Flag of the United States

• 1. Introduction

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  The flag of the United States first flew in battle on the 3rd of August 1777, at Fort Schuyler, also called Fort Stanwix, and the garrison built it from whatever cloth was at hand. Massachusetts reinforcements had just arrived with news that Congress had adopted an official flag. Soldiers cut up their own shirts to make the white stripes. Scarlet material came from the red flannel petticoats of officers' wives. The blue field came from the coat of Captain Abraham Swartwout of Dutchess County, and a voucher still survives showing that Congress paid him for it.

  That makeshift banner leaves a trail of puzzles. Who actually designed the flag, and why have so many people been credited with the job? How did a piece of equipment made to identify American ships and forts become one of the most widely recognized symbols in the world? And what happens when a symbol that many revere is also one that others set on fire in protest?

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• 2. Before the Stars

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  On the 3rd of December 1775, Continental Navy Lieutenant John Paul Jones raised a new ensign aboard Captain Esek Hopkins' flagship Alfred, on the Delaware River. It had 13 alternating red and white stripes, with the British Union Flag in the canton. Historians call it the Continental Union Flag. It also goes by the Cambridge Flag, the Grand Union Flag and the first American flag. The name Grand Union was first substantiated in 1852. A Philadelphia resident named T. Westcott used it while answering a question about the flag's origin in Notes and Queries, a London periodical.

  Prospect Hill was George Washington's command post during the Siege of Boston. On New Year's Day in 1776, he held a flag-raising ceremony there to lift the spirits of the Continental Army. The standard account says the Continental Union Flag flew that day. In 2006, Peter Ansoff proposed that it was really a British Union Flag. Byron DeLear and others defend the traditional version.

  When the Declaration of Independence arrived in July 1776, no flag then in use carried a single star. Congress would not adopt a star-studded blue field for about another year.

  In 1937, Sir Charles Fawcett argued that the East India Company's flag inspired the American design. Both flags could easily be made by adding white stripes to a Red Ensign, one of three maritime flags used across the British Empire. The company flag, however, could carry anywhere from nine to 13 stripes. It was also barred from flying outside the Indian Ocean.

  Benjamin Franklin is said to have told Washington that the new flag's field must be fresh in its details but need not be entirely new in its elements. Borrowing from the company would signal loyalty to the Crown. It would also hint at the self-government the company enjoyed. Critics point out that no written evidence links the two flags. Even so, the resemblance is obvious, and some Founding Fathers knew how freely the company ran its affairs in India.

  Whatever the debt to the company, stars were new, and Congress would give them their first official mention in June 1777.

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• 3. One Sentence, Many Flags

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  On the 14th of June 1777, the Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution. It read: "Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation." Flag Day is still observed on the 14th of June each year. Tradition says the Continental Army first hoisted the new flag that month at the Middlebrook encampment, though scholars still argue about it.

  The resolution sits between other resolutions from the Marine Committee, so it was probably meant to define a naval ensign. In the late 18th century, the idea of a national flag was barely formed. On the 10th of May 1779, Richard Peters, Secretary of the Board of War, worried that "it is not yet settled what is the Standard of the United States." He meant a national standard for the Army, which every regiment would carry beside its own. On the 3rd of September, he sent Washington "Drafts of a Standard." Washington preferred "the standard, with the Union and Emblems in the center." Those drafts are lost.

  The resolution said nothing about how the stars should be arranged, how many points they should have, or which way they should face. It also left open whether the flag had seven red stripes and six white ones, or the reverse. Flag makers decided for themselves. Some set the stars in one big star, a circle or rows, and some replaced a state's star with its initial. One circle design, with 13 five-pointed stars pointing outward, is known as the Betsy Ross flag. Experts date the earliest known example to a painting by John Trumbull from 1792.

  As late as 1779, Captain John Manley believed the United States "had no national colors," so each ship flew whatever its captain liked. Some early flags had blue stripes alongside the red and white. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams described a flag of "13 stripes, alternately red, white, and blue" in an October 1778 letter to Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. John Paul Jones flew varied 13-star flags in 1779. His Serapis flag had three rows of eight-pointed stars and red, white and blue stripes. His Alliance flag had five rows of eight-pointed stars and red and white stripes, with white on the outer edges. The Dutch government documented both in October 1779, making them two of the earliest known 13-star flags.

  Both stripes and stars already had a long life in classical heraldry. Stars, called mullets, were comparatively rare in early modern coats of arms. One example that predates the flag is the Valais coat of arms of 1618, where seven mullets stood for seven districts.

  The count of red and white stripes, seven of one color and six of the other, became the clue on which one man's claim of authorship rests.

