The Gadsden Flag at Sea

The words on the flag carry no apostrophe, as on the originals: DONT TREAD ON ME. It was a warning, and in the winter of 1775 it was aimed at the most powerful navy in the world.

The design belongs to Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, a delegate to the Continental Congress. He gave a copy to Esek Hopkins, the Continental Navy's first commander, who flew it as his personal standard. In February 1776 he presented another to South Carolina's provincial congress, whose journal described "a lively representation of a rattlesnake" on a yellow field.

The snake was already an American argument. Benjamin Franklin had drawn the colonies as a cut-up serpent in 1754 under the words "Join, or Die," and in 1775, writing as "An American Guesser," he argued that the rattlesnake never begins an attack and never surrenders once engaged.

The painting brings the flag ashore. On an earthwork above the water, a man in a blue coat hauls the yellow banner up a tall pole while four comrades watch it take the wind. A cannon points out to sea on the left, muskets stand stacked on the right, and a three-masted ship sits offshore beneath a low gold sun. Nothing else in the sky is as bright as that yellow.