a bottle of brandy before the
thirsty gaze of an Indian, he said, "If I give you this, will you
creep in at that embrasure and open the gate?" The red man grunted
assent, crept in, and opened the gate. Then the officer and twelve men
took possession. Soon a message went from the officer to his general
as follows: "May it please your honor to be informed that by the grace
of God and the courage of thirteen men, I entered the royal battery
about nine o'clock, and am awaiting for a reinforcement and a flag."
Sometimes the colonists were wanting in the grace of patience, and
this was one of the occasions. A soldier, tired of delay, decided
that, although he could not provide reinforcements, he could provide a
flag; so up the staff he clambered with a red coat in his teeth. He
nailed it to the top of the staff, and it swung out in the wind, much
to the alarm of the citizens, who sent one hundred men in boats to
recapture the battery. The hundred men fired, but the brave little
company kept them from landing and held their position till the
general could send help.

CHAPTER III

LIBERTY AND LIBERTY POLES

After the middle of the eighteenth century there was much talk among
the colonies of liberty. It is possible that not all the people were
quite clear in their minds what that "liberty" might mean; but
whatever it was, they wanted it. England required nothing more of her
colonies than other nations required of theirs. The colonies asked
nothing of England that would not be granted to-day as a matter of
course. The difficulty was that the mother country was living in the
eighteenth century, while the colonists were looking forward into the
nineteenth. A demand for liberty was in the air. The pole on which a
flag was hung was not called a flag pole, but a liberty pole.

Most of the flags on these liberty poles bore mottoes, many of them
decidedly bold and defiant. When the Stamp Act was passed, the wrath of
the people rose, and now they knew exactly what they wanted--"No
taxation without representation." The stamped paper brought to South
Carolina was carefully stowed away in a fort. Thereupon three volunteer
companies from Charleston took possession of the fort, ran up a blue
flag marked with three white crescents, and destroyed the paper. New
York's flag had one word only, but that one word was "Liberty."
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had a banner inscribed "Liberty, Property,
and no Stamps." In Newburyport, Massac