Seamen Remained Staunchly Loyal To The American Cause

The two most famous images of the Revolutionary flag, both of them painted in the nineteenth century, reveal its symbolic importance in the 1800s but little about what flags meant during the Revolution. Emanuel Leutze's painting of Washington crossing the stormy waters of the Delaware, flag billowing in a halo of light at the center, is wholly inaccurate: Not only did the party actually cross the river at night, and in a high-sided transport vessel, but the men would also have flown a regimental flag if they carried one at all. Likewise, C. G. Weisgerber's Birth of Our Nation's Flag depicts Betsy Ross sitting in her parlor across from George Washington and two other congressmen, proffering a flag for their approval as sunlight streams through the window. There is no evidence that a congressional committee ever visited Ross or that she sewed the flag with a circle of stars in the canton: Like the Leutze painting, the scene is imaginary.

The so-called prisoner's flag, however, is real. This is a small flag made by an American seaman or seamen held captive in a British jail during the Revolution. Its rectangular backing is red wool, onto which are stitched seven strips of white silk. The navy canton is pocked with thirteen white stars, embroidered idiosyncratically in a host of different orientations: They seem to spin on their field. These are not the delicate seams of an accomplished seamstress; they are the strong, straight stitches of a seaman mending a sail. One can imagine a sailor bending over his materials day after day, having scavenged the red wool from an officer's greatcoat and purchased the white silk ribbon at the prison gate. The flag must have meant a great deal to him.

The Revolution had begun in earnest with the open rebellion of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, as thousands joined the Continental army. For the first part of the war, it had seemed inconceivable that the new government would win: It was up against the strongest military power in the world, and British troops seized New York and captured the colonial seat at Philadelphia. But the decisive American victory of the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 proved a turning point, as American troops forced British General John Burgoyne to surrender. After a long campaign in the South, ending with Washington's decisive 1781 defeat of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, the British troops left the continent.

Of all those who fought in the Revolutionary War, it was seamen who embraced the flag most fervently. Imprisoned sailors were among the flag's earliest and most earnest private champions, the first to develop their own ceremonies and rituals around the flag. These men drew on the long strands of history to infuse the new flag with their own powerful and personal version of patriotism. There are intermittent records of this new culture: the hand-sewn prisoner's flag, lyrics of the popular sailing songs, prisoners' accounts of flag recognition. The most complete version is in a sailor's diary that describes a defiant Fourth of July ceremony in a British prison courtyard featuring military drills and handmade flags. It is the first recorded instance of American flag use that was popular and spontaneous, rather than quasi- official and organized. And it reveals the overlapping meanings of the new flag: as a tool of popular, humanitarian resistance and as a nationalist symbol of a new and separate government.

The first American flag appeared in the rigging of the Alfred as the warship sailed from Philadelphia in early December 1775. This was the Continental Colors: a flag bearing the red and white Sons of Liberty stripes in the field, and a miniature Union Jack in its canton. The complexity of the design made it hard to distinguish: One observer deemed it "English Colours but more Striped." Future commodore and naval hero John Paul Jones claimed to have been the first to raise it: "I hoisted with my own Hands the Flag of Freedom the First time that it was displayed on board the Alfred on the Delaware." The Alfred was the flagship of the new navy that had just been commissioned by the Continental Congress. It was a tiny fleet-only four ships-and Congress feared that it would be attacked by friendly forces without a distinct flag announcing its American sympathies. The authorization of a new flag design was a highly practical affair, without fanfare. The measure took place within the bounds of the Marine Committee and did not even arrive on the floor of the full Congress. The design of this flag, with both British and colonial elements, reflected the ambivalent political status of the rebellious colonies.

Eighteen months later, on June 14, 1777, Congress adopted the Flag Resolution. With that act, the Continental Colors of the defiant colonies became the Stars and Stripes of the United. States. There was little ceremony, but it was an important moment and one that would become more significant with time. For the first time, the American nation-the human community linked by shared territory, culture, and ideals-had become congruent with the state, the political entity. And the flag stood for three entities now woven together: the state, the nation, and the nonnational patriotism of the waterfront crowds.

