Things original are always sought after and it will certainly be gratifying to Americans to see the original resolution which gave birth to our national flag. The State Department fur nishes the actual photograph copy of this greatest sentence in the history of the United States; and we reproduce it with its corrections. This gives the reader the exact entry on the record pages of the Continental Congresses, and reads: The question is of ten asked what was in tended by the words °a new constellation," and had it any reference to any particular heavenly group of stars. .It may be stated that the con stellation Lyra, known as the harmony or unity group, was intended as its complement in the sky. John Adams was for a period chairman of the Continental Board of War, and he left a tradition in his family that the constellation Lyra was intended, and his son John Quincy Adams, when Secretary of State in 1820, had a seal made for passports which had the Amer ican eagle holding in his beak the constellation Lyra, the entirety surrounded by 13 stars repre senting the colonies. Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Adams, also confirms the tradition and brings correspondence of his dis tinguished sire to prove the item. And it was proposed that the blue union of our flag have the symbolic Lyra, but it was not accepted, as the idea of the stars in a circle seemed more beautiful and could mean as the Lyra con stellation, harmony and purity, without the ex act irregular location of stars and the em blem — Lyra.
While the creative resolution does not specify just what the arrangement of those stars should be, yet it was left to the will of the executive departments to agree upon some plan. The earliest flags always displayed these heavenly bodies in a circle, though there were many revolutionary flags which arranged them otherwise.
But on 26 Oct. 1912 the executive order of President William H. Taft was made concern ing the specific location of the stars and their definite representations; they were to be ar ranged in six rows of eight stars each, the stars to symbolize the States in the order of the States' ratification of the United States Con stitution, viz., Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Ala bama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota. South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona.
On the admission of Vermont in 1791, the citizens complained that their new State was not represented in the flag in either star or stripe. Then in 1792 Kentucky also joined the Union, and she, like Vermont, was not sym bolized with the star or stripe, and so it can be said that these two States were without heraldic representation on the National flag until May 1795 when Congress ordered: °That from and after the first day of May 1795 the flag of the United States be 15 stripes, alternate red and white; and that the union be 15 stars, white in a blue field." But this did not solve the problem of flag standardization, for in 1796 Tennessee came into the Union and wished a star and a stripe, as did also Ohio in 1802; Louisiana in 1812; Indiana in 1816; Mississippi in 1817; and Illinois in 1818. And it was the latter, Illinois, which
would not be stilled, and she insisted that her star or stripe, or both, must come into heraldic significance, and so Congress, on 4 April 1818, ordered: 'That from and after the fourth day of July next, the flag of the United States be 13 horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; that the union have 20 stars, white in a blue field." And the Illinois, or 21st star, legally went into the,flag, 4 July 1819.
Congress, in three basic laws, has always referred to our National flag as °The Flag of the United States," and, strictly speaking, the designation °The American Flag" is wrong, as there does not legally exist such an emblem, but there is a Flag of The United States, as decreed in the law of 14 June 1777, 1 May 1795 and 4 April 1818. On 9 Sept. 1776 Congress ordered that the words °United States" be used where heretofore the words "United Colonies" were used And so Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi and Illinois were for sometime without symbols on the flag, and in order that all new States in the future would not pester Congress for a star and a stripe, Section 2 of the order or bill which became a law in 1818, proyided: 'That on the admission of every new State into the Union, one star be added to the union of the flag; and that such addition shall take effect on the fourth of July next suc ceeding such admission." (Approved 4 April 1818.) Hence on 4 April 1818, the third and last law establishing the creation of our Na tional flag was instituted. The legal name for our emblematic cloth is 'The Flag of United permissible terms, 'The American Flag," 'Our National Flag," °The Star Spangled Banner," 'Stars and Stripes," 'Old Glory" and 'Flag of the Free," 'Stripes and Stars"— as the stripes came before the stars, by 17y, months. In the army it is called 'Standard? while in the navy it is known as 'Ensign? First Salute to the Stars and Stripes.— On the same page upon which on 14 June 1777 appears the resolution creating our flag, also appears by a strange coincidence, the ap pointment of Paul Jones, Captain of the Amer ican Navy. This coincidence led the young officer, who was later to achieve such marked success for the American Navy in the cause of liberty, to declare: " That flag and I are twins, born the same hour and the same day out of the womb of destiny. We cannot be in life or in death. So long as we can float we float together. If we must sink we shall go down as one." At Portsmouth, N. H., three weeks later, on the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Jones hoisted the flag to the peak of the Ranger,— the first time the Stars and Stripes ever floated from an American man-of war. In November 1777, the Ranger left American shores to carry to France the despatches announcing the surrender of Bur goyne at Saratoga. Upon his arrival, in Feb ruary 1778, Jones sent the following letter to William Carmichael, secretary to the commis sioners who were sent to France to arrange the treaty of alliance between the French gov ernment and the colonies: " Roomer, 13 Feb. 1778, Off Quiberon.