After a toilsome winter of many annoyances he repaired, early in April, 1777, to Philadelphia, then the seat of the Colonial Government. Prominent members of Congress, when their attention was called to the subject, admitted that Captain Jones had been wrongfully treated. Mr. Hancock, President of Congress, assured him that the injustice of superseding him was not intentional, but was the result of a multiplicity of business. He said to him: “The injustice of that regulation shall make but a nominal and temporary difference. In the mean time you may be assured that no navy officer stands higher in the opinion of Congress. The matter of rank shall, as soon as possible, be arranged. In the mean time you shall have a separate command, until better provision can he made for you.” Captain Jones urged that there should be a parity of rank between the officers of the navy and the army. He proposed that, in accordance with the British establishment, which was certainly the best regulated navy in the world, an admiral should rank with a general, a vice-admiral with a lieutenant-general, a rear-admiral with a major-general, a commodore with a brigadier-general, a captain with a colonel, a master and commander with a lieutenant-colonel, a lieutenant commanding with a major, and a lieutenant in the navy with a captain of horse, foot, or marines. He also urged strenuously, as an object demanding immediate attention, that commissioners of dock-yards should be established to superintend the building and outfit of all ships of war. They were to be invested with power to appoint deputies, and to provide and keep in constant readiness all naval stores. It speaks well for the intelligence and sound judgment of Captain Jones that, though he was a young officer of but one year’s standing, nearly every suggestion he made was subsequently adopted. Soon after this he received an appointment from the Marine Committee, to sail from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the French ship Amphitrite, to France, with a letter to the American Commissioners there, ordering them to purchase as fine a ship as could be obtained in Europe, for Captain Jones. He was to take out a crew with him, to man the ship, from Portsmouth. The letter the Marine Committee wrote to the Commissioners was very urgent, calling upon them to strain every nerve to accomplish the end as soon as possible. “We hope,” they wrote, “you may not delay this business one moment; but purchase, in such port or place in Europe as it can be done with most convenience and despatch, a fine fast-sailing frigate or larger ship. You must make it a point not to disappoint Captain Jones’s wishes and expectations on this occasion.” On the 14th of June, 1777, Congress established the national flag. It was voted “that the flag of the United States should be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white, in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”