The Stars and Stripes was not yet properly a flag: There were constituent elements but no standardized design. The most recognizable element was the red and white stripes, which echoed the protest flags of the Sons of Liberty. Each stripe symbolized one of the thirteen colonies, and together they symbolized the power of united resistance. Accompanying the stripes were white stars, which appeared in a blue canton in the upper left corner; their exact origin is unclear, though they may have come from the Masonic tradition of using stars or from the family military standard of George Washington. Within this basic structure, there were endless variations. Sometimes the stars were arranged in a circle, sometimes in rows, sometimes forming a square frame around a blue center, sometimes in an arch over the number seventy-six. Sometimes they had six or seven points, as in the heraldic tradition; sometimes they had five, which would become the American standard. The stripes, too, were variable: More than one flag showed red and blue stripes, or red, white, and blue. And while most flags showed thirteen stripes, some showed nine. Nine was a volatile number in the colonies. As the sum of four and five, it referred to the forty-fifth edition of the North Briton newspaper in which publisher John Wilkes had lambasted King George; Wilkes's subsequent arrest by the king caused an uproar about British constitutional freedoms. Whatever the number and significance of stripes, all traces of the Union Jack had disappeared.

These new flags flew over the official navy, as well as over a host of private and commercial vessels. The official Continental navy was a negligible force, sailing only fifty-seven boats over the course of the war, many of which were small and in poor condition. But naval culture, as opposed to the navy, was broad and pervasive. Large numbers of Americans took to the seas in private ships that acted in quasi-official roles and served as an adjunct to the official fleet. More than 200,000 men sailed on these ships, almost as many as the 230,000 enlistments on the active rolls of the Continental army. The impact of naval culture becomes clearer with the realization that the population numbered 2.5 million at the beginning of the war. Of every 13 people (men, women, and children included), 1 person was a sailor.

Most of these men served on the several thousand commercial vessels known as privateers. Trimmed with fast sails and carrying little burden, they served an important offensive function: They raided British ships and kept the profits. Privateers tracked down slower-moving vessels laden with British supplies for His Majesty's forces in the colonies. The raiding vessels' speed and large crews enabled the sailors to quickly move alongside, swarm onto the British decks, and subdue their crews. Then the raiders hauled off prizes, sometimes military supplies like cannons, guns, and powder, and sometimes casks of rum or shipments of food. Sometimes, the privateers themselves got taken, but as a whole, they succeeded in harassing the powerful Royal Navy. Their nips and stings forced convoy vessels into a defensive posture and kept the British navy from having the full run of the high seas.

Any self-respecting young man of the eighteenth century looking for fortune and adventure found himself down at the waterfront. The waves knocking on the wooden wharves promised a magical world of adventure and fortune. The ships he saw anchored would soon steer for London, Savannah, Santo Domingo-magical cities he could only imagine. He saw the sailors swaggering down the cobblestones in their big beaver hats, clinking the coins in their pockets. As he passed the waterfront dance halls, he could hear the violins and tambourines within; when doors swung open, he saw the flash of dancing girls. On street corners, he was hailed by ships' recruiters in shining uniforms. "Ha shipmate," they called out, "don't you wish to take a short cruise in a fine schooner and make your fortune?"

By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, many men were motivated by patriotism as well. Record numbers signed up for service, and recruiting posters testified to this patriotic allure, especially when combined with profit. On broadsides depicting woodcut images of ships, they called out: to all the JOLLY TARS who are fighting for the RIGHTS and LIBERTIES of AMERICA: make your Fortunes now, my Lads, before its too late, Defend, defend, I say defend an Independent State.

Many of these sailors were ultimately captured by the Royal Navy, and nearly twenty-five hundred were held in British prisons over the course of the war. Despite their lack of official affiliation, the seamen remained staunchly loyal to the American cause, refusing to join the Royal Navy and risking death for their convictions. When one Revolutionary sailor was hauled before a panel of British judges and asked why he had gone to sea, his reply was clear and direct: "We were out to fight the enemies of the thirteen United States." And these imprisoned seamen found meaning in the American flag, investing it with symbolic qualities far beyond its previous usage. Their improvised ceremonies around it reveal that sailors had begun to adopt the new flag in ways that were both national and personal.

Old Mill Prison, a stone fortification on the English coast, was one of two British prisons and many prison ships that held the captured Americans. It was a dismal place. From the windows, the prisoners could glimpse the grassy headlands of Plymouth and the windswept Devon coast. Between the captives and these free fields stood a series of four gray stone walls, each ten to twenty feet high, their tops studded with shards of glass. The central yard was littered with nettles, old shoes, bones, and stones. Stench rose from the open sewage pits, where the men dumped their daily waste.

On the morning of July 4, 1778, approximately two hundred captured American sailors gathered in the central prison yard. Once straight-backed and jaunty, they had enlisted during the fever of American patriotism in the summer of 1776. Now they were a motley crew, shoeless and ragged. Their bodies were weakened from a prison diet of bread, cabbage soup, and maggoty beef. Disease had ravaged them. Elias Hart lay dying of consumption, and Joseph Barnum, weakened from smallpox, would have his white and swollen knee amputated within the week. The prisoners hardly seemed the stuff of which nations were made.

