the True Story of American Flag

The True Story of the American Flag is a compact historical investigation into the origins and early meanings of the national banner. Fow treats the flag not merely as an emblem but as a contested artifact of Revolutionary politics, congressional procedure, heraldic convention, and popular memory. Written in the documentary, antiquarian style characteristic of early twentieth-century civic history, the book weighs dates, claims, and traditions with a lawyerly insistence on evidence, placing patriotic legend in conversation with archival record. John H. Fow was a Philadelphian lawyer, public official, and former Democratic congressman, circumstances that help explain both his subject and his method. Philadelphia's central place in the Revolution, and in the competing stories surrounding the flag's creation, gave Fow immediate access to a living historical controversy. His legal training and political experience encouraged a concern for testimony, institutional records, and the difference between venerable tradition and demonstrable fact. Readers interested in American symbols, Revolutionary history, or the making of national memory will find this work especially rewarding. It is recommended as a clear, purposeful corrective to mythologized accounts of the flag's birth.

Pagina's: 32, Paperback, Sharp Ink