Posted on a Thread of an American flag history forum, in response to the President of the North American Vexilogical Association (NAVA) Mr. Peter Ansoff who back in A.D. 2012 wrote a comment to a question raised by a Thread member who had found my A.D. 2008 era blog on the true First Navy Flag, the Liberty Tree Flag, or the Washington Cruisers Flag, with its motto - Appeal to Heaven : 01-27-2015, 03:55 AM #7 GeneralWashington GeneralWashington is online now Junior Member Join Date Jan 2015 Location Mount Vernon, Virginia Posts 1 Re: First Navy Flag ( Appeal To Heaven Flag ) As I wrote an hour or so ago to Peter Ansoff on this 27th day of January in the Year of Our Lord 2015, in his Welcome to this Forum automated email, while watching on Apple TV the PBS Frontline documentary on United States of Secrets about NSA tapping into Google fiber optic cables and so much more, I was using Google to search on my own named. On about page 15 I found this Thread on the Washington Cruisers - First Navy Flag. Let me start from the bottom up. First, Peter Ansoff states Manship did not ask for or receive permission to quote my personal email in his blog. The email I quoted was sent to me in response to my scholarly questions, and I was seeking the response of a recognized scholar, Peter Ansoff. I do not still have any of my emails from prior to 2007, and most of our emails were from before that, but I do recall any header or footer warnings or requests NOT to share the scholarship Mr. Ansoff provided. I have always tried to give Peter Ansoff credit for the scholarship I received, and I have thanked him more than once for sharing, and I do so again here. On my blog, among other compliments, I wrote: Given that variety, I also asked flag expert Peter Ansoff what did he believe was the shape of the tree described by Colonel Reeds letter. Mr. Ansoff suggested a simple triangle based on the Southhold flag, believed to be the only existing flag of the period with a tree in its design. Mr. Ansoff referred me to the Flag Bulletin #206... A few lines above that, Mr. Ansoff writes, The problem with Manships thesis is that the pine tree / Appeal to Heaven flag was not used by the Revolutionary War navy either....In the first two cases, the vessels were operated by Washingtons Army and had no relation to the Continental Navy. There I must present facts of history that may disagree with Mr. Ansoffs thesis. First, if you look at the Commissioning document for George Washington he was General and Commander in Chief of ALL Continental forces, not just the Army. As a military strategist and tactician, Washington recognized that he was laying siege to the British Army occupying Boston, with the mightiest Navy in the world in the harbor and off shore, and with many supply ships regularly providing the British Army and Navy. With Boston a port town, the British Army supported by supply ships partially protected by the British Navy, Washington had to interdict those supply ships for two good reasons - 1) to deny the supplies to the enemy, the British Army and Navy, and 2) to provide those supplies to the Continental Army, that desperately needed supplies. There were celebrations of Washington and staff when they received reports of some of the cargoes that were captured. Meanwhile the Continental Congress Maritime Committee was debating whether or not they should create a Continental Navy because of their fear to invoke the wrath of the British if they did. By the way, Stephen Hopkins from Rhode Island was on that committee, and his brother Esek Hopkins, who was a Brigadier General of the Rhode Island Militia Artillery, was chosen as the first Commodore of the Continental Navy, but was later Relieved of Command by the Continental Congress for his unprovoked attack on New Providence in the Bahamas, much like the first Captain of the first Continental Navy ship commissioned, the Hannah, Nicholas Broughan (?sp) was relieved for attacking St. Johns in Canada, when his orders from Commander in Chief Washington were to go to render support to the expedition to Quebec by Benedict Arnold and Montgomery. [NOT a good beginning in the leadership in the Continental Navy with Broughan and Hopkins, but John Manley who John Adams suggested to be Commodore was the most successful of the Continental Navy Captains.] Thus when Washington commissioned seven ships to go out to sea to intercept and capture British supply ships, but run from British war ships, he was doing so as Commander in Chief of ALL Continental forces, so thus, Washington created the Continental Navy, somewhat the Northern Fleet (open ports near Boston), later to be followed by the Mid-Atlantic Fleet (Philadelphia and Baltimore), and the Southern Fleet (Charleston) I was in