PRIOR to July 4th, 1776, various kinds of Flags were used. Mr.
Endicott, Puritan Governor, aided in a religious crusade against the
cross of St. George; he cut the cross from the Flag flying at Salem,
and was tried for treason, but escaped on the ground that his act was
not actuated by treasonable motives, but religious zeal.
About the first of January, 1776, the immortal Washington unfurled
his Flag in compliment to the United Colonies, but it was so nearly
like the British Flag, that the Bunker Hill patriots objected to it,
because it was a blue Flag with the St. George and St. Andrew’s crosses
combined; too much like the Flag of the Britons. Nearly every regiment
had its own colony Flag. All sorts of devices, corresponding with the
variegated coats of the Continental troops, or militia, scarcely two
alike. They were styled “Colony Rebel Flags;” still, the “Colony Rebel
Flags” were all used as rallying Flags, until they were eclipsed by the
starry Flag, called “The Appeal to Heaven,”—“The Star Spangled Banner.”