Whether you fly it, wear it or want nothing to do with it, the American flag says a lot in and about the United States. Red, white and blue is far from exclusive to our nation and yet it is very much our brand... and very much branded on anything we can think to put it on.
So where did the American obsession with our flag come from?
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:00] Nick. The other day I was craving a vanilla soft serve ice cream with rainbow sprinkles because I have never not craved a vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles. [00:00:10] And at a certain point, I realized that as an adult, I can just choose to eat kid coated desserts and I will be just fine.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:18] Just a quick reminder, Hannah, [00:00:20] this is Civics 101.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:21] I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:23] And I'm Nick Capodice, and I'm here to get you back on track.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:26] Okay, this story serves a purpose, I promise, because when my [00:00:30] ardently anticipated ice cream was handed out that window, it was not rainbow sprinkled at all.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:37] Everybody's on the edge of their seats here, Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:39] The sprinkles [00:00:40] were red, white and blue. And I thought, right, of course, it's almost summer. It is almost the 4th of July. It is almost [00:00:50] the 250th birthday of America. So red, white and blue, which are everywhere anyway, was going to be, especially everywhere lately. [00:01:00] And then I thought, I really wish that I could ask for regular rainbow sprinkles. But what would that say about me?
Nick Capodice: [00:01:06] Probably that you're more red than you are red, white and blue, if you know what [00:01:10] I'm saying. Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:11] Probably. So today we're for the American obsession, devotion, adoration, deification of the red, white [00:01:20] and blue. Now, Nick, ours is not the only flag with these colors by a long shot.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:26] Oh, absolutely. There is France, Norway, [00:01:30] the Netherlands.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:31] Great Britain notably.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:33] Oh, yeah. Duh.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:34] In fact, there are dozens and dozens of countries and territories with red, white and blue flags. But [00:01:40] hear those words in that order are shorthand for America. So [00:02:10] I wanted to know, does everyone's heart beat true for the red, white and blue or their nation's equivalent? Or is it just us? But first, where [00:02:20] did it come from?
Nick Capodice: [00:02:22] Come from our flag. Like who designed it?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:24] Well, we've talked about that a bit before on the show. It likely was not Betsy Ross, despite [00:02:30] the way the story goes. But it is possible. It is far more likely. It was a guy named Francis Hopkinson who designed flags for the Navy. He is the only one who made a documented [00:02:40] claim to it in his lifetime, and there is evidence that he requested payment in the form of a, quote, quarter cask of the public wine.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:47] Only a quarter cask in [00:02:50] exchange for the enduring symbol of American freedom, equality and union.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:54] Well, whoever did design it had no idea what the flag would come to mean. And [00:03:00] at the time, it really was not that big a deal.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:03] How could that possibly be the case?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:05] Well, let's get back to where the flag came from. Or maybe a [00:03:10] better way of putting it is what the flag was for. Because the first American flag was a basic necessity during the Revolutionary War. The [00:03:20] Continental Army, who entered armed conflict with the motherland in 1775, needed to distinguish itself from the British Army. Specifically, [00:03:30] it needed an ensign that was different from their ensigns.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:35] An ensign? Yeah, like in Star Trek.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:37] Like in Star Trek, and also in militaries in [00:03:40] the real world. Still holding out hope, of course, that Star Trek is the future of the real world, but I digress. Ensign can be the title of a ranking officer in the military, or it can be the [00:03:50] name of a flag, specifically a flag that identifies a ship as military or civilian. So for the British, they took their existing flag, the Union flag, or [00:04:00] the Union Jack, and they shrank it, and they stuck it in the Canton.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:04] The canton. Well, I know what that is. As a self-described amateur vexillologist and this is something we've talked about [00:04:10] before on Civics 101, it is the upper left hand corner of a flag. For us. At least today it is blue with stars.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:18] Bingo. So in the British ensigns, [00:04:20] the Union Jack was in the canton, and the rest of the space might be blue, it might be red, it might be white with a red cross. And the revolutionaries looked at that and realized [00:04:30] they needed something different. States had flags, but the Army and Congress did not. So we also shrank that Union Jack down for our canton [00:04:40] and made the rest of it red and white stripes.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:43] And keeping that Union Jack that was to symbolize loyalty, like. We're fighting with you and we're different [00:04:50] from you, but we're still part of you.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:52] Well, historians haven't actually come to a consensus on that point. In 1775, when we first started using it, [00:05:00] we hadn't yet declared independence. We hadn't yet blamed King George for our ills. Our beef was with Parliament. Now, one theory is that this was a way [00:05:10] for the Continental Army to. Yes, show loyalty to the King. Another is that it was supposed to show resistance to Parliament, or both. And one way or another it is [00:05:20] nearly identical to the British East India Company flag.