The United States flag was first blown over a military post at Fort Schuyler, on the present site of Rome, New York. The fort was besieged early in August, 1777. The garrison was without a flag; so it made one according to the design of Congress by cutting up sheets to form the white stripes, and bits of scarlet cloth for the red stripes. The blue ground for the stars was made of pieces of a cloth cloak belonging to Captain Abraham Swartwout. John Paul Jones is supposed to have been the first to fly the Stars and Stripes over a naval vessel. This ship was the Ranger, to which he was appointed in 1777. On December 5, 1782, the day when George III acknowledged the independence of the United States, J. S. Copley, the great early American artist, painted the flag in the background of a portrait he was doing of Elkanah Watson. The flag was not changed until 1795, when two stripes and two stars were added for Vermont and Kentucky. But it was realized that there must be a limit to the stripes, and on April 4, 1818, a recommendation was adopted that the flag be permanently thirteen stripes, representing the thirteen original states, and that a new star be added for each state admitted. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 1, No. 43. SERIAL No. 43 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mentor: The Revolution, Vol. 1, Num. 43, Serial No. 43, by Albert Bushnell Hart