http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_tread_on_me

n the fall of 1775, as the first ships of the Continental Navy readied in the Delaware River, Commodore Esek Hopkins issued, in a set of fleet signals, an instruction directing his vessels to fly a striped Jack and Ensign. In retrospect this has been taken as the first U.S. Navy Jack and has traditionally been shown as consisting of thirteen red and white stripes with a superimposed rattlesnake and the motto "Don't Tread on Me." No representation or example of the ensign survives: patriotic historians have inferred the design from Hopkins' message and a color plate depicting a "Don't Tread Upon Me" ensign in Admiral George Henry Preble's History of the Flag of the United States, 1880.

The rattlesnake had long been a symbol of resistance to the British in Colonial America. The phrase “Don't tread on me” was coined during the American Revolutionary War, a variant perhaps of the snake severed in segments labelled with the names of the colonies and the legend "Join or Die" which had appeared first in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754, as a political cartoon reflecting on the Albany Congress.


In 1980 Edward Hildago, the Secretary of the Navy, directed that the ship with the longest active status shall display the First Navy Jack until decommissioned or transferred to inactive service. Then the flag will be passed to the next ship in line.

On September 30, 1998, USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) became the oldest active status ship in the United States Navy upon the decommissioning of USS Independence (CV 62).

By an instruction dated 31 May 2002, the Secretary of the Navy directed all United States Navy ships to fly this flag in honor of those killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks and will be flown for the duration of the War on Terrorism.
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Gadsden Flag

The phrase "Don't tread on me" also appears below a coiled rattlesnake that is about to strike on the yellow Gadsden flag, named for its deviser, Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, which is said to have been flown by the Culpeper Minute Men, of Culpeper County, Virginia.
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