According to tradition, the first flag of the United States, the Continental Union Flag (also known as "Continental Colours"), was raised by General George Washington at Prospect Hill in Somerville, Massachusetts, on 1 January 1776, in an attempt to raise the morale of the men of the Continental Army. There was a 76-foot liberty pole situated on Prospect Hill on 22 August 1775 that "was visible from most parts of the American lines, as well as from Boston". The standard account has been questioned by modern researchers most notably Peter Ansoff, who in 2006 published a paper entitled "The Flag on Prospect Hill" where he advances the argument that Washington flew the Union Jack ("British Union Flag") and not the Continental Colours that bears 13 stripes. Others, such as Byron DeLear, have argued in favour of the traditional version of events.
There is a Prospect Hill Monument that was erected in 1903 and annual flag-raising ceremonies involving American Revolutionary War reenactors are held at Prospect Hill on New Year's Day.
Background
The British Union Flag featuring the crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew was introduced in 1606 to symbolise the dual status of King James I as ruler of England and Scotland. It was flown at sea as a maritime flag and from forts and royal castles. It formed the basis of the "King's colours" bestowed on army regiments. In 1801, the red cross of Saint Patrick was added to herald Ireland's entry into the United Kingdom. Beginning in the 19th century, it achieved customary use as the UK national flag when it was "inscribed with slogans as a protest flag of the Chartist movement".
The American revolutionaries continued to associate the British Union Flag with their cause before and after hostilities between the UK and the Thirteen American colonies erupted in April 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord. Colonial propaganda generally made the distinction between the Crown, to which most colonists still remained loyal, and the parliament and the parliamentary executive, which was viewed as the cause of their grievances. This sentiment finds expression in a verse affixed to the flag pole in Taunton, Massachusetts that mentions:
The reference to "the English colonies in General" points to the way the British Union Flag was seen as a protest symbol in that "its very name hinted at the idea of a union among the colonies" being "a concept that was not viewed favorably in London". Its use by the American revolutionaries was "in a sense a challenge to authority" as the concept of a national flag that represents both the government and the people is modern and did not prevail in the 18th century.
In a speech given on 27 October 1775 at the opening of parliament, copies of which reached Boston by the end of December 1775, King George III "made it clear that he had no sympathy for the distinctions made by the colonists" stating:
The Continental Congress appointed George Washington as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army on 15 June 1775 and dispatched him to Boston, where the British were under siege, to assume command of what he called "the Troops of the United Provinces of North America". He arrived at his post shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
It is not known for certain when the Continental Colours was designed or by whom. The design is nearly identical to the Flag of the British East India Company that was chartered in England in 1600 and played a pivotal role in the Boston Tea Party at the beginning of the American Revolution. It was raised for the first recorded time aboard the USS Alfred on 3 December 1775 by Senior Lieutenant John Paul Jones who referred to it as the "Flag of Freedom" and the "Flag of America". Construction of the specimen flown from the Alfred has been credited to Margaret Manny. The Continental Colours were in use until late 1777.
Arguments for the British Union Flag
All three known eyewitness accounts of the flag raising on Prospect Hill state that it was the "Union Flag". Peter Ansoff posits that the terms "Grand Union" and "Great Union" were not in use during the American Revolution "but were retrospectively applied to the striped union flag by 19th century historians".
Primary sources
George Washington's letter to his friend and aide-de-camp Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reed, dated 4 January 1776, states that:
There appears to be no reason arising from Washington's words or the context to doubt that he was referring to anything other than the British Union Flag and that what he was conveying to Reed "was the irony of the Army's hoisting a symbol of the Crown just before receiving the King's message of hostility toward the colonies". The Continental Colors was devised in Philadelphia for use by the nascent Continental Navy. At the time of the flag raising on Prospect Hill, it had never been formally adopted, and Washington may not have even been aware of the existence of the Continental Colors by then, which is not mentioned in any of his voluminous correspondence with the Continental Congress in the period July to December 1775.
The second account comes from an anonymous captain of a British merchant ship that arrived in Boston on 1 January 1776. In a lengthy letter to the ship owners dated 17 January 1776, he states:
Ansoff notes that his correspondents in London would have no knowledge of the Continental Colours and that if the flag raised on Prospect Hill differed from the British Union Flag, "it seems likely the captain would have further described it". The anonymous author makes the same assumption Washington believed the British had made being "that raising the King's colours was a reaction to the King's speech". However, whereas Washington had suggested to Reed in jest that it was interpreted as a sign of submission, the captain saw it as signalling colonial unity instead.
