Emphasis Preaching Journal

About the middle of the 1800s, Henry Ward Beecher became a prominent minister, political writer, and activist, and a friend of Abraham Lincoln. In May of 1861 he gave a speech titled "The National Flag." Fort Sumter had been captured, war had been declared, and eleven states had seceded from the Union. In "The National Flag" Beecher said: "The American flag has been a symbol of liberty, and [people] rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the sea carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope to the captive, and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the bright morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars shine forth even while it grows light, and then as the sun advances that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together, and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent [blazing], so, on the American flag, stars and beams of many-colored light shine out together. And wherever this flag comes, and people behold it, they see in its sacred emblazonry no ramping lion, and no fierce eagle, no embattled castles, or insignia of imperial authority, they see the symbols of light. It is the banner of dawn. It means Liberty, and the galley-slave, the poor oppressed ... the trodden-down creature of foreign despotism, sees in the American flag that very promise and prediction of God -- 'The people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.' ... Our flag means, then, all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War; all the Declaration of Independence meant; it means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history, and American feelings. Beginning with the colonies, and coming down to our time, in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea: Divine right of liberty in man. Every color means liberty; every thread means liberty; every form of star and beam or stripe of light means liberty; not law-lessness, not license; but organized, institutional liberty -- liberty through law, and laws for liberty!" -- Mosley