SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
69 
that this flag was made for John Paul Jones by the 
young ladies of Portsmouth Harbor, and that it was 
made for him from their own and their mothers’ gowns. 
It was this flag, in February, 1778, that had the honor 
of receiving from France the first official salute accorded 
by a foreign nation to the Stars and Stripes. 
It was first carried into battle at the Battle of Brandy- 
wine in September, 1777, when Lafayette fought with 
the Colonists and was wounded. This was the famous 
flag made out of a soldier’s white shirt, a woman’s red 
petticoat, and an officer’s blue cloak. A famous flag 
now in the National Museum in Washington is the 
Flag of fifteen stars and stripes, which floated over 
Fort McHenry — near Baltimore- — in the War of 1812, 
and which Francis Scott Key (imprisoned on a British 
ship) saw “by the dawn’s early light” after watching 
through the night the “rocket’s red glare, the bombs 
bursting in air” as proof that the fort had not fallen 
to the enemy. The next day he wrote “The Star- 
Spangled Banner.” 
It is said that peace has its victories as well as war, 
and Scouts will want to know that our flag flew from 
the first vessel ever propelled by steam — Robert Ful- 
ton’s Clermont . 
It was carried by Wilbur Wright on his first success- 
ful airplane flight in France. 
It was the flag planted at the North Pole by Robert 
Peary. 
It was the National emblem painted upon the first 
airplane to make the transatlantic flight, May, 1919. 
At first, when states came into the Union, a new 
stripe and a new star were added to the flag, but it was 
soon evident that the added stripes would make it very 
unwieldly. So on April 4, 1818, Congress passed this 
act to establish the flag of the United States: 
