State Flags and the Questions of Loyalty

Last month the Washington Post published an article by Gillian Brockell about seven state flags that have little-known ties to the Confederacy.

Four of those flags contain symbols that invoke the colonial or Revolutionary periods. So how could they have roots in the era of the U.S. Civil War?

Back in January I looked at another article by Brockell, one about Robert R. Livingston, and concluded that she had been misled by what appear to be authoritative online sources. So, I wondered, what evidence was behind this one?

The key to the conundrum is that most states didn’t have flags before the Civil War. Flags were national emblems, required by law for warfare at sea. States that had at one point been independent nations, particularly with naval ships or privateers, may have established flags before 1860. But once the U.S. of A. was established, those banners lost their official status. The very idea of a state flag was a sign of national disloyalty.

In the months leading up to the Civil War, several southern states seceded from the U.S. of A. They were briefly independent nations before helping to form the Confederate States of America. And in those months South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina adopted the flags they still basically use.

Notably, all three of those flags incorporated details associated with the Revolutionary War:

• South Carolina adopted the gorget (often taken to be a crescent moon) and palmetto tree from the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in 1776.
• Virginia slapped its state seal, designed principally by George Wythe and showing Liberty killing a tyrant with the motto “Sic Semper Tyrannus,” onto a blue background.
• North Carolina created a flag highlighting the dates May 20, 1775 (the mythical Mecklenburg Declaration), and April 16, 1776 (the genuine Halifax Resolves), as important moments when the state made steps toward independence.

Obviously, the secessionists adopting those memes were claiming their states’ Revolutionary heritage.

In Virginia, that claim didn’t go uncontested. Men in the western portion who didn’t want to break away (or who broke away from the breaking away) took the same seal-based flag design and changed the motto to “Liberty and Union.”

I was surprised to learn that there was a similar but smaller dispute over California’s bear flag. It was designed in some version back in 1846, but flew only a short time before the U.S. Army arrived. (Incidentally, the federal officer who pulled down the bear flag and replaced it with the U.S. flag was Lt. Joseph W. Revere, descendant of Paul Revere named after Dr. Joseph Warren.)

California didn’t have a state flag for more than a decade after that. Again, flags were seen as national symbols. But in 1861, in the “several months before the firing on Fort Sumpter,” some southern Californians flew the bear flag to show their opposition to the U.S. government, according to George H. Tinkham’s California: Men and Events (1915).

Maryland’s official flag dates from 1904, decades after the Civil War. It reflects the heraldic arms of Cecil Calvert, the second Baron Baltimore, proprietor of the colony in the seventeenth century. Maryland never seceded. So what ties to the Confederacy might its flag have?

According to Brockell, back in the early 1860s:

Union Marylanders flew the black-and-gold Calvert flag, the heraldry of the Calvert family that founded the Maryland colony. Confederate Marylanders flew the white-and-red Crossland flag, believed to be the heraldry of the Crossland family, from which George [actually Cecil] Calvert’s mother descended.

Marylanders and eventually their state legislature adopted a flag that incorporated both those patterns as a symbol of reconciliation. Of course, that was reconciliation among white men. Black Marylanders were subject to the Jim Crow laws of that time.

Brockell’s article is arranged from least to most obvious links to the Confederacy. The last two state flags it discusses are those of Arkansas, which includes a star explicitly added to commemorate the Confederacy, and Georgia, which is based on the Confederate national emblem. So those ties aren’t really debatable.

In contrast, we can ponder whether the actions of the South Carolina slaveholders of 1861 taint the symbols they adopted from the South Carolina slaveholders of 1776. Or whether the same combination of patterns as on Lord Baltimore’s seventeenth-century coat of arms can acquire a new meaning as the post-Reconstruction settlement among whites swept injustice under the national rug. But we’re mistaken to assume those state flags actually go back to the Revolution or before.

Brockell’s article starts by quoting Jason Patterson, interim deputy director of Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. He wants more people to understand the meaning of the Maryland flag. However, Patterson “doesn’t want to change the flag, which is particularly beloved by Marylanders. But he doesn’t think its Confederate ties should be ignored either.” Are people willing to do that? 