There is a third eyewitness account contained in a letter by Lieutenant William Carter of the British Army's 40th Regiment of Foot dated 26 January 1776, which states:
Unlike the other eyewitness accounts, Carter refers to "thirteen stripes" although he does not specify whether they are horizontal or vertical. According to Ansoff, "it seems fairly clear from his phrasing that he is talking about a Union Flag flying above another, striped flag". He speculates that if there was a flag hoisted beneath the British Union Flag, it may have been "one of the signal flags that were commonly flown on Prospect Hill". Amid the salutes and cheers, Carter may have assumed it was designed to represent the colonies. Washington may have "failed to mention it as it was not pertinent to the point he was making to Reed". Ansoff concedes that Carter may have been "giving a muddled description of a single flag with both the union crosses and thirteen stripes". However, if so, he considers it "extremely unlikely" that Washington and the anonymous ship captain would have referred to it as the Union Flag without any further qualification.
Secondary sources
There are two secondary accounts that are frequently cited in the vexillological literature. The first appeared on 15 January 1776 in Philadelphia's Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser which states:
Ansoff thinks it "very likely" the author has Washington's letter to Reed available to them given the similarity in phrasing. It appears that it was not uncommon for private correspondence to form the basis of newspaper articles and Washington complained about this in a previous letter to Reed. Ansoff believes that this account is the source of the term "Great Union" that historians subsequently used as the name for the striped Continental Colours.
There was another secondary account that appeared in the 1776 edition of the British publication The Annual Register that states:
Although this account refers to a "flag with thirteen stripes", Ansoff points out that "it is not an original account". It was not published until 25 September 1777 which was "long after the striped Continental Flag had become known to the British" and by which time it "had been superseded by the stars and stripes". The plain ground changing to a field of thirteen stripes faithfully "recalls the transition from the British red ensign to the American Continental colors". Absent is any reference to the Union Flag and Ansoff concludes that the editors "probably conflated this with accounts of the event at Prospect Hill".
Origin of the terms "Great Union" and "Grand Union"
Ansoff asserts the idea that the Continental Colours was raised on Prospect Hill had originated in a footnote in a history of the Siege of Boston published by Richard Frothingham in 1849. The relevant extract which relies on several previous primary sources states that:
Schuyler Hamilton reinforces the idea that a singular flag was flown on Prospect Hill in his 1853 history of the American flag. Quoting Carter's letter Hamilton remarks:
Hamilton also refers to a Philadelphia newspaper account dated 15 January 1776 that used the term "Great Union Flag" stating:
Ansoff notes that it is "somewhat misleading" for Hamilton to say that "Great Union Flag" was the "name given to the national banner of Great Britain". The term "great union" is found in a 1768 royal warrant concerning the colours carried by British infantry regiments and applies "generically to the design of the combined English and Scottish crosses, rather than to a particular flag". The reference in the newspaper report to the "great union" flag is probably a description rather than the name of the flag and "supports the idea that it was a union flag with the combined English and Scottish crosses overall". Hamilton's statement that the flag raised on Prospect Hill "must have been a peculiarly marked Union flag, to be called the Great Union Flag" is unsubstantiated yet his "use of the term as a proper name has been perpetuated by later historians, and is often used to refer to the Continental Colors".
According to Ansoff's 2006 paper, the first reference to the Continental Colours as the "Grand Union" comes from page 218 of the 1872 first edition of George Preble's History of the Flag of the United States of America, which states:
He stated that Preble evidently substitutes the word "grand" for "great" which appeared in the letter published in the Pennsylvania Gazette on 17 January 1776 and given his work is accepted as the seminal history of the American flag "his mistake has been perpetrated in vexillological and general literature ever since".
However, in his response to Byron DeLear in 2015, Ansoff makes a correction that the first recorded use of the term "Grand Union" is actually by historian Thompson Westcott in 1852. Responding to a query Westcott states:
Ansoff says this "almost certainly" refers to the account in the Pennsylvania Gazette, with the word "grand" accidentally used in place of "great". Preble then cites Westcott as a source "and probably copied the quote without checking it against the original".
Arguments for the Continental Colours
Byron DeLear has argued in favour of the conventional history based on a review of "eighteenth-century linguistic standards, contextual historical trends, and additional primary and secondary sources".
Continental Colours as a "Union Flag" In his 2014 paper "Revisiting the Flag at Prospect Hill: Grand Union or Just British", DeLear lists a number of additional primary sources where the Continental Colours are contemporaneously referred to using the descriptor "union".
Dated between December 1775 and March 1776 they are:
"Union Flag" (Account book of Philadelphia ship chandler, James Wharton, 12 December 1775) "UNION FLAG of the American States" (The Virginia Gazette, 17 May 1776) "Union flag, and striped red and white in the field" (Letter to Delegates to Congress from Richard Henry Lee, 5 January 1776)