Iconic America

(lively music) - I like flags.

I'm fascinated by flags.

I have a lot of flags.

(peter chuckling) This is a 13th star flag from the 18th century.

This is the house flag of the White Star Line, which is the line that owned the Titanic.

And this is the flag of the Flat Earth Research Society.

This is the flag of Juneteenth.

That's when the US Army issued a proclamation that slavery had been abolished.

And this, of course, is the Gadsden flag, which was the standard of the continental navy at the beginning of the revolution and was also presented by Mr. Gadsden to the South Carolina assembly.

(pages flipping) The Gadsden flag was created during the Revolutionary War.

In those days, the flag was a symbol of the nation that was flown aboard ships.

You had to fly a flag or else you were a pirate.

So when we decided to revolt against the British, we commissioned ships to go to sea to fight them, we had to have a symbol.

- After the Boston Tea Party, the British decide they're gonna blockade Boston Harbor.

So this is the beginning of real hostilities.

(shots firing) - Shots have been fired and people are coming together now to say, okay, what do we do?

How do we respond?

There is no going back.

- Well, the Continental Congress was an assembly made up of representatives from the 13 colonies and it was effectively the government of the United States.

The part that interests us, of course, is that they decided in October of 1775 that they were going to need a navy.

- They create a navy in order to protect trade and that Navy has, as its symbol, the rattlesnake.

(lively music) - [Reporter] The first Marines land with this flag in a raid on the Bahamas in February.

It is seen with the South Carolina Navy also.

It seems to express our feelings.

- A Colonel Gadsden presented to the Congress an elegant standard, such as to be used by the commander-in-chief of the American Navy being a yellow field with a lively representation of a rattlesnake in the middle in the attitude of going to strike, and these words underneath, don't tread on me.

Those are the definitive words of what we know about the Gadsden flag.

This is a way to fire people up and get them on board for the cause.

(dramatic music)