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:23] Which was a self-governing company that managed to take over India while remaining loyal to the king. So [00:05:30] it's sort of like we could be our own self-governing entity and maintain Britishness.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:36] Yes. And again, who knows if that's what we were trying to say. [00:05:40] Exactly. The symbolism of flags has always been important, but not in the same way it is today. We have to be careful about giving 18th century flags a [00:05:50] 21st century interpretation. At that time, flags were almost entirely about military operations. The Continental Congress passed [00:06:00] the flag resolution on July 14th, 1777, it says, quote. Resolved that the flag of the 13 United States be 13 stripes, alternate red [00:06:10] and white, and that the Union be 13 stars white in a blue field representing a new constellation.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:16] And this was because we had actually become the United [00:06:20] States at this point. We had finally blamed the King. We are finally thinking about ourselves as an independent nation.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:27] There's a bit of that. There is also a bit of, [00:06:30] uh oh, when we have the Union Jack on our flag, we might accidentally get fired on by our own side. Better switch it up and we already have the stripe thing going. That's [00:06:40] pretty familiar. So let's just change the canton.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:43] Hannah, was it really that casual?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:45] I think it's more like one small detail among many decisions being [00:06:50] made about the operations of a burgeoning military within a tenuous, brand new country. And for years to come, these United States flags would [00:07:00] be haphazard. There was no standard design, no direction on how many points the stars should have, how the stars should be arranged, how many red versus white stripes. [00:07:10] I mean, some of the flags even had blue stripes blue.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:14] Even though Congress passed an act saying red and white stripes. Also, Hannah, [00:07:20] if you're going to say this is our flag, why wouldn't you? I don't know. Include a picture or a press release of some kind that says, [00:07:30] and this is what it looks like.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:31] Well, over the course of the revolution, there were a lot of questions about the standard. People wanted to know, you know, like, what exactly [00:07:40] is the design? Do we have some standard that we can use to base our military flags on? But again, the flag is part utilitarian [00:07:50] object. A military tool was a flag representative of shared ideals and solidarity, the sort of thing that could remind people, namely soldiers, [00:08:00] what they were on about. Totally. Was it this near sacred beacon for all citizenry to fly with pride? Uh uh. It [00:08:10] was far more a way of saying, hey, don't shoot, we're friends or we're still here. Or this is ours now, or this is [00:08:20] not a warship.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:21] Or watch out. We're gonna get you.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:23] Sure, but you weren't walking down to the corner store to buy a flag to hang by your front door. The average person [00:08:30] is not flying the flag at all.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:33] All right, so obviously, something changed majorly. What happened?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:38] We're gonna get to that after [00:08:40] the break. We're [00:08:50] back. We're talking the red, white and blue [00:09:00] stars and stripes. Old glory.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:02] The Star Spangled Banner.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:04] The Star Spangled Banner is the nickname of a real, actual flag. And there is only one. And [00:09:10] you can go see it at the Smithsonian. And it is the one that Francis Scott Key wrote the poem about, and that is how it got its name. But that was not until 1814.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:18] During the war of 1812, [00:09:20] when the British were like, actually, you know what? We're not done here.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:25] Actually, we started the war of 1812 over trade restrictions during the Napoleonic [00:09:30] Wars. Britain was not really in any real way trying to regain North America.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:36] And there is yet another global conflict I missed in grade school.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:39] You and [00:09:40] me both. Anyway, yes. During the war of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that would eventually be excerpted for our national anthem. Now, [00:09:50] what happened was this the British Royal Navy bombarded the American Fort McHenry in Baltimore, and when all [00:10:00] was said and done, the American flag was still there. Huzzah! And that success was immortalized in poetry.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:12] And [00:10:10] so the Star-Spangled banner, our national anthem, is actually a war poem.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:17] It is very much a war poem, and it isn't even [00:10:20] called the Star-Spangled banner. It is called The Defense of Fort McHenry. The song, our national Anthem, leaves out a lot of the war stuff.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:28] So Francis Scott Key [00:10:30] was documenting the horrors of war and the success of this new country, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:38] Right. And if you think of the line, does [00:10:40] that star spangled Banner yet wave? He's saying, do we still have the fort? And also, more broadly, will this free and brave country prevail in [00:10:50] this war? The flag is the signifier that we are continuing. If it is still there, we are still here. And [00:11:10] yes, the tattered Fort McHenry flag was trotted out for special occasions in the decades following the war. It was representative of something far greater than [00:11:20] itself. The Star Spangled Banner was revered, make no mistake, but we are trying to figure out when this symbol became something that we all [00:11:30] possessed, something that projected our Americanness to others, something we revered, something we put on our hats and t shirts and pillows and mugs [00:11:40] and rugs and shorts and bikinis and anything else we can manage to stick it on. So when did that happen?