the office of a Navy History Museum employee, when we were discussing WHEN the Continental Navy was formed, and he cited the Valcour Island time, and I pointed out that as about a year after the Continental Navy was formed with the Washington Cruisers. Then, he acknowledged that to be the case, but he said that the American Navy measures its birth to 13 October 1775 when the Maritime Committee voted to commission several ships for the Continental Navy. Then I said, and WHAT was the MARITIME COMMITTEEs first item of business that day of 13 October? He pulled out a book and looked to see what I had already researched, that the first order of business that day was to read and act upon a letter from Commander in Chief Washington asking what disposition they directed for a British supply ship that one of his Continental Navy ships had captured and taken to a Continental friendly port. That pretty much ENDED THE COMMITTEEs DEBATE about annoying the British by forming a Continental Navy. A key second point is there is a substantial difference between the floating batteries that flew a Liberty Tree flag, and the seven sea-going ships that Commander in Chief Washington commissioned in September and October 1775. And then there was the Massachusetts Navy that also flew a Liberty Tree flag, but that began in 1776. From the research that I did from 2004 to 2007 after I was a keynote speaker at the Navy Chaplains Conference in Virginia Beach in November 2004, I do not believe that either the floating batteries or the Massachusetts Navy flag carried the motto Appeal to Heaven. I am very open to good citations that confirm or contradict that reading of our early Naval history. And by the way, I as a former Navy Signals Officer, I am very aware of the difference between a Navy Jack Flag and the Ensign. MOST commercial versions of the First Navy Flag, or Washington Cruisers Flag, carry the motto AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN using all caps and a modern font. The letter of 20 October 1775 written by Washingtons aide-de-camp Colonel Joseph Reed stated the motto to be Appeal to Heaven NOT, repeat NOT, AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN, with NO AN and showing upper and lower case letters. The font on the ONLY surviving tree flag from the Revolution, that Peter Ansoff pointed me to in the magazine published by Dr. Whitney Smith, showed upper and lower case, and a font that looked like Caslon, which is the font used when both the Declaration of Independence and this Constitution for the United States of America were printed. From a Grammar basis, AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN makes APPEAL a noun, and with the adjective AN suggests ONE APPEAL ONE time or by ONE person; where as in Appeal to Heaven, Appeal is a verb, an action word, so Appeal to Heaven becomes a CONTINUING, COLLECTIVE COMMAND from the COMMANDER IN CHIEF (Washington) for ALL Americans to Appeal to Heaven to pray to God the Father in Heaven continuously, as was the daily practice of Commander in Chief George Washington. An interesting side note of History, is the Washington family motto is, Aspire to Heaven. Further, the motto Appeal to Heaven is said to derive from John Lockes Second Treatise on Government. If one reads that essay, no where did Locke write the words an appeal to heaven, but did write appeal to heaven. And Mr. Ansoff writes: The blog that 13 Stars found is written by a gent named James Manship, a former naval officer who portrays George Washington at public events. True, I was a former Naval Line Officer, the Signals Officer on the USS Independence in the Bicentennial Year of 1976, then in 1979, after two shoulder injuries in Navy EOD Diver training, I switched to Special Duty, Cryptology. In 1985, as Commanding Officer, my unit won the Delany Award as the best Naval Reserve Crypto Unit in the nation, and I was twice nominated by by Admirals for a White House Fellowship. In 1987, I suffered food poisoning, fell, hit my head, suffered a concussion, and was discharged from the Navy in 1988. Later I was director of the Defend America: VOTE! program at American Defense Institute on Capitol Hill in Washington. In 1997, I first began to portray General George Washington as an effective way to make History Come Alive and five times since have received standing ovations by the Virginia House of Delegates for portraying George Washington. In October 2012, the Library of Congress granted me a copyright on my research and on the faithful to facts of History design of the Washington Cruisers Flag, or Liberty Tree Flag, indeed the true First Navy Flag.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 09:05:02 +0000
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