And yet the sailors were stubbornly loyal to the United States. King George would shortly announce himself willing to pardon any rebel who would sign on with a British man-of-war. The sailors knew that, aside from turning to the British, they had little hope. American ships would never be able to free them on the British coast, and Benjamin Franklin was working for a prisoner exchange but had had no success. Their trials, which would take place before a British panel of judges, were a foregone conclusion. The men would be charged with high treason, summarily tried, and found guilty. They would make the long, slow walk to the gallows and make their last brief statements, and then their bodies would swing in the wind. But most American sailors were willing to accept this fate to die as an American, rather than turn traitor on a British warship. Nine out of ten chose to stay in prison and face an almost certain hanging. They were, in the words of one of them, "true sons of America."

That morning of July 4, each of the several hundred prisoners wore a hat, folded out of paper into a distinctive three-corner construction. At a signal, they raised paper discs, cut into half- moon shapes, and set them into the notches on these hats. The guard, watching carefully, might have been able to see the image of the American flag: thirteen stars and thirteen stripes on each of the discs. And under this distinctive pattern, he would have just been able to make out Revolutionary slogans-"Independence" and "Liberty or Death"-printed in large capital letters.

Few of the prisoners had served in the official army or navy, and many had already been captured when Congress had passed the Flag Resolution. They had sailed under the Continental Colors and had only learned of the Stars and Stripes in prison. But these symbols evoked a strong and personal sense of patriotism. The flags communicated the sailors' American allegiance and their defiance of British rule. Their three-corner hats, also known as cocked hats, were a replica of those worn by American officers. The paper discs were a handmade version of military cockades: circular knots of ribbon worn on one's hat as a badge of loyalty. It was well known that Washington wore a black cockade, as did many of the American troops. The printed words invoked what had become a specifically American tradition of resistance. They conjured up the spectacle of the Continental Congress ratifying the Declaration of Independence, and resonated with the mythic speech on the floor of the Virginia House of Burgesses, in which Representative Patrick Henry was said to have urged military action against the British by crying, "Give me liberty or give me death!"

Just past midday, at one o'clock, the prisoners assembled in the prison yard. They had spent the morning in their usual activities; now they gathered to show their self-discipline and their united strength. The prison guard, watching, saw a strange choreography evolve. The two hundred prisoners suddenly moved apart. They arranged themselves, still wearing their paper hats and flag cockades, into a number of smaller clusters. If the guard had thought to count, the number of clusters-thirteen-would have enlightened him.

The guard watched as, one after another, each of the thirteen groups gave three cheers: Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! As simple as the ceremony was, it was threatening, too. After the first three groups had cheered, the guard knew that ten more would have their turn before the prisoners were done. When the ceremony ended with the whole company cheering together, the guard must have feared the collective power of those two hundred prisoners, even against the locks and walls that kept them in. The prison agent, too, was concerned. He sent the guard to bring him one of the hats and doubled the watch at the gate.

Among the prisoners was Charles Herbert, a twenty-year-old man from coastal Massachusetts. He was a typical recruit: young, white, landless. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had enlisted at the news of the Declaration of Independence, served first in his local militia and then on a privateer, and bonded deeply with his fellow sailors in prison. Herbert's diary-which he kept hidden in his shoe, since inmates were not allowed pen and paper-chronicled his years in prison. In it, the young captive described how the men tracked American military progress through smuggled newspapers, how they dug underground tunnels from which they escaped and were frequently brought back, and how they cooperated with one another against the hated prison agent. "The Americans unanimously hang together," he wrote.

Two passages in Herbert's diary illuminate his developing patriotism with particular clarity. The first is the simple record of a book purchase: He spent precious money on a copy of Thomas Paine's The American Crisis. Herbert was certainly familiar with Paine's thinking, as all Americans were. Paine's Common Sense, published in January 1776, was the single most powerful articulation of American nationhood and the most popular work in all the colonies. It was written in plain language and read aloud in homes, workshops, and taverns. Within a few months of publication, it had outstripped all other pamphlet sales by ten to one.

Paine was himself a sailor. Like many other seamen, he came from a working-class family, and as a young man, he had shipped on board a privateer. He had been profoundly shaped by his time at sea, admiring the solidarity of seamen, their cooperation, and their culture of egalitarianism. Paine's American vision, as articulated first in Common Sense and then in The American Crisis, infused republican ideology with a strong sense of these values. He sought to dismantle social hierarchies. He criticized monarchy not simply because it was corrupt, but also because of the very fact that it was a monarchy. "In America," he wrote, "the law is king." He developed the concept of "the people" more fully than ever before, basing his vision on a broad, inclusive franchise. "The case of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind," he wrote. "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. The birth-day of a new world is at hand." In recording his purchase, Herbert carefully noted that he had bought it "on purpose to lend it to a friend without." Paine was the only political thinker whom sailors honored in this way. His vision, with its strongly egalitarian ethos, was the closest to the one that the sailors themselves embraced.