This article told me stuff I didn’t know, and prompted me to look up more, so I’m grateful for it.

TOMORROW: Massachusetts’s seal.

“Fair the year of glory lies”

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition to post a period poem for New Year’s. Usually I’ve chosen verses written and sung by young news carriers, but this year I’m picking up on this month’s thread of poetry debating the new U.S. Constitution.

“A POEM, Addressed to the PEOPLE of VIRGINIA, on New-Year’s Day, 1788” appeared in the Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser dated 10 Jan 1788. Since that newspaper isn’t in the database I can access, I’ve transcribed the version reprinted in the Pennsylvania Packet on 25 January.

Despite the poem being reprinted in several more newspapers and the American Mercury magazine, it really is meant for a Virginia readership. It boasts about the state’s geographic bounties and drops the names of more than a dozen state politicians in a way that would make John Adams grumble, “You know Virginian geese are always swans.”

So far as I can tell, this poem was not included in the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, perhaps because it was published several months before the Virginia ratifying convention got under way.

Still, there’s no question what the anonymous poet was on about.

A POEM, Addressed to the PEOPLE of VIRGINIA, on New-Year’s Day, 1788.

FAIR VIRGINIA, ever dear,
See arriv’d th’ important year!
While the annual song I pay,
Truth inspires the patriot lay:
Wake!—too long thy sons have dream’d—
Where’s the sister state, that beam’d
Fairer in the dawn of fame,
Glowing with a purer flame?
Shall the ancient wreaths you gain’d
By thy latter deeds be stain’d?
Shall not fed’ral conduct crown
All thy acts of old renown?
Union into ruin hurl’d,
Shall a Tyrant grasp a world?
Or shall sep’rate Unions grow,
Endless source of war and woe?
Or, if Anarchy ensue,
Who hath more to lose than you?

Shall we basely sell the boon,
Bought with so much blood, so soon?
Oh! the muse a tale could tell,
How our heroes fought and fell—
Must our Empire’s short-liv’d reign
Prove they fought and bled in vain?

Blest Virginians, sum the cost!
Shall the price of blood be lost?
Lost the blessings ye possess,
Freedom and the pow’r to bless?
Your’s are planted plains and farms,
Villas fair in rural charms;
Lovely girls and prattling boys,
All the bliss of home-born joys;
When the soothing voice invites
Guests to hospitable rights.—
Your’s th’ illimitable waste,
Flow’ry meads and valleys vast;
Your’s stupendous cliffs that rise,
Bosom’d high in fleecy skies;
Your’s the Alleganian hills,
Spouting forth in num’rous rills.
List ye, how, from many a shore,
Distant sons of ocean roar?
Rivers broad to you belong,
Yet to run in deathless song—
Fair Ohio gently roves
Through the sweet Acasian groves;
Rappahannock (sounding name)
And Fluvanna, slow to fame;
Pohawtan superbly rolls;
Great Potomack, void of shoals;
Mississippi’s waves will gain,
Spite of fraud, for you, the main;
Harvests, by your fields supplied,
Then may float on ev’ry tide.

Go, thou miscreant, from whose tongue
Accents of DISUNION rung;
At the shrine of self, in lies,
Every blessing sacrifice!
Bid the kindling beacons far
Light the realms to civil war;
Bid the drum’s obstrep’rous sound
Rumbling run along the ground;
Bid the trumpet sing to arms,
Swell the cannon’s dread alarms;
Wake the clang of steel again;
Purple every flood and plain;
Make the sick’ning harvest die,
Burning cities scorch the sky:
Heav’n for this shall on thy head
Chosen bolts of vengeance shed.
Round our forests, on our coast,
We have nobler names to boast—
Liberal souls, by none surpast,
Names with time itself to last.
Hail Virginia’s patriot sons.
Griffin, Blair, M’Clurg and Jones!
Join the Pages firm and just:
Steward faithful to his trust:
Maddison, above the rest,
Pouring from his narrow chest
More than Greek or Roman sense,
Boundless tides of eloquence:
Withe, who drank the source of truth,
Skill’d in lore of laws from youth:
Thruston’s mind of ample reach;
Innis, fraught with powerful speech:
Too reluctant to engage:
Pendleton with locks of age,
Mild his eye with wisdom beams,
Lent from other worlds he seems;
Heav’n, resume not such a loan,
Ere we make his choice our own.
Erst the Lees, a glorious band,
For their country made a stand.
Wise and brave, unapt to yield.
In the council or the field;
Why asunder are they torn?
Why his* loss must millions mourn,
Who, to glad th’ astonish’d earth,
Spoke an empire into birth?

