Manual of Patriotism

FLAG-DAY MAKES SACRED JUNE 14TH.

QUOTATIONS .Song, The American Flag. “'

SELECTIONS ...Song, Our Flag.

SELECTIONS .Song, Flag of the Free.

SELECTIONS .•..Song, America.

(299)

FLAG-DAY.

This day, June fourteenth,—more, cheerful always in its associations than Memorial Day, even as the weather is fairer in mid-June than at the last of May,—more widespread in its significance than “the glorious Fourth,” or the birthday of Washington or Lincoln, since the flag is the symbol of every great deed or event of patriotism, and not of any one man or fact alone,—is not yet generally observed as a national holiday. But the signs are many that the time will come when the jubilee of the flag will be kept with a display of waving colors—the blending of the matchless Red, White and Blue—such as will gladden the eyes of every American, young and old, and fan to a brighter flame the fire of patriotism in every heart. In this deepening and extending honor to the flag it is natural and possible for children to take the lead. And wherever and whenever they lead the Way, the rest of us will fall into line. When the G. A. R. held its annual reunion in Buffalo a few years ago, there was no sight “half so fine,” so “never-to-be-forgotten” as the “Living Shield” of red, white and blue, composed of school children, several thousand in number, suitably arranged. When Syracuse kept the semi-centennial of its life as a city there was nothing that so drew and held the gaze of the thronging crowds as the sight of four hundred high-school girls arranged in the semblance and colors of a “Living Flag “—the boys meanwhile making the streets alive with color, as they marched in procession with waving banners. But of course it is not always possible, never necessary, to use such elaborate means in celebrating. At slight expense, let each boy and girl in a school be provided with a flag, and there is nothing rhythmic in speech or song for which they cannot easily supply an accompaniment of waving flags; no march whose movement they cannot “time” with moving banners. And out of each Flag-day exercise, whether annual or oftener, there should come a better appreciation of the worth of the flag and the meaning of true patriotism. Moreover, the exercises may be greatly varied by the use of any number among the forty programs which this book contains—for all the forty subjects, like a chorus of voices, “Rally 'Round the Flag.”

QUOTATIONS.

— Henry P. Beck.

—Jennie Gould.

— William Shakespeare.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

-Thomas Williams.

—Frederic Dennison..

\—Phoebe Cary.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. JOHN W. TUFTS.

By permission S1LVER, BURDETT & Co.

THE FLAG MAKES SACRED JUNE FOURTEENTH.

SELECTIONS.

It was no holiday flag, emblazoned for gayety, or for vanity. It was a solemn national signal. When that banner first unrolled to the sun, it was the symbol of all those holy truths and purposes which brought together the Colonial American Congress! Our flag means, then, all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War; it means all that the Declaration of Independence meant; it means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history, and American feelings. Beginning with the colonies, and coming down to our time, in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea—divine right of liberty in man. Every color means liberty; every thread means liberty; every form of star and beam or stripe of light means liberty; not lawlessness, not license; but organized institutional liberty,—liberty through law, and laws for liberty.—Henry Ward Beecher.

Behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a tongue; every stripe is articulate. “There is no language or speech where their voices are not heard.” There is magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question of duty. It has a solution for every doubt and perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency. Behold it! Listen to it! It speaks of earlier and of later struggles. It speaks of victories, and sometimes of reverses, on the sea and on the land. It speaks of patriots and heroes among the living and the dead. But before all and above all other associations and memories, whether of glorious men, or glorious deeds, or glorious places, its voice is ever of Union and Liberty, of the Constitution and the Laws.—Robert C. Winthrop.

All hail to our glorious ensign! Courage to the heart, and strength to the hand to which, in all time, it shall be entrusted! May it ever wave in honor, in unsullied glory, and patriotic hope, on the dome of the capitol, on the dome of the country's stronghold, on the tented plain, on the wave-rocked topmast. Wherever, on the earth's surface, the eye of the American shall behold it, may he have reason to bless it! On whatsoever spot it is planted, there may freedom have a foothold, humanity a brave champion, and religion an altar. Though stained with blood in a righteous cause, may it never, in any cause, be stained with shame. Alike, where its gorgeous folds shall wanton in lazy holiday triumphs on the summer breeze, and its tattered fragments be dimly seen through the clouds of war, may it be the joy and the pride of the American heart. First raised in the cause of right and liberty, in that cause alone. may it forever spread its streaming blazonry to the battle and the storm. Having been borne victoriously across the continent, and on every sea, may virtue, and freedom, and peace forever follow where it leads the way.—Edward Everett.

