Beschreibung:

printed silk in red, white, blue and black flag with canton having black printed memorial column with eagle surmount and Greek temple in background; the plinth is inscribed Kensington May 6-7-8 1844, while the fluted column is wrapped in a ribbon banner, inscribed from top to bottom Shiffler Greeble, Wright, Cox, Rhine Dollar, Hammitt, Stilwell, Ramsey; with blue surround and 26 five pointed stars; fly with 13 strikes from top to bottom B-W-R-W-B-W-R-W-B-W-R-W-B, with Freedom To The American on white stripes; 18" x 27"; pressure mounted in birds eye maple frame; 22.5" x 31.15". This piece was made to commemorate the 1844 Kensington Riots in Philadelphia. During the first week of May 1844 violence erupted between Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Irish Catholic immigrants in the Kensington neighborhood of what is today greater Philadelphia. Most of the Irish were fleeing the potato famine, and their arrival in large numbers caused near panic among the Protestant majority in the city. After the Depression of 1842, Irish Catholic laborers, willing to work for less than the Protestant U.S. citizens, were seen as a distinct economic threat. Many Protestants took as fact stories about bizarre Catholic religious and other practices. Above all, Catholics were accused of owing their first loyalty to a foreign potentate -- the Roman pope. In the early 1840s, nativist groups espousing anti-immigration and anti-Catholic policies, formed American Republican Party (later called the Native American, or the American Party, and best-known by the nickname "The Know-Nothings.") In May, tension between the supporters of "native American" principles and Irish-born Catholics erupted into three days of violence and mayhem in Philadelphia, kown as the Kensington Riots. Several dozen citizens were killed, more than 200 hundred homes and three Catholic churches were destroyed before order was restored. George Shiffler, a 19-year-old tanner and supporter of the Native American Party was the first to die, clutching and an American flag as he fell. Shiffler became the protestant martyr of the riots. Lithographs depicting The Death of George Shiffler were printed and hung in Nativist's homes; later the "blessed flag" was taken to New York and waved at inflammatory Nativist meetings which led to riots in that city. On July 4, 1844, the Native American Party held a mammoth parade in Philadelphia to commemorate their fallen. More than 3000 participated in the march itself, with another 70,000 onlookers. Flags and banners of every description hung from windows along the route, and the marchers themselves waved American flags and variations on the theme, ranging from small-hand held ones to huge hand-stitched banners sewed by the Women's Nativist League. Undoubtedly, this flag was carried in this parade. This flag and variations of it, are described in John Hancock Lee (1855), Origin and Progress of the American Party in Politics Embracing a Complete History of the Philadelphia Riots in 1844. (see especially pp 131-61). Condition:Several small stains and small areas of silk loss, still VG.