The footnote explains, “R. H. Lee made the motion in Congress for the declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.” In late 1787 Lee publicly objected to the lack of specified rights in the new Constitution, though not to a restructured federal government. This poet thought Lee was undercutting his earlier actions while he, of course, felt he was acting on the same principles as before.

While the awful hour demands
Ablest heads and purest hands.
Him, in vain, we call from far,
Second splendor, other star,
Light and glory of the age,
Jefferson, the learned sage!
Yet a name adorns our state,
Great as modest, good as great;
Though unnam’d, illustrious far,
PRIDE of PEACE and STRENGTH of WAR!

Though a FEW, or false or blind,
Strive to taint the public mind;
Trust the muse’s Heav’n-taught strain,
All the noise, the labour’s vain—
Numbers vast will own the plan,
That secures the rights of man;
Gives the States their destin’d place,
High amidst the human race:
Our illustrious hero then,
(First of sages, best of men)
Will the nation’s cares assume,
And again avert its doom.

Bards! your wreaths immortal twine:
Brighter days begin to shine.
Come, ye freemen! Patriots, come!
Read with me Columbia’s doom—
Lo! involv’d in yonder skies,
Fair the year of glory lies.
Ravish’d far, in vision’d trance,
I behold, with mystic glance,
Towns extend on many a bank,
Late with darkling thickets dank,
And the gilded spires arise,
Grateful to propitious skies—
Arts, refinements, morals blest,
Claim perfection in the WEST—
Peace, with commerce in her train,
Brings a golden age again—
While our woven wings unfurl’d
Sail triumphant round the world.

Among the prominent Virginians not named in these lines were Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason, all known to oppose the new Constitution.

Also unnamed, but only because he was too “Great” to need specifying, was George Washington.

(The photograph above shows Virginia’s capitol building in Richmond, designed by Jefferson and under construction in 1788.)

Virginia Takes an Even Less Firm Stand Against the Stamp Act

None of Virginia’s established political leaders liked the Stamp Act. Gov. Francis Fauquier (shown here) had advised his superiors in London against it. John Robinson, speaker of the House of Burgesses, and Peyton Randolph, attorney general, had both protested the possibility.

But once Parliament did pass the Stamp Act in early 1765, those politicians felt that Virginia should be careful about defying it. Certainly more careful than rookie lawmaker Patrick Henry was in the debates on 29-30 May 1765.

Despite that powerful opposition, which also included the highly respected lawyer George Wythe, Henry won over the “young hot and giddy” members of the house. On 30 May 1765 they passed five bold resolutions insisting that only a Virginia legislature could tax Virginians. The fifth went so far as to say that a law like the Stamp Act “has a manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom.”

Then Henry headed home, as most of the other burgesses already had. Gov. Fauquier and the other establishment figures seized the opportunity. The governor explained to London:

On Friday the 31st there having happened a small alteration in the House there was an attempt to strike all the Resolutions off the Journals. The 5th which was thought the most offensive was accordingly struck off, but it did not succeed as to the other four.

A letter printed in the London Gazetteer joked that “Resolves were passed one day, and erased the next.” Indeed, the official record of the House of Burgesses for 1765 doesn’t acknowledge the fifth of Henry’s resolutions. And none of the resolutions, even those that remained on the record, appeared in any of the Virginia Gazette newspapers then being published in the capital.

On 1 June, Gov. Fauquier dissolved the legislature to keep things under control. The House of Burgesses wouldn’t convene again for over a year.

