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In 1790, with the customs laws firmly in place, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton set to work devising adequate means of enforcing the year-old regulations. "A few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports," Hamilton suggested, "might at a small expense be made useful sentinels of our laws." Congress concurred, and that year appropriated $10,000 to build and maintain a fleet of ten revenue cutters, which were to be placed under the charge of the customs collectors. Nine years later, Congress refined the revenue cutters’ role in customs operations with the passage of the Act of March 2, 1799, known as the Customs Administration Act. In particular, Congress determined "the cutters and boats employed in the service of the revenue shall be distinguished from other vessels by "an ensign and pendant, with such marks thereon as shall be prescribed and directed by the President of the United States." Additionally, the Act permitted commanders of revenue vessels to fire at other vessels failing to respond "after such pendant and ensign shall be hoisted and a gun fired by such revenue cutter as a signal." Further, the Act set a penalty of one hundred dollars for unauthorized use of the customs ensign. The job of designing the distinguishing ensign eventually fell upon Oliver Wolcott, who had replaced Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury in 1795. On June 1, 1799, Wolcott submitted his design to President John Adams for approval. Wolcott’s proposal featured an ensign of sixteen vertical stripes, alternating red and white, representing the number of states that had joined the Union by 1799. In suggesting a correspondence of stripes and states, Wolcott was following the lead of Congress, which in 1794 had changed the national flag to fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, implying an adjustment at the entry of each new state. Wolcott, therefore, raised the number of stripes to sixteen, and significantly, turned their arrangement ninety degrees to differentiate the new revenue cutter ensign from the U.S. Flag. The noted author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who served as customs surveyor at the port of Salem, Massachusetts, from 1846 to 1849, would later suggest the "stripes turned vertically, not horizontally, (indicated) a civil, not military, post of Uncle Sam’s government." For the union of the ensign, Wolcott proposed using the Arms of the United States, officially adopted by Congress in 1782, displaying an American bald eagle clutching a bundle of arrows in its sinister talon, and an olive branch in the dexter talon. Walcott’s use of the National Arms in the union of the revenue cutter ensign was not unique: American regimental colors at the end of the Revolutionary War featured the Arms and stripes. One such flag, dating from 1784, and now preserved at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, shows the union’s eagle beneath an arc of thirteen stars, bearing in its talons three arrows and an olive branch, much like the eagle placed in the union of the first revenue cutter ensign. A similar flag appears in portraits by the artist Charles Wilson Peale, of Revolutionary War heroes George Washington, and Samuel Smith. President John Adams replied to Secretary Wolcott, that he had "no great objection to the marks on the ensign and pendant" proposed by Wolcott. "The yellow color, however," the President commented, "I do not admire." What appeared as yellow in Wolcott’s first design is unknown; the sketch accompanying the letter has yet to be uncovered. Adams left it to his Treasury Secretary "to determine in favor of that (color) or any other you may prefer." The final arrangement determined by Wolcott, and transmitted to the collectors in a Circular Letter dated August 1, 1799, fixed the ensign at "sixteen perpendicular stripes, alternate red and white, the Union of the Ensign to be the Arms of the United States, in dark blue, on a white Field." With specifications in hand, each collector contracted with local flagmakers to furnish the new revenue cutter ensigns. Not until the 1860's were standardized ensigns issued directly from the Treasury Department. Although originally intended as a marine ensign to be flown from revenue cutters and customs vessels, the collectors soon were flying it over their customhouses. That tradition was codified a half-century later, when in 1874, Treasury Secretary William A. Richardson, required that during business hours, the customs ensign was to be hoisted by the side of the Stars and Stripes over all customhouses. When the Coast Guard became an independent bureau of the Treasury Department in 1915, absorbing the duties of the older Revenue Cutter Service, a modification of that ensign was created to distinguish vessels under the newly organized U.S. Coast Guard, and those still employed by the collectors of the customs. Precedent for the distinction between the two ensigns was established five years earlier, when President William Howard Taft issued an Executive Order on June 7, 1910, announcing "the flag now used on vessels of the Revenue Cutter Service be marked by the distinctive emblem of that Service, in blue and white . . . over the center of the seventh vertical red stripe." In 1927, Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, ordered the emblem changed to the official seal of the U.S. Coast Guard. The basic design of Oliver Walcott’s ensign remained in use by the Customs Service for over 150 years. In 1951, during the course of a flag identification project authorized by President Harry S. Truman, the Heraldic Branch of the U.S. Army, noted the National Arms appearing on both the Customs Coast Guard ensigns, were not exact representations of the National Arms as originally prescribed by Congress. The Act of 1782 had stipulated the Arms was to be "an American Bald Eagle, displayed proper, holding in his dexter (right) talon an olive branch, in his sinister (left) a bundle of thirteen arrows, all proper, and in his beak a scroll inscribed with this motto, ‘E Pluribus Unum’." On his breast was to be "a shield of thirteen red and white pales, with a chief of blue" and, above the eagle’s head, "a glory, breaking through a cloud and surrounding thirteen stars forming a constellation." On the historic Customs ensign, the scroll was absent from the eagle’s beak; in his talon were three arrows instead of thirteen; and above his head the stars were arranged in an arc, instead of within a Constellation. Consequently, in 1951, the union of the Customs ensign was changed to bring it into accord with the intention of the original 1799 Act of Congress, to properly display the "Arms of the United States."
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