'...that our flag was still there'
Happy Independence Day everybody. It’s here once again, a chance to celebrate our great nation and independence from Great Britain, who sometimes refer to us as “The Colonies.” I wonder if England has a Fourth of July? They sure remember ours!
Our Founding Fathers had a little trouble enforcing the Declaration of Independence of 1776 because we were actually colonies of Great Britain. On Dec. 16, 1773, the Boston Tea Party rallied American patriots to take action against the tyrannical government of Britain, which imposed taxation without representation. At Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, colonists dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor as the first major act of defiance to British rule.
In response to dumping the tea, the British Parliament passed a series of punitive measures known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts, including the Boston Port Bill, which shut off the city’s sea trade until payment was made for the tea. The punishment to single out Boston served to unite the colonies to action, and eventually war.
The British Parliament in 1765 had created the Stamp Act, which imposed a direct tax on the colonies to help pay for troops stationed in North America. Unpopular with the colonists, they considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen, with their slogan “No Taxation Without Representation.”
A coalition of colonial merchants and landowners led the protests, which were initiated by a new secret organization called the Sons of Liberty. The tax was never effectively collected due to intimidation of the collectors by protesters, and the Stamp Act was repealed in March 1766. The secret society was formed to fight taxation and protect the rights of colonists. Considered an underground organization, it was disbanded when the Stamp Act was repealed, but the name continued to other groups in the years preceding the American Revolution.
The American War of Independence (1775-1783; The Revolutionary War) was evoked to secure independence from Great Britain. The Founding Fathers knew that in order for the fledgling country to succeed, it needed a form of government in keeping with the verbiage in the Declaration of Independence “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
To that end, our Constitution was written “to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
In June 1777, the Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution, which described the flag of the 13 United States colonies “be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” As a symbol on sovereignty and identification, our new flag was first raised by the Continental Army in August 1777 at the Middlebrook encampment in New Jersey.
Our national anthem was inspired by victory over the British at the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The battle occurred at the port city of Baltimore, Md., in September 1814. American forces repulsed sea and land invasions, and killed the commander of the invading British forces. Frances Scott Key observed the bombardment aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant as a guest of British officers. He was onboard to negotiate the release of prisoners, who were arrested after jailing marauding British troops who were looting local farms.
Key saw the American garrison flag (30 x 42 feet) flying over Fort McHenry on Whetstone Point, which juts into the opening of Baltimore Harbor, to signal victory. He wrote the poem “Defence of Fort McHenry” the morning after the British had been defeated at the battle. The poem was set to music and became our national anthem, which includes the phrase “that our flag was still there.”
Over time, our flag has been raised to signal victory in battle. Perhaps Mount Sarabachi on Iwo Jima is the most iconic rendering of our flag securing victory. Flags of nations are also “planted” to establish ownership of [new] territory. We have a flag in Antarctica, and six on the moon. Other countries have staked out territory around the world to claim the land, just as the Spanish conquistador Ponce de Leon (1460-1521) claimed Florida for Spain in 1513 while seeking the “fountain of youth.”
This Independence Day we celebrate 242 years of America, “the Land of the Free, and the Home of the BRAVE.” Let’s stand and salute those who made America great.
P.S.: England has a 4th of July. It’s between the 3rd and 5th.
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Jack Evensizer is a resident of Dalton Gardens.