Flag Day

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Flag Day.

The fourteenth of June of every year has been set apart by Congress as a National holiday in honor of the adoption on that date 118 years ago of the stars and strips as the flag of our country.

This year Flag Day will be made memorable in all parts of the country by celebrations at which collections will be taken up for a fund for the erection of a monument in Frederick to Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

The Key Monument Association as announced in yesterday’s News, will hold a celebration of the day tomorrow at 5 p.m. at the grave of Key in Mt. Olivet cemetery, which the people are cordially invited to attend.

An interesting program will be rendered and a handsome new flag will be flung to the breeze from the thirty-five foot staff recently erected at the grave side. It is to be hoped that from every business house, every dwelling, aye, from every humble home in Frederick a flag of some kind will float tomorrow.

Our flag is the sacred symbol of our liberties.

Let us do it full honor on its natal day.

The News (Frederick, Maryland) Jun 13, 1895

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MANY FLAG RAISINGS.

Today is the Anniversary of the Birth of U.S. Flag.

Today, June 14, is the anniversary of the birth of our glorious emblem of freedom, the Stars and Stripes. For it was on the 14th of June, 1777, that congress enacted “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.”

Then today, everywhere, Old Glory floats in honor throughout the land, and, wherever possible, exercises are appropriately held to commemorate the first coming into existence of the American Flag. Throughout the city, on school and public buildings and from private dwellings, the flag and national colors salute the eye. Never before has the country been so thoroughly united as today, when north and south have joined in one just cause as brothers. For this reason the observance of flag day is especially appropriate.

The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) Jun 14, 1898

TODAY is flag day.

On June 14, 1777, congress adopted the present form of hte American flag. The first flag had 13 stars representing 13 struggling colonies, now it has 45, representing 45 states the most resourseful, powerful and majestic in the world.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Jun 14, 1898

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MAY ITS LUSTER NE’R DIM

THIS nation is observing flag day today. It is an occasion for raising to the loftiest pedestal the symbol of our national greatness.

And glorious symbol it is. Behind the stars and stripes, one sees the righteous wars that have been fought and the victorious conclusion in each case. One sees the struggle of the colonists, most of them moved by a passion for religious liberty and willing to face privation and hunger for an ideal. One sees the march westward of the pioneers who gave us our Abraham Lincoln. One sees the steamship developed and one sees the early-day wood-burning locomotives pushing their way into the almost unexplored frontier regions. One sees the beginning of the era of science and its vast strides, hand in hand with labor-saving machinery. One sees the march of education from crude beginnings to the present temples of learning more costly than the palaces of olden kings.

All of these pictures are in that old flag. It’s a living thing, a never-ending inspiration. May the day never come when the sight of Old Glory fails to stimulate a thrill  of pride in those who look upon its beauteous folds.

Mason City Globe Gazette (Mason City, Iowa) Jun 14, 1929

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THE FLOWER FLAG.

It is related that when the Chinese first saw the American colors, they said, “A ship has arrived, with a flag as beautiful as a flower,” and they called, in their poetical phraseology, ours the “flower flag country.” A writer in the Litchfield (Conn.) Enquirer, has seized upon this idea as the basis of the following beautiful little poem, which we cannot but admire, although hardly assenting to the substantial truthfulness of the refrain —
The banner of a — slaveless shore.”

Where proud the ships spread their snowy wings
Over the world-wide sea,
Floats beautiful upon the breeze
The Flag of Liberty.
Oh, stainless be it evermore,
The banner of a slaveless shore!

Its shade is on the northern hills,
And on the southern plains —
It waives above the prairie flower,
And boundless empire gains —
Oh, stainless be it evermore,
The banner of a slaveless shore.

When first its folds were flung abroad,
Then freely bled the brave —
They fought beneath its stripes and stars,
For freedom or the grave.
Oh, stainless be it evermore,
The banner of a slaveless shore!

Say freemen! what shall be its fate,
In the dim future time?
Cleanse ye the land it represents,
From every taint of crime.
Oh, stainless be it evermore,
The banner of a slaveless shore.

Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio) Jan 1, 1850

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