The Star Spangled Banner

The Star Spangled Banner

Inside the Smithsonian Museum of American History hangs the fifteen star and fifteen stripe flag that flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the British naval attack in 1814.  This is the flag that inspired the poem and eventually the American national anthem, for most Americans the most enduring legacy of the War of 1812.  But was this the flag that the American infantry carried into Canada during the war?

Apparently not. Although there are reports of the Stars and Stripes flying above Fort Niagara, on Oliver Perry's ship during the Battle of Lake Erie, and with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, American infantry regiments as their national colours appear to have carried the Presidential Ensign.  This flag, essentially displaying the presidential seal, has an American eagle with wings spread, on a navy background beneath
a field of stars. In 1812 the flag had seventeen stars,  reflecting the number of states in the union prior to the war.  The Presidental Ensign can still be seen today on ceremonial occasions opposite the Stars and Stripes flanking the President.

Why might the United States Army entering Canada not carry the Stars and Stripes?

I offer this speculation.  The Stars and Stripes flag adopted by the Continental Congress during the American Revolution represented the thirteen colonies.  As additional states joined the union, adjustments to the flag were deemed necessary.  But just adding stars and stripes became problematic.  By the time that
Mary Pickersgill's banner flew over Fort McHenry there were already seventeen states in the union, not fifteen.  Not until after the War of 1812 had ended, did the American Congress in 1818 approve President Munro's bill establishing the national flag as thirteen alternating red and white stripes and twenty stars, twenty being the number of states in the union at that time.  Given the debate over how to alter the flag, U.S. Regiments must have decided to avoid any controversy and to carry the Presidential Ensign instead.