Gadsden Flag

Gadsden US Flag, Made of Polyester, size 3ft x 5ft, comes with 2 metal grommets. The Gadsden American flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field depicting a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Positioned below the snake is the legend "DONT TREAD ON ME". The American flag was designed by and is named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden. It was also used by the United States Marine Corps as an early motto US flag. The use of the timber rattlesnake as a symbol of the American colonies can be traced back to the publications of Benjamin Franklin where In 1751, he made the first reference to the rattlesnake in a satirical commentary published in his Pennsylvania Gazette. It had been the policy of Britain to send convicted criminals to America, so Franklin suggested that they thank the British by sending rattlesnakes to England. In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Franklin published his famous woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. This American Flag represented the colonies, with New England joined together as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. Under the snake was the message "Join, or Die". This was the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper. As the American Revolution grew, the snake began to see more use as a symbol of the colonies. In 1774, Paul Revere added it to the title of his paper, the Massachusetts Spy, as a snake joined to fight a British dragon.^[2] In December 1775, Benjamin Franklin published an essay in the Pennsylvania Journal under the pseudonym American Guesser in which he suggested that the rattlesnake was a good symbol for the American spirit.