Four Official United States Flags and Their Historical Backgrounds

[00:00:00]Don't tread on me with the routing. So little bit of brief history behind this one. This was designed by a man with the last name of Gapston, but it was more so inspired by Benjamin Franklin. See, during the time of the colonies, there was a lot of British men being sent over to America to colonize, but a lot of times they were criminals. So these men would carry on with their criminal acts on the colonies. So as a sarcastic thank you, Benjamin Franklin had the idea of the man that he was filling up barrels of rattlesnakes and sending them back to Britain as a sarcastic thank you to help colonize America. So the rattlesnake made it onto the flag. Don't tread on me. This would be in the early years 1775.

[00:00:51]Proud about there. And the message was clear. Don't interfere with our liberty except at your own peril. And of course, it has the rattle on there. June the 17th, 1775, Bunker Hill. And this is one of the believed flags that would have flown for the Americans. It has a big red field with a smaller white field in the right hand corner up here with a tree that looks similar to an arrow but it is a evergreen tree and the reasoning behind this would actually be inspired to a different flag and it would be uh the appeal to heaven which that's why the flag or the tree looks like an arrow pointing upward to heaven which George Washington would later on want that to be pretty much milit 's motto to have appealed to heaven during the war looking to God's guidance. So this is the one flag that was believed to be flown at the battle of Bunker Hill.

[00:01:54]There are some things that are different about it.

[00:01:58]Notice how many stripes are here. There are 15 stripes with 15 stars still in a blue union and the stars are still equal to each other representing the same thing. So in 1791, as mentioned previously, Vermont became state and then 1792, Kentucky coming to be. And it wasn't until 1795 that this flag was then adopted with two new states. So there are 15 stripes and 15 stars. But then they realized later on when the next flag came to be 1818 that they can't keep adding more stripes to the flag. So it actually went back to 13 stripes and stars would be added over the years to come. But this flag here would have been flown from roughly 1795 to 1818. And it has a nickname. Do you know what that nickname might be? Think about what wars took place from 1795 to 1818.

[00:03:05]>> Yes, the War of 1812. So this flag's nickname is the star spangled banner.

[00:03:12]This would have been the 15 star flag and 15 stripe flag for Mckenry. When Francis Scott Key writed the national anthem in September of 1814 watching that battle commence, this would have been the flag that you seen there as in 15 stars 15 stripes. The war between the states came to be in 1861 of January.

[00:03:37]Alabama seceded from the Union with several other states that would include Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Florida.

[00:03:47]It is a very dark time in the United States of America with seeing different usurppations and things which is a whole another pres presentation in itself. But this flag here was nicknamed the stars and bars and that there is a man by the name of John Pelum who was buried in Jacksonville here. The main road at here is called Pelum Road. There was a military base called Pelum Range.

[00:04:12]There's a Pelum, Alabama and a Pelum, Georgia. John Pelum himself was a resident in Alexandria just a few miles west of here. and he went to West Point Military Academy at the age of 16. Two weeks before graduation, he was enrolled in a 5-year course. But just two weeks before graduation, war broke out. And he resigned from West Point and came back home to Alabama to join the Confederacy as an artillery officer. He didn't start off there, but he rose up through the ranks as a major underneath General Jeb Stewart's mobile horse artillery unit, but he unfortunately died at age 24 as a major in the Confederacy. This would have been the flag that John Pull would have seen when he went to Montgomery with many other Alamians who went to Montgomery to offer their service at that time.