The governor knew that opponents of the Stamp Act were fervent, but he hoped they had been contained. His report to London added:

I am informed the gentlemen had two more resolutions in their pocket, but finding the difficulty they had in carrying the 5th which was by a single voice, and knowing them to be more virulent and inflammatory; they did not produce them.

Those resolutions would eventually come out. I’ll get to them later this year.

It’s notable that Randolph and Wythe, who argued strenuously against all five resolutions, later became leading supporters of the Patriot movement. (Robinson and Fauquier died within three years.) They weren’t ready to be radical in 1765, but eventually Patrick Henry’s arguments became the norm.

New Reading from Williamsburg

The book reviews from the January 2013 issue of the William & Mary Quarterly are now online, readable in P.D.F. form through this webpage. Those reviews include Edward G. Gray’s roundup of three recent books on Loyalism headlined “Liberty’s Losers” because, as Gray points out, British society didn’t actually suffer that much damage from the war:

Less than a decade after the conclusive battle at Yorktown, ordinary Britons could point to few lingering consequences of the war. Americans who had traveled to London for culture and knowledge before the war were coming again. Prewar trading patterns had been more or less restored. Dynastic tensions with France and Spain remained largely unchanged; they neither improved nor worsened, although in 1790 they did nearly erupt into a war over the remote Nootka Sound. In Ireland little changed as a result of the war, despite the seemingly bold 1782 repeal of Poyning’s Law, granting the Irish Parliament a measure of legislative independence. Whatever fears Britons had about the spread of American-style revolution on their side of the Atlantic—and those fears appear to have been minimal—quickly dissipated. Before the appearance of the second part of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man in 1792, republicanism showed no real sign of departing from its moderate Whig roots. Similarly, aside from a very brief Whig ascendency in 1782 and 1783, the overall cast of British politics changed very little as a result of the war. The opposition remained more or less as it had been before the war, and the government of William Pitt the Younger essentially sustained the constitutional order that had prevailed before and during the war.

In contrast, the Loyalists who left the area that became the new U.S. of A.—the largest number of war refugees created by any of the West’s late-eighteenth-century wars—had to rebuild their lives in new homes. But that didn’t mean they shared the same experience, outlook, or values. Gray writes of the “frustratingly elusive quality of loyalism,” and concludes that much of the best material in the books he reviews focuses on particular communities.

Also online now are articles from the latest issue of the Colonial Williamsburg Journal, including items on George Washington’s wealth, George Wythe’s murder, and archeology at Jamestown.

Benjamin Carp’s essay “Separated by a Common History” considers how American authors came to emphasize differences between the North and South that really didn’t play a big role in the colonial and Revolutionary periods. Ben gets off this line:

Colonial American leaders primarily looked in four directions: eastward for goods, westward for land, upward for God, and down their noses at everyone else.

I’m also represented in this issue of the Journal. On page 9, the Correction says: “Two readers wrote that the magazine misspelled the first name of the father of gerrymandering…” I’m one of those two. So proud.

Assembling Individual Information on Black Loyalists

The Black Loyalist website reproduces the names in the “Book of Negroes” compiled by British authorities as they evacuated New York in 1783, listing all the people of African descent who chose to maintain freedom in the British Empire instead of taking a chance in the new, still slave-holding republic. And then it adds more information.

The website describes itself this way:

Working on the principle that enslaved African Americans were not just a faceless, nameless, undifferentiated mass, but individuals with complex life experiences, this site seeks to provide as much biographical data as can be found for the individual people who ran away to join the British during the American Revolution and were evacuated as free people in 1783.

The website grew out of Prof. Cassandra Pybus’s research for Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty, and was funded by the Australian Research Council. (Pybus teaches at the University of Sydney.)

The site is a work in progress. The first postings comprised “biographical and demographic information for the largest cohort, about 1000 people from Norfolk, Virginia, and surrounding counties.” Last year’s additions included “major findings as to the movement of Quakers and their slaves.” Among the planned updates are data on “the slaves of prominent individuals such as George Washington, George Wythe and Robert Pleasants.”

Pleasants was a Virginian Quaker who became an abolitionist. He was the recipient of Patrick Henry’s frank 1773 letter that deplored keeping slaves but acknowledged “ye. general inconvenience of living without them.”