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• 4. Many Hands

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  Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, designed a flag in 1777 while chairman of the Continental Navy Board's Middle Department. He took the post in November 1776, and the flag resolution followed in June 1777. Hopkinson was the only person who claimed such authorship during his own lifetime. On the 25th of May 1780, he wrote to Congress asking for a "Quarter Cask of the Public Wine" as payment for designing the U.S. flag, two board seals, Continental currency, the Great Seal and other devices.

  In three later bills, Hopkinson asked for cash instead, and he did not list a U.S. flag. He listed a "great Naval Flag of the United States," then the "Naval Flag of the United States," then "the Naval Flag of the States." The source reads these as generic names for his naval ensign, which had seven red stripes and six white ones. Red dominated so the flag would stand out against the sky at sea. His flag for the nation had seven white stripes, in effect six red stripes on a white background. His sketches are missing. The conclusion rests on the seals he designed in the spring of 1780, one with seven red stripes and one with seven white. Two early flags painted by a Dutch artist who watched Jones's squadron arrive at Texel in 1779 also show seven stripes below the canton. Hopkinson was never paid, probably because others had worked on the Great Seal and he already drew a salary as a member of Congress.

  The better-known legend belongs to Betsy Ross. Her descendants spread the story that she sewed one of the first flags from a pencil sketch handed to her by George Washington. Neither Washington's diaries nor the records of Congress mention it. Nearly a century passed before her grandson William Canby first suggested the story publicly, in 1870. By her family's own admission, Ross ran an upholstery business and had never made a flag by the time of the supposed visit in June 1776. Canby also admitted that his own search of congressional journals found nothing to support it.

  George Henry Preble wrote in 1882 that no combined stars and stripes flag was in common use before June 1777, and that nobody knew who designed the 1777 flag. Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argues there was no single "first flag" worth fighting over. Marla Miller puts it this way: "The flag, like the Revolution it represents, was the work of many hands." The family of Rebecca Young claimed she sewed the first flag. Her daughter Mary Pickersgill made the Star-Spangled Banner Flag.

  Another popular theory ties the design to the coat of arms of George Washington's family, which shows three red stars over two red bars on white. The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon calls it an "enduring myth" with "no discernible evidence." The story seems to come from an 1876 play, Washington: A Drama in Five Acts, by the English poet Martin Farquhar Tupper. The children's magazine St. Nicholas then spread it through repetition.

  Pickersgill was assisted in making that banner by Grace Wisher, a 13-year-old African American girl.

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• 5. Growing Stars

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  In 1795, the flag grew from 13 stars and stripes to 15, to reflect Vermont and Kentucky joining the Union. Later states did not change it for a time, probably because more stripes and stars would cause clutter. This 15-star, 15-stripe version inspired Francis Scott Key to write "Defence of Fort M'Henry," later known as "The Star-Spangled Banner," now the national anthem.

  In 1907, Eben Appleton, a New York stockbroker, loaned the original banner to the Smithsonian Institution. He was the grandson of Lieutenant Colonel George Armistead, who commanded Fort McHenry during the bombardment of 1814. Appleton turned the loan into a gift in 1912, hoping it would always be on view. By 1994, the National Museum of American History decided it needed more conservation work. In 1998, teams of specialists moved it into a new laboratory. Since the museum reopened on the 21st of November 2008, it has rested at a 10-degree angle in dim light.

  On the 4th of April 1818, Congress passed a plan suggested by Naval Captain Samuel C. Reid. The flag would have 20 stars, with a new one added for each new state. The stripes would return to 13, honoring the original colonies. New designs would become official on the first Fourth of July after a state's admission.

  The 48-star flag of 1912 was the first to have an official star arrangement in law, six rows of eight stars, each pointing upward. The Army and Navy had already used standard layouts. Civilians through the 19th century used many patterns, both rectangular and circular.

  When Alaska and Hawaii approached statehood in the 1950s, the public sent in more than 3,000 designs to the Eisenhower administration. A few were 49-star versions, but the vast majority had 50 stars. The earliest 50-star submission came in 1953. On the 14th of July 1953, President Eisenhower proposed a joint committee of six members to pick the design. On the 3rd of January 1959, he issued Executive Order 10798 for the 49-star flag. On the 21st of August 1959, Executive Order 10834 set the current 50-star design, and the executive branch credited the United States Army Institute of Heraldry. The 50-star flag was adopted in July 1960, after Hawaii's statehood.

  A popular account credits Robert G. Heft, an Ohio teenager who later became mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, as the 50-star flag's designer. No official account exists, and his submission probably arrived after the final design had been chosen. Biographer Alec Nevala-Lee concluded that the main details of the story seem entirely fabricated.

  Today's flag is the 27th design. It has 13 stripes and 50 stars in nine offset rows, alternating six stars and five. On the 4th of July 2007, it passed the 48-star flag, used from 1912 to 1959, as the longest-used version.

