Historic flags unfold national pride and struggle

The Museum of the American Revolution’s summer exhibition of historic American flags and original founding documents opens this weekend. With the Fourth of July just around the corner, the stage is set for a patriotic season.

But history is never that simple. “Flags and Founding Documents: 1776 – Today” (on view until Sept. 6) features more than 40 flags dating from roughly 1800 to the 1970s and more than 16 original state constitutions, to both celebrate the nation and examine its historic threads of slavery, religious intolerance, and Native American relations.

A flag believed to be from 1846 to 1848, anticipating the coming Civil War, features 14 stars — not representing all the states of the union (there were 30 states in 1848), but only those free states where slavery was illegal. Another flag likely made during the Civil War has no color — its stripes are black and white, emblazoned with the words “No Union With Slavery.” It features just 23 stars, eliminating eleven Southern states that were fighting to secede from the union.

Those abolitionist flags went against the wishes of Abraham Lincoln, who did not want to see the South eliminated.

“Lincoln wanted those stars to be kept on the flag, even though states had seceded from the union already in 1861,” said curator Matthew Skic. “Flag makers just sometimes didn’t listen to that.”