DON’T TREAD ON ME.



The Gadsden flag pictured here is seen flying – sometimes en masse - at almost all Tea Party protest rallies. At the Tax Day protest in Washington D.C. on April 15, I noted an individual, probably a journalist, talking to all the flag bearers, presumably about the flag.

If he was trying for a “gotcha” moment, he was clearly failing, as everyone I saw was enthusiastically talking to him.

Rummaging around the internet for the origins of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag has been an interesting journey. The origin, as best as I can determine it, is with Benjamin Franklin, who in 1754 during the French and Indian War, published a woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. It represented the colonies, with New England joined together as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. Under the snake was the message "Join, or Die". It played off a common superstition of the time: a snake that had been cut into pieces could come back to life if you joined the sections together before sunset.

Franklin’s woodcut cartoon was popular and widely published throughout the colonies, and in the 20 years leading toward the American Revolution, the snake began to see more use as a symbol of the colonies. Many of the colonial militias used some variant of Franklin’s serpent as their unit insignia.

Two stand out. The now familiar Gadsden flag, a coiled rattlesnake with 13 rattles symbolizing the 13 colonies on a field of yellow and the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath the snake, and the Navy Jack, an uncoiled serpent on a field of alternating red and white bars, also with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath the serpent.

Both have naval origins. The Gadsden flag, named after Christopher Gadsden, was presented to (Commodore) Esek Hopkins, as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy, to be used as his personal standard. Hopkins then directed that “a striped Jack” (presumably the Navy Jack) be flown on all Continental Navy vessels.

The Jack of the United States (Navy Jack) is still in use today, and one warship in the active Fleet is entitled to fly the original (First Navy Jack). In 1980, Edward Hidalgo, then Secretary of the Navy, directed that the ship with the longest active status shall display the First Navy Jack until decommissioned or transferred to inactive service, at which time the flag is passed to the next ship in line.

Today, the honor of flying the First Navy Jack belongs to the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65), commissioned in 1961.

In 2002, the Secretary of the Navy issued Instruction 10520.6[3] directing all Navy ships to fly the First Navy Jack as a temporary substitute for the Jack of the United States "for the duration of the Global War on Terrorism".

More flag history can be found here, here, and here.