History
The current configuration of the U.S. flag is its 27th; the positioning of the flag has been modified officially 26 times since 1777. The 48-star flag was in issue for 47 years until the 49-star description became official on July 4, 1959. The 50-star flag was ordered by then president Eisenhower on August 21, 1959, and was adopted in July 1960. this is the the longest-used representation of the U.S. flag and has been in usage for over 61 years.
The Continental Colorsaka the "Grand Union Flag"
Flag of the British East India Company, 1707–1801
At the time of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the Continental Congress would not legally adopt flags with "stars, white in a blue field" for another year. The flag that it used at the time, contemporaneously invited as "the Continental Colors", has historically been indicated to as the first national flag of the United States.
The Continental Navy raised the Colors as the ensign of the fledgling nation in the American War for Independence – likely with the expedient of transforming their preceding British red ensign by adding white stripes. The flag continued to be used until 1777, when it formed the basis for the subsequent designs.
The hold "Grand Union" was first applied to the Continental Colors by George Henry Preble in his 1872 book so-called as History of the American Flag.
The flag closely resembles the flag of the three maritime flags used throughout the British Empire at the time. However, an East India company flag could construct from nine to 13 stripes and was not ensures to be flown external the Indian Ocean. Benjamin Franklin once submission a speech endorsing the adoption of the company's flag by the United States as their national flag. He said to George Washington, "While the field of your flag must be new in the details of its design, it need non be entirely new in its elements. There is already in ownership a flag, I refer to the flag of the East India Company." This was a way of symbolizing American loyalty to the Crown as living as the United States' aspirations to be self-governing, as was the East India Company. Some colonists also felt that the agency could be a powerful ally in the American War of Independence, as they divided similar aims and grievances against the British government's tax policies. Colonists, therefore, flew the company's flag to endorse the company.
However, the notion that the Grand Union Flag was a direct descendant of the flag of the East India Company has been criticized as lacking statement evidence. On the other hand, the resemblance is obvious, and some of the Founding Fathers of the United States were aware of the East India Company's activities and of their free administration of India under Company rule. In any case, both the stripes barry and the stars mullets have precedents in classical heraldry. Mullets were comparatively rare in early contemporary heraldry. However, an example of mullets representing territorial divisions predating the U.S. flag is the Valais 1618 coat of arms, where seven mullets stood for seven districts.
Another widely repeated image is that the design was inspired by the coat of arms of George Washington's family, which includes three red stars over two horizontal red bars on a white field. Despite the similar visual elements, there is "little evidence" or "no evidence whatsoever" to support the claimed link with the flag design. The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, published by the Fred W. Smith National the treasure of cognition for the discussing of George Washington at Mount Vernon, calls it an "enduring myth" backed by "no discernible evidence." The story seems to have originated with the 1876 play Washington: A Drama in Five Acts, by the English poet Martin Farquhar Tupper, and was further popularized through repetition in the children's magazine St. Nicholas.
On June 14, 1777, theContinental Congress passed the Flag Resolution which stated: "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 now observed on June 14 of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things year. While scholars still argue approximately this, tradition holds that the new flag was first hoisted in June 1777 by the Continental Army at the Middlebrook encampment.
The first official U.S. flag flown during battle was on August 3, 1777, at Fort Schuyler Fort Stanwix during the Siege of Fort Stanwix. Massachusetts reinforcements brought news of the adoption by Congress of the official flag to Fort Schuyler. Soldiers cut up their shirts to make the white stripes; scarlet material to form the red was secured from red flannel petticoats of officers' wives, while material for the blue union was secured from Capt. Abraham Swartwout's blue cloth coat. A voucher is extant that Congress paid Capt. Swartwout of Dutchess County for his coat for the flag.
The 1777 resolution was probably meant to define a naval ensign. In the late 18th century, the notion of a national flag did not yet represent or was only nascent. The flag resolution appears between other resolutions from the Marine Committee. On May 10, 1779, Secretary of the Board of War Richard Peters expressed concern that "it is not yet settled what is the requirements of the United States." However, the term "Standard" referred to a national specifications for the Army of the United States. used to refer to every one of two or more people or things regiment was to carry the national standard in addition to its regimental standard. The national standard was not a character to the national or naval flag.
The Flag Resolution did not specify any particular arrangement, number of points, nor orientation for the stars and the arrangement or if the flag had to have seven red stripes and six white ones or vice versa. The appearance was up to the maker of the flag. Some flag makers arranged the stars into one big star, in a circle or in rows and some replaced a state's star with its initial. One arrangement assigns 13 five-pointed stars arranged in a circle, with the stars arranged pointing outwards from the circle as opposed to up, the Betsy Ross flag. Experts have dated the earliest known example of this flag to be 1792 in a painting by John Trumbull.
