In the Pennsylvania _Evening Post_ of June 20, 1776, was published a letter stating that the British cruiser Roebuck had captured two prizes in Delaware Bay "which she decoyed by hoisting a Continental Union Flag." There is no doubt that from July 4, 1776, until June 14, 1777, we had as a national ensign simply a flag with thirteen stripes, as we had declared ourselves free from the government represented by the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew which we had hitherto on our flag, but having upon it a snake with the motto already so often mentioned of "Don't tread on me," and this design was used, but without any official action being taken thereon by the General Congress (see Fig. 11); yet from May, 1776, or June, 1776, the date fixed upon in the Ross claim, until May, 1777, the American troops fought the following battles: June 28, 1776, Fort Moultrie. The flag in that engagement was a blue flag with a crescent and the word "Liberty" upon it (see Fig. 12). Battle of Long Island, August 2, 1776, the British captured a flag of red damask with the word "Liberty" on it; September 16th, Harlem Plains, no flag being mentioned; October 28th, the battle of White Plains, the flag carried by the Americans was a white flag with two cross-swords on it and the words "Liberty or death;" November 16th, surrender of Fort Washington, no mention of a flag; December 26th, battle of Trenton, the flags in this battle were State flags; all other claims are the imagination of artists who apparently knew nothing of the history of the flag; January 3d, Princeton, the same as at Trenton; January 26th, Tryon's attack on Danbury; and yet in all these engagements that took place after we had declared ourselves a free and independent people there is no record in existence, public or private, that the flag claimed to have been designed by Mrs. Ross in May or June, 1776, was carried. The first time the Stars and Stripes was carried by American troops of which we have any positive record was at the battle of the Brandywine, in September, 1777.