gagements that took
place after we had declared ourselves a free and independent people
there is no record in existence, public or private, that the flag
claimed to have been designed by Mrs. Ross in May or June, 1776, was
carried. The first time the Stars and Stripes was carried by American
troops of which we have any positive record was at the battle of the
Brandywine, in September, 1777.

It soon became apparent in 1776 that we were fighting for more than mere
Parliamentary representation, and when the culmination was reached by
the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th day of July,
1776, the conclusion was also reached that we could not consistently
fight under a standard containing in its union the crosses of St. Andrew
and St. George, devices that belonged to the enemy, but which we had
used, to express our loyalty to the king up to that time while fighting
for a principle. The want of a change in our emblem as originally
adopted can be best appreciated by the contents of a letter dated
October 15, 1776, sent by William Richards to the Committee of Safety,
published in the Pennsylvania Archives, Vol. 5, page 46, wherein, _inter
alia_, he said: "The Commodore was with me this morning, and says that
the fleet has no colors to hoist if they should be called on duty. _It
is not in my power to get them until there is a design fixed on to make
the colors by._" Yet this letter was written four months after the time
fixed in the alleged Betsy Ross claim. Thus it is shown conclusively by
the record that we had dropped the old Grand Union or Continental Flag,
to wit: the Crosses and the Stripes, but had not yet, October, 1776,
adopted a new design, and it was not until June 14, 1777, one year after
the time fixed as to the Ross claim, that a new design was adopted, and
a resolution was passed wherein Congress said "that the Flag of the
Thirteen United States be thirteen stripes alternate red and white, that
the union be thirteen stars white on a blue field, representing a new
constellation." In the rough Journal of Congress the word "of" occurs
before the words "thirteen stripes;" in the record it appears to have
been changed, thus corroborating the former use of the thirteen stripes.

There is no record as to how this resolution got before
Congress--whether a member introduced it, or whether it was the
outcome of the report of a committee. No official proclamation of this
resolution was made until Septemb