the
White House, and the Federal buildings of Washington.
But, after war broke out in 1812 over
Britian's attempts to regulate American shipping and other activities
while Britain was at war with France, all was not tranquil in Georgetown.
The British had entered Chesapeake Bay on August 19th, 1814, and by the
evening of the 24th of August, the British had invaded and captured
Washington. They set fire to the Capitol and the White House, the flames
visible 40 miles away in Baltimore.
President James Madison,his wife
Dolley, and his Cabinet had already fled to a safer location. Such was
their haste to leave that they had had to rip the Stuart portrait of
George Washington from the walls without its frame!
A thunderstorm at dawn kept the fires
from spreading. The next day more buildings were burned and again a
thunderstorm dampened the fires. Having done their work the British troops
returned to their ships in and around the Chesapeake Bay.
In the days following the attack on
Washington, the American forces prepared for the assault on Baltimore
(population 40,000) that they knew would come by both land and sea. Word
soon reached Francis Scott Key that the British had carried off an elderly
and much loved town physician of Upper Marlboro, Dr. William Beanes, and
was being held on the British flagship TONNANT. The townsfolk feared that
Dr. Beanes would be hanged. They asked Francis Scott Key for his help, and
he agreed, and arranged to have Col. John Skinner, an American agent for
prisoner exchange to accompany him.
On the morning of September 3rd, he
and Col. Skinner set sail from Baltimore aboard a sloop flying a flag of
truce approved by President Madison. On the 7th they found and boarded the
TONNANT to confer with Gen. Ross and Adm. Alexander Cochrane. At first
they refused to release Dr. Beanes. But Key and Skinner produced a pouch
of letters written by wounded British prisoners praising the care they
were receiving from the Americans, among them Dr. Beanes. The British
officers relented but would not release the three Americans immediately
because they had seen and heard too much of the preparations for the
attack on Baltimore. They were placed under guard, first aboard the H.M.S.
Surprise, then onto the sloop and forced to wait out the battle behind the
British fleet.
Now let's go back to the summer of
1813 for a moment. At the star-shaped Fort McHenry, the commander, Maj.
George Armistead, asked for a flag so big that "the British would
have no trouble seeing it from a distance". Two officers, a Commodore
and a General, were sent to the Baltimore home of Mary Young Pickersgill,
a "maker of colours," and commisioned the flag. Mary and her
thirteen year old daughter Caroline, working in an upstairs front bedroom,
used 400 yards of best quality wool bunting. They cut 15 stars that
measured two feet from point to point. Eight red and seven white stripes,
each two feet wide, were cut. Laying out the material on the malthouse
floor of Claggett's Brewery, a neighborhood establishment, the flag was
sewn together. By August it was finished. It measured 30 by 42 feet and
cost $405.90. The Baltimore Flag House, a museum, now occupies her
premises, which were restored in 1953.
At 7 a.m. on the morning of September
13, 1814, the British bombardment began, and the flag was ready to meet
the enemy. The bombardment continued for 25 hours,the British firing 1,500
bombshells that weighed as much as 220 pounds and carried lighted fuses
that would supposedly cause it to explode when it reached its target. But
they weren't very dependable and often blew up in mid air. From special
small boats the British fired the new Congreve rockets that traced wobbly
arcs of red flame across the sky. The Americans had sunk 22 vessels so a
close approach by the British was not possible. That evening the
connonading stopped, but at about 1 a.m. on the 14th, the British fleet
roared to life, lighting the rainy night sky with grotesque fireworks.

Key, Col. Skinner, and Dr. Beanes
watched the battle with apprehension. They knew that as long as the
shelling continued, Fort McHenry had not surrendered. But, long before
daylight there came a sudden and mysterious silence. What the three
Americans did not know was that the British land assault on Baltimore as
well as the naval attack, had been abandoned. Judging Baltimore as being
too costly a prize, the British officers ordered a retreat.
Waiting in the predawn darkness, Key
waited for the sight that would end his anxiety; the joyous sight of Gen.
Armisteads great flag blowing in the breeze. When at last daylight came,
the flag was still there!
Being an amatuer poet and having been
so uniquely inspired, Key began to write on the back of a letter he had in
his pocket. Sailing back to Baltimore he composed more lines and in his
lodgings at the Indian Queen Hotel he finished the poem. Judge J. H.
Nicholson, his brother-in-law, took it to a printer and copies were
circulated around Baltimore under the title "Defence of Fort M'Henry".
Two of these copies survive. It was printed in a newspaper for the first
time in the Baltimore Patriot on September 20th,1814, then in papers as
far away as Georgia and New Hampshire. To the verses was added a note
"Tune: Anacreon in Heaven." In October a Baltimore actor sang
Key's new song in a public performance and called it "The
Star-Spangled Banner".
Immediately popular, it remained just
one of several patriotic airs until it was finally adopted as our national
anthem on March 3, 1931. But the actual words were not included in the
legal documents. Key himself had written several versions with slight
variations so discrepancies in the exact wording still occur.
The flag, our beloved Star-Spangled
Banner, went on view ,for the first time after flying over Fort McHenry,
on January 1st,1876 at the Old State House in Philadelphia for the
nations' Centennial celebration. It now resides in the Smithsonian
Institution's Museum of American History. An opaque curtain shields the
now fragile flag from light and dust. The flag is exposed for viewing for
a few moments once every hour during museum hours.
Francis Scott Key was a witness to
the last enemy fire to fall on Fort McHenry. The Fort was designed by a
Frenchman named Jean Foncin and was named for then Secretary of war James
McHenry. Fort McHenry holds the unique designation of national monument
and historic shrine.
Since May 30th, 1949 the flag has
flown continuously, by a Joint Resolution of Congress, over the monument
marking the site of Francis Scott Key's birthplace, Terra Rubra Farm,
Carroll County, Keymar, Maryland.
The copy that Key wrote in his hotel
September 14,1814, remained in the Nicholson family for 93 years. In 1907
it was sold to Henry Walters of Baltimore. In 1934 it was bought at
auction in New York from the Walters estate by the Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore for $26,400. The Walters Gallery in 1953 sold the manuscript to
the Maryland Historical Society for the same price. Another copy that Key
made is in the Library of Congress.
On September 12, Willie Nelson will release his first .
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