How the Flag Became Old Glory

Amid cheers and cries of “Old Glory! Old Glory!” that echoed to the Distant hills the old sea flag unfurled and floated above the topmost pinnacle of the Capitol of Tennessee. Swarming over the city, bent on various quests, went the victorious Federals. Not so the old sailor. The revered flag, flaunting the colors so joyously above his head once more, was far too weather-beaten, he feared, to withstand long the stiff breeze blowing about the elevated site. Torn to ribbons it must not be, howsoever good the cause. Quietly he watched and waited about the grounds until after nightfall, when, under cover of the darkness, he again ascended the dome, rescued his beloved old flag, and swung in its place a big merino one that had figured as a campaign flag in 1840, when “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” was the slogan of the Whig Party. He then carried Old Glory to his home and laid it tenderly away in the old sea locker so long dedicated to its use. Very gradually thereafter the pleasing appellation, Old Glory, made its impress upon the speech of the populace, until, in the later nineties, the “Hoosier Poet” was moved to expression in verse: Old Glory, the story we’re wanting to hear, Is what the plain facts of your christening were, For your name, just to hear it, Repeat it and cheer it, s’tang to the spirit As salt as a tear. And seeing you fly and the boys marching by, There’s a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye And an aching to live for you always or die; And so, by our love for you floating above, And the scars of all wars and the sorrows thereof, Who gave you the name of Old Glory? James Whitcomb Riley. But to the query the sealed lips of the old seaman answered not. For him had come the higher summons. Captain Driver’s death occurred in Nashville in 1886. At the head of his grave, in the old City Cemetery, stands a unique monument of his own designing. Upon an old tree trunk, in stone, appears a ship’s anchor and cable. At the top of the anchor is inscribed the beloved pseudonym of his heart’s own coinage, above him here, even in his last sleep: “His ship, his country, and his flag—Old Glory.” About his body when placed