Posted by
LouGanzo on Monday, September 07, 2009 11:47:53 AM
As the American Colonials enganged the British in a seige at Boston it became necessary for them to build the first American Navy. Six schooners were commissioned and personally outfitted by George Washington to harrass the British navy. The symbol of liberty in Boston and throughout the colonies had become the Liberty Tree - a large elm where the Sons of Liberty would meet. For the new American navy a flag was commissioned with a pine tree on it (perhaps easier to mass produce on a flag than an elm) and the enscryption was ordered, "An Appeal to Heaven" - likely a recognition that the Americans would need the help of Heaven to defeat the mightier British Army and Navy. The first vessels commissioned by the Continental Congress sailed under the same device as well as the Massachessetts Navy. Pennsylvania Floating Batteries in 1775, 1777-1778 in defense of Philadelphia also flew the same flag.
The new great - or not so great Atheist movement - in America has tried for years to depict our founding fathers as faithless or ignore our religious heritage in an effort to paint the U.S. Constitution as a document requiring freedom from religion. This misguided perspective is argued by many good evidences which we all know - and also by the first official, commissioned flag of the U.S. Navy. "An Appeal to Heaven. Of course atheists arguments have changed from arguing our religious traditions to the new "religion threatens the free world" arguments espoused by such previously divergent minds as Christopher Hitchens and Bill Maher.
The U.S. Postal System made "An Appeal to Heaven" a part of the historic flags commemorative set in 1968 along with nine other colonial flags.
In a letter dated 10/20/1775 George Washington's secretary, Col. Joseph Reed, wrote from Cambridge, Mass. to Colonels Glover and Moyland and stated:
"Please fix upon some particular color for a flag, and a signal by which our vessels may know one another. What do you think of a flag with a white ground and a tree in the middle, the motto 'AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN' - this is the flag of our floating batteries."
Perhaps as we choose our colonial flags, such as "Don't Tread on Me" or "Unite or Die" to represent our arguments for freedom from Obama-care and "Stimulus" packages we should remember the "Appeal to Heaven" as a symbol and as a practice in our efforts to retain the freedoms of this previously-blessed and still-to-be-blessed nation.