The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1883-04-19
The Star spangled Banner.

0tates, we suppose, who does not know that
the thirteen stripes in the American flag are
symbolical of the thirteen States that COM
posed the original Union, and that the stars
in its azure field represent the number that
now compose it, yet we fancy that few of
their elders even could tell, if they were
asked, how and when this device came to be
adopted as the National emblem. Nay
more, we suspect that of the millions who
have sung the Star Spangled Banner" in
peace and in war, still fewer are aware that
it was not until four years after Key had
composed his immortal anthem in the dun
geon of a British man-of-war, during the
futile commandment of Fort McHenry, that
the stars and stripes actually became the
flag of our country. The facts concerning
its origin are as follows: In 1894 Congress
passed an act declaring that the flag should
be composed of fifteen stripes, and that the
field should contain fifteen stars, and it so
remained until the year 1916, when the State
of Indiana having been admitted into the
Union, and it being evident that to add
another stripe to the flag would make it too
unWieldly, it became necessary to consider
the propriety of making some alteration in
the design. A committee was accordingly
appointed, and Captain Samuel C. Reid, the
hero of the famous naval duel between the
American brig General Armstrong and the
British fleet at Fayal in September, 1914,
was authorized TO prepare new design,
which should retain the essential character
istics of the old flag while doing away at the
same time with its cumbrousness. This he
succeeded in doing by reducing the number
of stripes to thirteen and making the stars
in the union of the flag representative of the
number of States in the Confederation, new
star to be added on the Fourth of July next
following the admission of any new State.
This modification Of the old design received
the approval of Congress, and on the 4th
of April, 1913, an act was passed declaring
it the flag of the United States, but it was
not until the thirteenth of the month that
the first fag-made for the occasion by the
wife of Captain Reid and a number of
New York ladies arrived in Washington.
AT 2 o'clock on the afternoon of that day it
was hoisted over the Capitol, and There, for
the first time, the Star Spangled Banner, as
we know it to-day, saw the light of heaven.
1t was in the spring of the following year
that James R0dman Drake, one of the
earliest and best of our American poets. com
posed his apostrophe to the American flag,
which, although it has never attained the
popularity of Keys rather turgid verses, is
the most vivid conception of the beauty and
significance of the National eoloTs that has
ever been penned. Written more than sixty
years ago, when the final adjustment of all
foreign complications seemingly promised
permanent security to the Republic, how
prophetic in the light of later events seem
the following linesi
Flag of the brave thy folds shall fy,
The sign of hope and triumph high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,
And the long line comes cleaning on;
Ere yet the life-bIood warm and wet
Has dimnled the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn,
To where thy sky-born glories burn,
And, as his springing steps advance
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And when the cannOn-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreathes the battle shroud,
And CORY sabers rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame nidnight's pail,
| Then shall thy meteor-g lanees glow,
And covering foes shall sink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
| That lovely messenger of DEATH
| Little did the poet think, however, that
the day would ever come when the hand of
an American would be raised against that
| flag, and it would require the sacrifice of
| thousands of lives to unfurl it again over
an undivided country! But preserved it
was-not a star missing from its azure field
and it is with a feeling such as the poet
never could have known that Americans to-
day exelaim:
Flag of the free hearts hope and love,
| BY angel hands to valor given;
Thy stars have lit the wellSin dome,
And all thy hues born in heaven.
| Forever float that standard sheet!
| Where breathes the foe but falls before u.s.
| With freedoms soil beneath our feet
Aud freedoms banner streaming DER us ~
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