This flag was carried by the Huntington Militia into the Battles of Long Island, Harlem Heights and White Plains, where it was eventually captured by Hessians. After defeat most of the Huntington militia returned home, were captured, and pressed into a forced labor company by the British, but some stayed and fought, forming a “shadow organization of guerrilla fighters” in Connecticut. There they harassed and raided the British occupiers of Long Island and enlisted in other colonial resistance units.
This story is important because it shows a very real and frank lesson. Those who did not have the intestinal fortitude to fight or die for their liberty, almost immediately lost what little they had upon relenting. Disgraced in front of their loved ones, clapped in irons or bound by arms, and forced to toil for their enemy.
Those who believed in posterity and dreamed of something larger than themselves, so much so that they would live in the woods like animals being hunted, starving, freezing, and relentlessly mocked and lampooned by the British and Tory's, would emerge from the woods some 7 years later heros, liberators, and Americans.