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• 6. The Flag Abroad

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  In 1784, the merchant ship Empress of China carried a cargo of ginseng and the American flag to the city of Canton, now Guangzhou. According to an account first published in the Boston Courier and later retold by George H. Preble, crowds went to see the "strange ship" with a flag as beautiful as a flower. The name stuck. Locals called the vessel the "flower flagship," and America became the "flower flag country." That was kinder than the title "red headed barbarian," first given to the Dutch. In Cantonese, the flag was the huaqi, written "花旗."

  The name has lasted. American ginseng is still called flower flag ginseng in Chinese. Citibank, which opened a branch in China in 1902, is known as Flower Flag Bank. Vietnamese borrowed the same term, so the formal name for the country is Hoa Ky, and a colloquial nickname for it is xu Co Hoa, "land of Flower Flag." The modern Mandarin name for the country, Meiguo, is unrelated to the flag.

  The Shanghai Municipal Council's seal from 1869 included the American flag beside the British one, because the United States helped create the International Settlement. In 1972, President Richard Nixon presented Mao Zedong with a flag and Moon rocks. They are now on display at the National Museum of China.

  The flag's first trip around the world was aboard the Columbia, from 1787 to 1790. In 1831-32, William Driver took it around the world again and coined the phrase "Old Glory." Japan noticed the flag in 1871, when an oversized version arrived in Yokohama on the steamer Great Republic as part of a round-the-world journey.

  It has since travelled much farther. John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight in 1962 began a tradition of flags on American crewed spacecraft. A flag stands at the ceremonial South Pole as one of 12 representing the original Antarctic Treaty signatories. Six crewed missions raised flags on the Moon.

  When the Apollo 11 Ascent Stage launched to meet the Command Module Columbia, its exhaust gases blew over the flag the astronauts had placed.

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• 7. Flagmania

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  Before the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861, the American flag was rarely seen outside military forts, government buildings and ships. The flag that had flown over the fort left with the Union troops when they surrendered. It was carried through Northern cities, setting off a wave of "Flagmania." The Stars and Stripes, which had held little place in public life, suddenly became part of national identity. Sales exploded.

  Historian Adam Goodheart notes that American flags were mass-produced for the first time rather than stitched one by one, and makers still could not keep up. He wrote that the cloth became a physical form of the Union cause, "strips of cloth that millions of people would fight for, and many thousands die for."

  The war reversed an old restriction. Armies had not officially been allowed to carry the flag into battle during the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812. The artillery received permission in 1834, and the Army followed in 1841. In 1847, in the middle of the war with Mexico, the flag was confined to camp use. The Civil War lifted that rule.

  Some people wanted to remove the stars of seceded states. Abraham Lincoln opposed the idea, believing it would lend legitimacy to the Confederacy.

  In 1865, Henry Ward Beecher spoke as the Fort Sumter Flag returned to the fort. He hoped that it would wave "over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving."

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• 8. Colors and Customs

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  In 1782, Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress, presented a proposed seal and explained the colors. White signified purity and innocence, red hardiness and valor, and blue vigilance, perseverance and justice. The 1777 resolution had assigned no meaning to red, white and blue. In 1986, Ronald Reagan offered his own version: red for courage, white for pure intentions, and blue for vigilance and justice.

  The cloth itself is less settled. No law fixes shades of red, white and blue. Federal Specification DDD-F-416E names "Old Glory Red" No. 70180 and "Old Glory Blue" No. 70075, drawn from the Standard Color Card of America. Government sources give Pantone equivalents of PMS 193C for red and either PMS 281C or 282C for blue. The Government Printing Office prefers PMS 186C and PMS 288C. Flags made to the government ratio of 1.9 wide to 1.0 tall are often called "G-spec" flags. The union spans seven stripes.

  The Flag Code says the flag should never be dipped to any person or thing, except as an ensign answering a foreign ship's salute. The habit may trace to the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, where the American flag bearer did not dip to King Edward VII. Team captain Martin Sheridan is famously quoted as saying, "this flag dips to no earthly king," though the source of that quotation is unclear. The flag should never touch the ground, and it should be lit at night.

  Half-staff customs date to the 1st of March 1954, when President Eisenhower issued the first proclamation standardizing the dates and periods. A flag folded for storage usually takes thirteen triangular folds, leaving only the blue field of stars visible. Military custom gives no meaning to individual folds. At funerals, the flag is folded and presented to the next of kin.

  The Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that burning the flag is protected as symbolic speech, and it reaffirmed that in U.S. v. Eichman. Johnson had stolen the flag from a Texas bank's flagpole. An upside-down flag originally signaled dire distress, but it has become a mark of protest. On the 13th of April 1996, Rage Against the Machine hung two upside-down flags from their amplifiers on Saturday Night Live. Stagehands ripped them down about 20 seconds before the band played "Bulls on Parade."

  Some places never lower the flag. In Taos, New Mexico, custom has kept one flying in the plaza since 1861.

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