For myself, in our Federal relations, I know but one section, one union, one flag, one government. That section embraces every state; that union is the union sealed with blood and consecrated by the tears of the Revolutionary struggle; that flag is the flag known and honored on every sea under heaven; which has borne off glorious victory from many a bloody battlefield, and yet stirs with warmer and quicker pulsations the heart's blood of every true American when he looks upon the stars and stripes. I will sustain 'that flag wherever it waves—over the sea or over the land. And when it shall be despoiled and disfigured, I will rally around it still, as the star-spangled banner of my fathers and my country; and, so long as a single stripe can be discovered, or a single star shall glimmer from the surrounding darkne_ss, I will cheer it as the emblem of a nation's glory and a nation's hope.—Daniel S. Dickinson.

There is the national flag! He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds, rippling in the breeze, without pride of country. If he be in a foreign land, the flag is companionship, and country itself, with all its endearments. Who, as he sees it, can think of a state merely? Whose eye, once fastened on its radiant trophies, can fail to recognize the image of the whole nation? It has been called a “floating piece of poetry; “and yet I know not if it has any intrinsic beauty beyond other ensigns. Its highest beauty is in what it symbolizes. It is because it represents all, that ail gaze at it with delight and reverence. It is a piece of bunting lifted in the air; but it speaks sublimely, and every part has a voice. Its stripes, of alternate red and white, proclaim the original union of thirteen States to maintain the Declaration of Independence. Its stars, white on a field of blue, proclaim that union of States, constituting our national constellation, which receives a new star with every new State. The two, together, signify union, past and present. The very colors have a language, which was officially recognized by our fathers. White is for purity, red for valor, blue for justice; and all together,—bunting, stripes, stars, and colors blazing in the sky,—make the flag of our country, to be cherished by all of our hearts, to be upheld by all our hands.—Charles Sumner.

I have recently returned from an extended tour of the States, and nothing so impressed and so refreshed me as the universal display of this banner of beauty and glory. It waved over the schoolhouses; it was in the hands of the school children. As we speeded across the sandy wastes, at some solitary place a man, a woman, a child would come to the door and wave it in loyal greeting. Two years ago, I saw a sight that has ever been present in my memory. As we were going out of the harbor of Newport, about midnight on a dark night, some of the officers of the torpedo station had prepared for us a beautiful surprise. The flag at the depot station was unseen in the darkness of the night, when suddenly electric searchlights were turned on it, bathing it in a flood of light. All below the flag was hidden, and it seemed to have no touch with earth, but to hang from the battlements of heaven. It was as if heaven was approving the human liberty and human equality typified by that flag.—Benjamin Harrison.

It is on such an occasion as this that we can reason together—reaffirm our devotion to the country and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Let us make up our mind that when we do put a new star upon our banner it shall be a fixed one, never “to be dimmed by the horrors of war, but brightened by the contentment and prosperity of peace. Let us go on to extend the area of our usefulness, add star upon star, until their light shall shine upon five hundred millions of a free and happy people.—Abraham Lincoln, on raising a new flag over Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861.

In the ceremonies at Philadelphia, I was, for the first time, allowed the privilege of standing in old Independence Hall. * * * My friends there had provided a magnificent flag of the country. They had arranged it so that I was given the honor of raising it to the head of its staff. And when it went up, I was pleased that it went up to its place by the strength of my own feeble arm. When, according to the arrangement, the cord was pulled, and it floated gloriously to the wind without an accident, in the light, glowing sunshine of the morning, I could not help hoping that there was in the entire success of that beautiful ceremony at least something of an omen of what is to come. How could I help feeling then, as I often have felt, in the whole of that proceeding I was a very humble instrument?

