![]() This new design would continue to be our standard for the next 24 years, despite the addition of five more states (Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi) to our country. This law specified that our national flag would now consist of fifteen red and white alternating stripes and fifteen stars in a field of blue. Consequently, on January 13, 1794, the United States Congress passed the Flag Act of 1794. When Vermont and Kentucky were added to the Union, we needed to modify our flag. Both flags used five pointed stars, and both met the loose design specifications of the First Flag Act. These claimants include Betsy Ross and her Betsy Ross flag with thirteen stars in a circle and Francis Hopkinson who designed a flag with thirteen stars in a 3-2-3-2-3 pattern. The lack of clarity led to numerous designs being used during the American Revolution, as well as several people who claimed to have created our first flag. Interestingly, at the time of American Revolution, six pointed stars were more common than the five-pointed stars we adopted for our emblem. That said, our early flags generally had seven red and six white alternating stripes and thirteen five pointed stars. The act read,” Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternating red and white, that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”Īs you can see, the statute did not specify if there were to be more red or white stripes, how the stars were to be arranged or even how many points the stars were to have. In any event, our flag was born with the Flag Act of 1777 passed by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. Historically, flags had been used as military banners on battlefields as signs for the opposing armies. In fact, most countries did not create their own national flags until the 19th and 20th centuries. When we declared our independence on July 4, 1776, our country did not have a national flag, but that was not unusual for the 1700’s. That said, our flags early history is a bit murky. Since then, it has been changed 27 times, the most recent of which was on Jwhen Hawaii’s star, the fiftieth, was added to the constellation. Our nation’s flag, the emblem of our country, was officially created and later modified by three laws passed by Congress.
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