The Flag Resolution did not specify any particular arrangement for the stars. The so-called Betsy Ross Flag with the thirteen stars arranged in a circle , although never an official flag, is the oldest version of any United States flag to appear on any physical relic: it is historically referenced in contemporary battlefield paintings by John Trumbull and Charles Willson Peale, which depict the circular star arrangement.
Popular designs at the time were varied and most were individually crafted rather than mass-produced. Given the scant archaeological and written evidence, it is unknown which design was the most popular at that time. The origin of the stars and stripes design is uncertain. A popular story credits Betsy Ross for sewing the first flag from a pencil sketch by George Washington who personally commissioned her for the job. Another woman, Rebecca Young, has also been credited as having made the first flag by later generations of her family.
Another, more likely, popular theory is that the flag was designed by Congressman Francis Hopkinson. Hopkinson was the only person to have made such a claim during his own lifetime, when he sent a bill to Congress for his work.
Virgin Islands, might be considered for statehood. The star flag officially became the U. Though there is no conclusive proof, Francis Hopkinson, a congressman from New Jersey and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is credited with designing the flag. Each star and stripe represented a former British colony. Two stripes and two stars were added to the flag when Vermont and Kentucky became the 14th and 15th states in and , respectively.
The star flag would last for 23 years and five presidents would serve under it. With the westward expansion of the United States and the addition of more states, Congress realized that adding stripes to the flag would be impractical. So Congress passed the Flag Act in , restoring the original stripe design and unveiling the flag with additional stars on July 4. Five stars were added to represent five new states: Tennessee , Ohio , Louisiana , Indiana , and Mississippi The star flag became the official flag on April 13, , and it was the first of nine flags to only last about a year.
Just over a year after the twenty-star flag was introduced, the United States added Illinois to the Union, boosting the number of states to Illinois, where future president Abraham Lincoln began his political career, was admitted on Dec. The number of U. The flag became the official U.
President James Monroe was the only president to serve under this flag as well as the previous two flags. The flag expanded to 24 stars with the addition of Missouri in Missouri, a slave state, was admitted as part of the Missouri Compromise, which sought to achieve a balance of free and slave states during the antebellum period. The compromise included the admission of Maine, a free state, which had separated from Massachusetts and become a state the previous year.
Arkansas joined the Union as a slave state on June 15, Less than a month later, its star was included in the U. Arkansas was part of the Louisiana Purchase and carved out of what became the Missouri Territory to become its own territory. Michigan was admitted to the Union in as a free state to help maintain the balance between slave and free states. Michigan's admission had been thwarted because of a border dispute with Ohio — which had been admitted as a state in — but President Andrew Jackson helped Michigan save face by awarding it land from the Upper Peninsula, and then it was granted statehood, boosting the number of states to Florida, a former possession of the Spanish empire, was admitted to the Union in , raising the total number of U.
It would not remain in the Union for long: Florida would secede in For years every flag was constructed by hand. Because there were no specifications for dimension, color, or star arrangement, the flag saw a plethora of one-off variations. Shown here is a timeline of each official iteration including notable variations.
The current star flag was adopted July 4, Composition The U. Iconography 50 stars the fifty states of the Union 13 stripes the original thirteen colonies. The values here are provided by the U. Until the Executive Order of June 24, , neither the order of the stars nor the proportions of the flag was prescribed. Consequently, flags dating before this period sometimes show unusual arrangements of the stars and odd proportions, these features being left to the discretion of the flag maker.
In general, however, straight rows of stars and proportions similar to those later adopted officially were used.
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