A second passage, from March 1778, was written as news of the British army's struggles brought hope. Herbert often wrote at night, after other prisoners were sleeping. He must have sat in a small pool of light in the darkened prison, a marrow-bone candle flickering at his elbow, and laid out his vision of what he wanted the war to achieve: I hope that our long wished for prize is just at hand-a prize that is preferable to any other earthly enjoyment. I hope our days of trouble are nearly at an end, and after we have borne them with a spirit of manly fortitude, we shall be returned to a free country, to enjoy our just rights and privileges for which we have been so long contending. This will make ample satisfaction for all our sufferings.

This was the language of republican ideology. Nowhere in the diary did Herbert write that he wished the war were simply over so that he could go home. Rather, his vision was deeply egalitarian. He assumed that the free country was his as well as others'. Sailors had no economic, cultural, or political power. They were subject to captain's orders on ship and to impressment in port. They were not allowed to vote. And yet, Herbert spoke of rights that belonged specifically to him and other sailors when he wrote of "our just rights and privileges." He saw himself as part of a political system in which he too could participate. And he saw the sailors' suffering not only as a form of loyalty to the colonies but also as a loyalty to themselves. Their love of country was inextricable from what it promised them.

Before the Old Mill Prison flag ceremony, the prisoners had governed themselves with the rough egalitarianism they had on board ship. When someone stole, they formed a gauntlet around the prison yard and forced the thief to run through while they beat at him with nettles from the yard. They hung together, too, using a boycott to punish a cook whose wife had betrayed an escaping prisoner. After the flag ceremony, the men's relationship with one another changed. Instead of the implicit comradeship of sailors' culture, they began to act as a government: formal, deliberate, representative. The change was swift and striking. Within two weeks, they began to act as a democratic body, making joint decisions and issuing proclamations. They provided for the needy, raising money to support a prisoner's wife and contributing to a fund for the sick. Most strikingly, they drew up formal "articles" banning gambling and cursing and posted them in the yard. This was prison democracy, enforced by tying violators to a post and pouring cold water down their necks for half an hour.

The sailors' new sense of self-determination culminated in a different ceremony in the prison yard, held six months after the first. On the second anniversary of their capture, on a December day, the men gathered again. This time, there were no cocked hats, no cockades, no Stars and Stripes, no division into thirteen colonies. Instead, there were words. The men gathered around a paper that was read aloud. We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, do, of our own free and voluntary consent, agree firmly with each other, and hereby solemnly swear, that we are fully determined to stand, and so remain as long as we live, true and loyal to our Congress, our country, our wives, children and friends, and never petition to enter on board any of His Majesty's ships or vessels or into any of service whatsoever.

More than one hundred men signed this statement. The prisoners had petitioned before, but it had always been a supplication for better food or treatment. This petition did not ask. It was a declaration of independence. It was also the fullest expression of the liberty claimed by the sailors when they had raised the flags on their hats. Their patriotism was defined by what they articulated: their loyalty to their Congress and their country, clearly distinguished, and to their own families. It was also defined through their expression. American patriotism meant the ability to represent one's own self in a political context. It allowed the sailors to imagine themselves not simply as the men who fought the war but also as the men who governed the community.

The colonists as a whole underwent a similar transformation. At the moment of the Stamp Act in 1765, most colonists simply wanted the offensive measure repealed. At the moment of the Declaration in 1776, they wanted political independence from Great Britain. By the end of the war, they had effected a social revolution. The process of effective group opposition was trans- formative: It turned what might have been merely a republic into a democracy. Like Charles Herbert, ordinary people found themselves transformed by the war. They believed that they, too, should be able to participate in the political system that they were helping to create.

In the hands of Revolutionary sailors, the flag became an emblem of liberty in all its political and social meanings: a rejection of British monarchy and hierarchical culture and an embrace of American democracy and egalitarianism, indicating a nation-state that had staked a claim for humanitarian values.

Woden Teachout. . Basic Books. May 25, 2009.

I'm not too sure about this book, but I know that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Certainly, in the panorama of American history, many a rogue can be detected peering from behind the American flag, and today a red, white, and blue decal is no guarantee of anything.

---

top of page

back a page