title: Our Heaven Born Banner

artist: Frederic Edwin church

date: circa 1861

source: Library of Congress, Reproduction Number: [link LC-USZC4-12417] LOC-image|id=cph.3g12417

credit: This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g12417.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.

description: Title: our heaven born banner / painted by Wm. Bauly ; lith. of Sarony, Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway, N.Y.

• Creator(s): Sarony, Major & Knapp Lith., lithographer
• Related Names: Bauly, William , artist; Schaus, William , publisher
• Date Created/Published: [New York] : Published by W[illiam] Schaus, 749 Broadway New York, c1861.
• Medium: 1 print on wove paper : lithograph printed in colors ; image 25.2 x 32.3 cm.
• Summary: A pro-Union patriotic print, evidently based on Frederic Edwin Church's small oil painting "our banner in the sky" or on a chromolithograph reproducing that painting published in New York by Goupil & Co. in the summer of 1861. Church's painting was inspired by the highly publicized Confederate insult to the American flag at Fort Sumter in April 1861 and by a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher published shortly thereafter. the present print was deposited for copyright, with a companion piece, "Fate of the Rebel Flag" (no. 1861-21), on September 6. "our Heaven Born banner" shows a lone Zouave sentry watching from a promontory as the dawn breaks in the distance. His rifle and bayonet form the staff of an American flag whose design and colors are formed by the sky's light. Below, in the distance, is a fort--probably Sumter. the print is accompanied by eight lines of verse:

When Freedom from her mountain height / Unfurled her standard to the air, / She tore the azure robe of night / And set the stars of glory there. / She mingled with its gorgeous dyes / the milky baldrick of the skies, / And striped its pure celestial white / With streakings of the morning light.

Unlike its companion piece, "our Heaven Born banner" is printed using brown instead of black ink for the primary tone.

• Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-12417 (color film copy transparency) LC-USZ62-91440 (b&w film copy neg.)
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
• Call Number: PGA - Sarony, Major & Knapp--our heaven... (A size) [P&P]
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
• Notes: Title from item. "Entered ... 1861 by W. Schaus ..." the Library's copy is the copyright deposit impression.
• Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1861-20.
• Described in: Burke, Doreen Bolger. "Frederic Edwin Church and the banner of Dawn." American art journal 14, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 39-46.

A lithograph by Sarony, Major & Knapp based on Frederic Edwin Church's oil painting our banner in the sky. A Zouave sentry watches from a promontory as the dawn breaks, while his rifle and bayonet form the staff of the flag.