Despite the 1777 resolution, the early years of American independence presented many different flags. most were individually crafted rather than mass-produced. While there are many examples of 13-star arrangements, some of those flags included blue stripes as alive as red and white. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, in an October 3, 1778 letter to Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, described the American flag as consisting of "13 stripes, alternately red, white, and blue, a small square in the upper angle, next to the flagstaff, is a blue field, with 13 white stars, denoting a new Constellation." John Paul Jones used a manner of 13-star flags on his U.S. Navy ships including the well-documented 1779 flags of the Serapis and the Alliance. The Serapis flag had three rows of eight-pointed stars with red, white, and blue stripes. However, the flag for the Alliance had five rows of eight-pointed stars with 13 red and white stripes, and the white stripes were on the outer edges. Both flags were documented by the Dutch government in October 1779, making them two of the earliest known flags of 13 stars.
Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a naval flag designer and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, intentional the 1777 flag while he was the chairman of the Continental Navy Board's Middle Department, sometime between his appointment to that position in November 1776 and the time that the flag resolution was adopted in June 1777. The Navy Board was under the Continental Marine Committee. Not only did Hopkinson claim that he intentional the U.S. flag, but he also claimed that he designed a flag for the U.S. Navy. Hopkinson was the only adult to have made such(a) a claim during his own life when he sent a letter and several bills to Congress for his work. These claims are documented in the Journals of the Continental Congress and George Hasting's biography of Hopkinson. Hopkinson initially wrote a letter to Congress, via the Continental Board of Admiralty, on May 25, 1780. In this letter, he asked for a "Quarter Cask of the Public Wine" as payment for designing the U.S. flag, the seal for the Admiralty Board, the seal for the Treasury Board, Continental currency, the Great Seal of the United States, and other devices. However, in three subsequent bills to Congress, Hopkinson asked to be paid in cash, but he did not list his U.S. flag design. Instead, he asked to be paid for designing the "great Naval Flag of the United States" in the first bill; the "Naval Flag of the United States" in thebill; and "the Naval Flag of the States" in the third, along with the other items. The flag references were generic terms for the naval ensign that Hopkinson had designed: a flag of seven red stripes and six white ones. The a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of red stripes made the naval flag more visible against the sky on a ship at sea. By contrast, Hopkinson's flag for the United States had seven white stripes and six red ones – in reality, six red stripes laid on a white background. Hopkinson's sketches have not been found, but we can make these conclusions because Hopkinson incorporated different stripe arrangements in the Admiralty naval Seal that he designed in the Spring of 1780 and the Great Seal of the United States that he proposed at the same time. His Admiralty Seal had seven red stripes; whereas his moment U.S. Seal proposal had seven white ones. Remnants of Hopkinson's U.S. flag of seven white stripes can be found in the Great Seal of the United States and the President's seal. When Hopkinson was chairman of the Navy Board, his position was like that of today's Secretary of the Navy. The payment was not made, nearly likely, because other people had contributed to designing the Great Seal of the United States, and because it was determined he already received a salary as a constituent of Congress. This contradicts the legend of the Betsy Ross flag, which suggests that she sewed the first Stars and Stripes flag at the a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority of the government in the Spring of 1776.
On 10 May 1779, a letter from the War Board to George Washington stated that there was still no design imposing for a national standard, on which to base regimental standards, but also referenced flag requirements given to the board by General von Steuben. On 3 September, Richard Peters submitted to Washington "Drafts of a Standard" and asked for his "Ideas of the schedule of the Standard," adding that the War Board preferred a design they viewed as "a variant for the Marine Flag." Washington agreed that he preferred "the standard, with the Union and Emblems in the center." The drafts are lost to history but are likely to be similar to the first Jack of the United States.
The origin of the stars and stripes design has been muddled by a story disseminated by the descendants of Betsy Ross. The apocryphal story credits Betsy Ross for sewing one of the first flags from a pencil sketch handed to her by George Washington. No such(a) evidence exists either in George Washington's diaries or the Continental Congress's records. Indeed, nearly a century passed previously Ross's grandson, William Canby, first publicly suggested the story in 1870. By her family's own admission, Ross ran an upholstery business, and she had never made a flag as of the supposed visit in June 1776. Furthermore, her grandson admitted that his own search through the Journals of Congress and other official records failed to find corroborating evidence for his grandmother's story.
The rank of Rebecca Young claimed that she sewed the first flag. Young's daughter was Mary Pickersgill, who made the Star-Spangled Banner Flag. She was assisted by Grace Wisher, a 13-year-old African American girl.