I had not provided the flag; I had not made the arrangements for elevating it to its place. I had applied but a very small portion of my feeble strength in raising it. In the whole transaction, I was in the hands of the people who had arranged it. And, if I can have the same generous co-operation of the people of the nation, I think the flag of our country may still be kept flaunting gloriously.—Abraham Lincoln, Address to the Legislature, Harrisburg, February 22, 1861.

OUR FLAG.

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OUR FLAG.

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— Lucy Larcom.

COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN.

—David T. Shaw.

-Dexter Smith.

-Anonymous.

It is the flag of history. Those thirteen stripes tell the story of our colonial struggle, of the days of '76. They speak of the savage wilderness, of old Independence Hall, of Valley Forge, and Yorktown. Those stars tell the story of our nation's growth, how it has come from weakness to strength, until its gleam, in the sunrise over the forests of Maine, crimsons the sunset's dying beams on the golden sands of California.—S. L. Waterbury.

—Thomas Buchanan Read.

-F. Marion Crawford.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

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—J. Rodman Drake.

-I. C. Pray, Jr.

FLAG OF THE FREE.

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From LR'\"ERMORE's “Academy Song Book.” Published by GINN & Co. By permission.

Every nation has its flag. Every ship in foreign waters is known by the colors she shows at her peak. When we were colonies of England, we sailed and fought under her flag. We finally rebelled; it was nothing less; and to England our George Washington was merely a leading rebel. We were thirteen little States, fringed along on the Atlantic coast, with the unbroken forest behind us, and among the great family of nations we had neither place nor name. We had to fight to obtain due respect from all the great old nations who were looking on. Of course, we had no flag; we had to earn that too. Our army at Cambridge celebrated New Year's Day, January r, 1776, by unfurling for the first time in an American camp the flag of thirteen stripes. On the 14th of June, 1776, Congress, which met then in Philadelphia, settled upon our style of flag. “It shall have,” said they, “thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the States shall be indicated by thirteen stars, white, in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” They followed up the adoption of a flag by a Declaration of Ind pendence; and then we went to fighting harder than ever, and France acknowledged our independence, and helped us to make England acknowledge it. Afterward it was decided to add another star for every new State as it joined the Union. So that the constellation, as it is now, with forty-five stars in it, has grown a good deal from the original thirteen. But the stripes still remain the same in number, to remind us of the first little band of States “who fought it out” against Great Britain.—Kate Foote.

-Harriet Prescott Spofford.

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER.

-Francis Scott Key.

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The flag of a nation is the sign of its sovereignty. The American flag is but the historic parallel of older nations, and yet it stands alone in this—that from the day it was first unfurled in the breeze it has stood for manly independence and a people's government. It has never been sullied by ignoble conquests, and it has been glorified by the proudest possible service in the cause of human freedom.

And it is a curious fact that it is the oldest flag among the great nations of the world in its characteristic present form. Most of the older nations have modified the design of their flags within a hundred years, while ours remains unchanged.

What splendid memories cluster about this beautiful flag! What heroic deeds have made immortal the gallant volunteer heroes who have defended it through all its perils and triumphs of over 120 years, as it has floated in the van of the march of American progress and civilization on this continent!—Albert D. Shaw, Commander-in-Chief (1899-1900) G. A. R.

The history of our country is grandly illustrated in our Stars and Stripes. New stars have been added to its field of blue as new States have been admitted into our Union. It had its origin in the era of Washington, when our republic was established, and it had its greatest trial in the epoch of Lincoln, when the mightiest civil war of the world tested its power and vindicated its supreme control and command over the discordant elements arrayed in deadly and brave attempt to destroy it. To-day this flag stands for no one party or section, but floats over the whole country, one and undivided, without sectional hates, united in the bonds of universal liberty and in the sentiments of an inspiring American civilization. It is the proud sign of peace among ourselves and with all the world.—Albert D. Shaw.

Our beautiful flag is surrounded by touching memories and associations. Its bright stripes and fair stars are perishable, but the sentiments it teaches, like the spirit of liberty, can never die. “ These shall resist the Empire of decay, when time is o'er and worlds have passed away.” Let it be treasured as one of the greatest inspiring factors in the blessed work of science and art here devoted to the uplifting of the youth of our land along the plane of peace and happiness, and may it inspire coming generations to

— Extract from address presenting flag to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, from Albert D. Shaw.

— Charles Fenno Hoffman.