Nick Capodice: [00:11:47] Right, right.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:49] Civil war, [00:11:50] my friend.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:50] No way.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:52] Oh, yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:54] So that is like a hundred years of the flag mostly being this military symbol, not [00:12:00] something that everyone or anyone else really displayed and then all of a sudden it's everywhere.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:06] Well, in terms of the Stars and Stripes, the defining moment was the capture [00:12:10] of Fort Sumter by the Confederacy. When they took it, they raised a new flag. Their flag.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:17] Right. The stars and bars. [00:12:20] So, Hannah, was this the Confederacy purposefully riffing off the Stars and Stripes?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:29] Oh, [00:12:30] very much so. And very quickly here, the Stars and Bars is not the same thing as the Confederate battle flag that many Americans display proudly to this day. The Stars [00:12:40] and Bars has the blue canton with a circle of. As the name suggests, stars and three bars of color, two red and one white. As one newspaper put it, it [00:12:50] bore, quote, a sufficient resemblance to the old one to keep an everlasting remembrance, the glorious deeds achieved beneath its fold unquote. The [00:13:00] idea was not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to retain an old patriotism while building a new one.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:07] So Sumpter was captured. And then what? Suddenly [00:13:10] everyone or every unionist, I guess, wants to display Old Glory, basically.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:16] Yeah. Flag culture took off very quickly. [00:13:20] Flag day, which we now celebrate on June 14th, was proposed shortly after the capture of Fort Sumter. Conceived of as a way to support the Union troops, we [00:13:30] were a nation divided, clashing ideals. So on the battlefield, flags signified literally and politically. Spiritually, [00:13:40] where you stood, where the lines were drawn as brothers and fathers, sons and friends killed each other for what they believed in. [00:13:50] The flags were the objects that told everyone who you were, what you represented, and what represented you.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:02] And [00:14:00] I guess if you're going gonna roll out a brand new flag to represent your side, your movement, and I'm talking about the Confederacy here, you're going [00:14:10] to want a lot of people to see the stars and bars.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:13] Yeah. And there were these local flag raising ceremonies throughout the South. There were schematics of the design available for people who [00:14:20] wanted to copy it. It appeared on newspaper mastheads, on envelopes, on railroad cars, courthouses, hotels. Likewise, in the north, the Stars and Stripes was [00:14:30] displayed on schoolhouses, churches, and even tucked into hats and lapels.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:35] Lapels. So people are wearing the thing that used to be [00:14:40] reserved for the military and special occasions.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:42] That's right. During the Civil War, displaying your flag became fully entwined with patriotism for whatever side [00:14:50] you were on. And a lot of historians think of this as the beginning of the American flag, as a symbol of devoutness to the only national religion [00:15:00] America has itself. It has been referred to by some as a flag cult.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:09] Wait, what does that mean? [00:15:10]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:10] Officially, Nick, we have no religion, right? Though I'm sure many would beg to differ. We have no national religion. We have no king. But people [00:15:20] are people, and a lot of the time they need fervor. They need to worship something. And after the Civil War, after so many had died for an idea, and by transference [00:15:30] for a flag, and the idea and the flag that won out was the Stars and Stripes Old glory, its sacredness took hold. [00:15:40]
Nick Capodice: [00:15:40] Well, Hannah, is it treated as sacred, though? Like if we're putting it on beach towels and underwear.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:49] Well, I mean, [00:15:50] Nick, that's an issue in religious sects around the world. Is it right and pious to create physical representations of something you worship? Is iconography holy or is [00:16:00] it blasphemy? And in the United States, that truly runs the gamut. There are those who see their Jesus t shirts or car decals, or any number of other objects as [00:16:10] a signifier of their devotion, and those who see it as oppositional to real Christian piety.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:16] All right, so speaking of the iconography thing, Hannah, when did we start [00:16:20] putting the flag on everything?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:22] By the first centennial. 1876, photography and lithography had made it possible to stamp the symbol of freedom [00:16:30] of persevering ideals on loads of commercial products. It also allowed politicians to stamp the flag on their campaign materials.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:39] All right, [00:16:40] so the flag became a tool for commercialism and politicking.