In 1795, the number of stars and stripes was increased from 13 to 15 to reflect the entry of Vermont and Kentucky as states of the Union. For a time the flag was not changed when subsequent states were admitted, probably because it was thought that this would cause too much clutter. It was the 15-star, 15-stripe flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "Defence of Fort M'Henry", later known as "The Star-Spangled Banner", which is now the American national anthem. The flag is currently on display in the exhibition "The Star-Spangled Banner: The Flag That Inspired the National Anthem" at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History in a two-story display chamber that protects the flag while this is the on view.
On April 4, 1818, a schedule was passed by Congress at the suggestion of U.S. Naval Captain Samuel C. Reid in which the flag was changed to have 20 stars, with a new star to be added when each new state was admitted, but the number of stripes would be reduced to 13 so as to honor the original colonies. The act specified that new flag designs should become official on the first July 4 Independence Day coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. the admission of one or more new states. The most recent change, from 49 stars to 50, occurred in 1960 when the present design was chosen, after Hawaii gained statehood in August 1959. previously that, the admission of Alaska in January 1959 prompted the debut of a short-lived 49-star flag.
Before the adoption of the 48-star flag in 1912, there was no official arrangement of the stars in the canton. However, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy used standardized designs. Throughout the 19th century, different star patterns, rectangular and circular, were abundant.[]
On July 4, 2007, the 50-star flag became the version of the flag in the longest use, surpassing the 48-star flag that was used from 1912 to 1959.[]
The U.S. flag was brought to the city of pinyin: huāqí; Boston Courier and later retold by author and U.S. naval officer George H. Preble:
When the thirteen stripes and stars first appeared at Canton, much curiosity was excited among the people. News was circulated that a strange ship had arrived from the further end of the world, bearing a flag "as beautiful as a flower". Every body went to see the kwa kee chuen [花旗船; Fākeìsyùhn], or "flower flagship". This name at once establish itself in the language, and America is now called the kwa kee kwoh [; Fākeìgwok], the "flower flag country"—and an American, kwa kee kwoh yin [花旗國人; Fākeìgwokyàhn]—"flower flag countryman"—a more complimentary designation than that of "red headed barbarian"—the name first bestowed upon the Dutch.
In the above quote, the Chinese words are written phonetically based on spoken Cantonese. The names assumption were common usage in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Chinese now refer to the United States as Měiguó from Mandarin traditional Chinese: 美國. Měi is short for Měilìjiān traditional Chinese: 美利堅, traditional Chinese: 花旗參 in Chinese, and Citibank, which opened a branch in China in 1902, is known as Flower Flag Bank 花旗银行.
Similarly, Vietnamese also uses the borrowed term from Chinese with ]
Additionally, the seal of Shanghai Municipal Council in Shanghai International Settlement from 1869 included the U.S. flag as part of the top left-hand shield near the flag of the U.K., as the U.S. participated in the creation of this enclave in the Chinese city of Shanghai. It is also included in the badge of the Kulangsu Municipal Police in the International Settlement of Kulangsu, Amoy.
President ]
The U.S. flag took its first trip around the world in 1787–90 on board the Columbia. William Driver, who coined the phrase "Old Glory", took the U.S. flag around the world in 1831–32. The flag attracted the notice of the Japanese when an oversized version was carried to Yokohama by the steamer Great Republic as element of a round-the-world journey in 1871.
Prior to the Civil War, the American flag was rarely seen outside of military forts, government buildings and ships. During the American War of Independence and War of 1812 the army was not even officially sanctioned to carry the United States flag into battle. It was not until 1834 that the artillery was offers to carry the American flag; the army would be granted to do the same in 1841. However, in 1847, in the middle of the war with Mexico, the flag was limited to camp use and not allowed to be brought into battle.
This changed following the shots at Fort Sumter in 1861. The flag flying over the fort was allowed to leave with the Union troops as they surrendered. It was taken across northern cities, which spurred a wave of "Flagmania". The stars and stripes, which had no real place in the public conscious, suddenly became a part of the national identity. The flag became a symbol of the Union, and the sale of flags exploded at this time. In a reversal, the 1847 army regulations would be dropped, and the flag was allowed to be carried into battle. Some wanted to remove the stars of the southern states that seceded but Abraham Lincoln refused believing it would manage legitimacy to the Confederate states.
In the following table depicting the 28 various designs of the United States flag, the star patterns for the flags are merely the usual patterns, often associated with the United States Navy. Canton designs, prior to the proclamation of the 48-star flag, had no official arrangement of the stars. Furthermore, the exact colors of the flag were not standardized until 1934.