In a historical irony few Americans are aware of, the colonies’ first collective flag prominently displayed the very symbol of the empire from which the Revolutionaries would soon declare their independence.
By the close of 1775, the Second Continental Congress had already assumed many of the functions of a national government. It had authorized a Continental Army, established a navy and created the Marine Corps that November. Those institutions required a banner that represented the united colonies rather than the patchwork of individual colonial flags then in use, including Massachusetts’ Taunton Flag (designed by the Sons of Liberty) and New York’s George Rex Flag, raised on a “liberty pole” in 1774.
What became known as the Continental Union Flag was born — featuring thirteen stripes, with, surprisingly, the Union Jack in one top corner. The new standard distinguished American forces from the various British military and naval ensigns while still reflecting the colonists’ complicated relationship with the Crown. During the Revolutionary era it was referred to by many names, including the Continental Colors, Congress Flag, First Navy Ensign or Cambridge Flag.
The identity of its designer remains unknown. One longstanding tradition attributes its construction to Margaret Manny, a milliner based in Philadelphia. Some historians have also suggested that the flag’s creation was remarkably practical: by sewing six white stripes onto existing British Red Ensigns, the colonies could quickly produce a distinctive national banner while conserving scarce wartime resources.
The retention of the Union Jack reflected the belief of many of the colonists that reconciliation would prevent the need for full-scale Revolution. After all, their quarrel was with Parliament’s policies and what they regarded as violations of their constitutional rights as Englishmen, not necessarily with the institution of monarchy itself.
The first documented raising of the flag occurred on Dec. 3, 1775, when it was hoisted at the commissioning of Admiral Esek Hopkins’ USS Alfred on the western shore of the Delaware River at Philadelphia. The flag subsequently became closely associated with George Washington’s army outside Boston. Tradition holds that it was raised at Prospect Hill on New Year’s Day 1776 as the Continental Army besieged British forces occupying the city.
Only months after the flag first appeared, however, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” transformed public opinion by arguing that complete independence was both necessary and morally justified. The Declaration of Independence followed on July 4, 1776, fundamentally changing the meaning of the Revolution.
A flag that still incorporated Britain’s national symbol no longer reflected the new political reality. On June 14, 1777, Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes, replacing the Union Jack with thirteen stars representing a new constellation of sovereign states. That date is now commemorated as “Flag Day.”
This gradual progression evokes the sequence of the Exodus story. The Torah depicts redemption as a process rather than a single event. The Israelites did not leave Egypt one day and become a covenantal nation the next. More than once they longed for the comfort food of their former captors. Remnants of the oppressive empire in whose culture the Israelites had been steeped took time to be removed. Political and spiritual maturity required trials and tribulations to manifest on the way to the Promised Land. Revolutions in the Bible, the late British chief rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks observed, “go with the grain of human nature, recognising that it takes time for people to change.”
The Continental Union Flag therefore deserves to be remembered as a window into the political process of independence, as in the time of biblical Israel. The banner embodies the uncertainty, debate and gradual emergence of the American liberation movement, the wanderings that helped form those whom Abraham Lincoln would later label “God’s almost chosen people.”
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include the newly released “Jewish Roots of American Liberty,” “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”