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:45] Just as it is today. Simultaneously, there were those who saw this as an exploitation [00:16:50] and desecration of the sacred symbol of the United States. We established Flag Day in 1877. Flag committees were formed around the country to dictate the proper use [00:17:00] of the Stars and Stripes to learn, by the way, how the Pledge of Allegiance came to be. Check out our episode on that. World Wars one and two certainly catapulted the flag to a new stratosphere of reverence and [00:17:10] representation of liberty. And finally, Congress approved a flag code that would tell people exactly how they should and should not treat the flag.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:21] To [00:17:20] that point, Hannah, the flag code says that the flag must not be used for advertising purposes of any kind whatsoever. So [00:17:30] what does that make all those old Navy shirts?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:33] Well, the flag code is more guidelines than actual rules.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:40] You're [00:17:40] always finding a way to sneak it in. Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:42] And by that, I mean it doesn't contain much in the way of enforcement. Are the Old Navy t shirts and all of the other flag things illegal? There [00:17:50] are those who say, technically yes, but without any actual penalty. There's not much you can do. Now, there are state American flag laws as well. In 1907, for example, the Supreme [00:18:00] Court upheld a Nebraska law prohibiting desecration of the flag when a businessman was charged for putting an American flag label on a bottle of beer. That said, Nick, [00:18:10] if patriotism is one American deity, capitalism is another. The towels and the shoes and the board shorts and the rugs, they're here to stay.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:20] All [00:18:20] right. So I am wondering if we really are a little bit more flag obsessed than other countries. Like, we clearly have a unique history [00:18:30] with it, but are we the only ones who do this, who like, print every object we can think of with the stars and Stripes?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:37] Well, not exactly. The Union Jack is [00:18:40] heavily merchandised in Great Britain, though the national devotion there is more intertwined with the Royal Family, admittedly a complicated and not at all universal devotion. In Denmark, [00:18:50] the Danish flag is displayed everywhere, including on Christmas trees. In France, the flag blue, white and red, continues to serve as a symbol of a successful [00:19:00] revolution and of national principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, but Americans are undeniably among the most fervent flag devotees [00:19:10] on earth.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:11] All right, last question here, Anna. We have talked before about the proliferation of different kinds of flags in the United States in recent years, [00:19:20] flags that represent or signify movements, opposition division. Flags that say sometimes by way of redesigning the [00:19:30] American flag. We are the true representation of America, and the American flag itself has become to some divisive or [00:19:40] at the very least, conflicting. Because what it means to be a patriot, to be an American, to honor and Revere liberty is incredibly fragmented [00:19:50] right now. The flag itself, by way of its use, or some might say, overuse in certain spheres, has been perceived as politicized as representing [00:20:00] a party instead of a people. So my question is, has this ever happened before? Has the symbol of unity ever [00:20:10] been a symbol of division?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:13] Now, whether it comforts you or not, it most certainly has. Overwhelmingly for the black American population [00:20:20] of the United States, for whom the symbol of unity and of freedom did not represent their reality, whether under enslavement or. In the ensuing decades of oppression and violence, the American [00:20:30] flag has been conflicting or worse. And it was following the Vietnam War that flag burning was found to be a constitutionally protected form of speech after antiwar protesters [00:20:40] burned Old Glory, when to them it had become representative of the American government's transgressions. But I think if there were ever a time that the flag was as widely [00:20:50] fraught as it is today, it would be the exact same era that made the flag what it became.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:57] And you mean the Civil War?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:59] I do. [00:21:00] There was pain, melancholy, Longing, disgust and fury in the South when it came to the Stars and Stripes. [00:21:10] The Union, as they saw it, had been destroyed by. As one historian put it, quote, abolitionist fanatics and their unprincipled, despotic president. [00:21:20] It doesn't surprise me, Nick, that the Civil War complicated and cemented the American flag as something so much grander than a military tool. When [00:21:30] we turned our resistance and weapons against each other, against ourselves, the American flag became a symbol of division, even [00:21:40] as it fervently united one half of the nation.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:44] But even the Confederacy couldn't let it go. Not entirely. If they were going to have a new flag, it [00:21:50] was going to honor what the original represented or what it had come to represent.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:57] Yeah. And I think that even if today Americans [00:22:00] are once again looking at one another over that flag, It is hard to the point of being painful to ignore the people [00:22:10] and victories and defeats and joy and anguish woven into it. I'm not sure we can stop the [00:22:20] flag from meaning something more than any one era or body politic or movement or president. For what my $0.02 is worth, I think we threw [00:22:30] that constellation of stars too far up into the heavens. It's more a question of whether we can still see it. By the dawn's early light.