The American flag flies over schools, courthouses, front porches, and military bases in every corner of the country. It waves at ball games, it drapes the coffins of fallen soldiers, and it has even been planted on the moon. Yet most Americans know only a small part of its story. The history of the US flag is a story of rebellion, war, legend, and growth, stretching from a secret committee meeting in 1777 to a high school student’s class project in 1958. It has changed 27 times, and every change tells you something about the country itself.
The History of the US Flag Begins in 1777
Before there was a Stars and Stripes, American forces fought under a different flag. In late 1775, the Continental Army raised the Grand Union flag, also called the Continental Colors. It had 13 red and white stripes, like the flag we know today, but in the upper corner it carried the British Union Jack. It was a flag that said, in effect, we are Americans, but we are still part of the British Empire. That message did not last long. On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared independence, and a flag with the British Union Jack on it no longer made sense.
Almost a year later, on June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution creating a new flag. The resolution was short and simple: “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.” That date, June 14, is now celebrated every year as Flag Day.
Notice what the resolution did not say. It did not say how the stars should be arranged. It did not say who designed the flag. It did not even say what shade of red or blue to use. Because of that, early American flags came in many shapes. Some had stars in straight rows. Some had stars in a circle. Some had the stars arranged in the shape of a flower. All of them were the American flag, and all of them were correct under the law.
The most famous story about the first flag is the story of Betsy Ross. According to the legend, George Washington, George Ross, and Robert Morris visited Ross, a Philadelphia upholsterer, in the summer of 1776 and asked her to sew a flag. She suggested changing the six-pointed stars in their design to five-pointed stars, because they were easier to cut, and she sewed the first flag. It is a wonderful story, and it may even be partly true. But historians treat it as legend rather than proven fact, because the story comes from Ross’s grandson, William Canby, who first told it in public in 1870, nearly a century after the events he described. No document from 1776 mentions Ross making the flag. Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who designed seals and flags for the new government, also claimed a role in the design, and he sent Congress bills for his work. The truth is probably that the flag was the work of more than one person, and that its design was settled by committee rather than by a single hero.
Whatever its exact origin, the flag went to war quickly. Tradition holds that the Stars and Stripes was first carried in battle at Brandywine, Pennsylvania, in September 1777, just months after Congress adopted it. Soldiers who had fought under the Grand Union flag now fought under a flag with no trace of Britain on it. The message was clear: the United States was a new constellation, separate and independent.
The Star-Spangled Banner and the 15-Star Flag
The flag did not stay at 13 stars for long. When Vermont joined the Union in 1791 and Kentucky followed in 1792, Congress added a star and a stripe for each new state. In 1795, the flag had 15 stars and 15 stripes. That 15-star flag is the one that gave America its national anthem.
In September 1814, during the War of 1812, British warships bombarded Fort McHenry, the fort guarding Baltimore harbor. The fort’s commander had ordered an enormous flag, 30 feet by 42 feet, sewn by Mary Pickersgill, a Baltimore flag maker. It was so large that Pickersgill had to lay it out on the floor of a brewery to sew it. Through the night of September 13 and into the morning of September 14, the British fired rockets and shells at the fort, and the great flag flew over it the whole time.
Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer who was on a British ship in the harbor trying to arrange a prisoner exchange, watched the bombardment all night. At dawn, he saw that the flag was still flying, and he wrote a poem about it, first called “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” Set to music, the poem became “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It did not become the official national anthem until 1931, but by then Americans had been singing it for more than a century. The original flag that inspired it survives today at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., preserved after years of conservation. It is smaller now, about 30 feet by 34 feet, because pieces were cut away over the years as souvenirs.
The 15-star flag also taught Congress a lesson. If the flag kept gaining a stripe with every new state, it would soon be nothing but stripes. After Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, and Mississippi joined, the flag would have had 20 stripes, and the design was getting crowded. Something had to change.
History of the US Flag: Growth, State by State
In 1818, Congress passed a new Flag Act that fixed the number of stripes at 13, honoring the original colonies forever, and ruled that a new star would be added for each new state on the Fourth of July following its admission. From then on, the flag grew one star at a time, and each new version marked a new chapter in American expansion.
The 20-star flag of 1818 was followed by new versions as the nation pushed west. There was a 21-star flag, a 23-star flag, a 24-star flag, and so on, all the way to a 48-star flag in 1912, after Arizona and New Mexico became states. The 48-star flag flew over the United States through World War I and World War II, and it flew for 47 years, from 1912 to 1959. For most of the 20th century, it was the flag Americans grew up with, and many people still remember it from their childhoods.
As the flag grew, the government also worked to make it consistent. In 1912, President William Howard Taft issued an executive order standardizing the flag’s proportions and the arrangement of the stars. Before that order, flag makers had some freedom in how they laid out the stars, and flags could look noticeably different from one maker to the next. Taft’s order set the official proportions at 1 to 1.9, the ratio still used today, and arranged the stars in neat rows. Later presidents refined the rules further, and in 1942, during World War II, Congress adopted the United States Flag Code, a set of rules for how the flag should be displayed and treated.
A key chapter in the history of the US flag came in the late 1950s, when Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union. Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959, and the 49-star flag flew for just one year. Hawaii followed in August 1959, and the country needed a 50-star design. That is where the flag’s most charming story begins.
The History of the US Flag in the Modern Era
Robert G. Heft was 17 years old and a junior at Lancaster High School in Ohio when he designed the 50-star flag. It was 1958, and his assignment was to create a new national flag for a class project. Heft took his family’s 48-star flag apart, cut it up, and sewed it back together with two extra stars, arranging all 50 stars in neat, staggered rows. His teacher gave the project a B-minus.
Heft thought the grade was unfair, and his teacher made him a deal: if the design was ever adopted by Congress, the grade would be raised to an A. Heft sent his flag to his congressman, and it made its way to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. When Hawaii became a state, Eisenhower had to choose among many submitted designs for the new 50-star flag, and he picked Heft’s. The flag became official on July 4, 1960. Heft’s teacher kept the bargain, and the grade was changed to an A. Heft went on to become a high school teacher and a mayor, and for the rest of his life he was known as the young man who designed the flag.
The 50-star flag is now the longest-serving version of the American flag in history, flying for more than 65 years. It has flown over the White House, over the Capitol, and over American embassies around the world. It has also flown far beyond the Earth. Six American flags were planted on the moon by the Apollo missions: Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. The Apollo 11 flag, planted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, was likely knocked over by the exhaust of the lunar module as it took off, but the other five may still be standing, faded white by decades of harsh sunlight.
Two dates anchor the modern flag calendar. Flag Day, June 14, marks the 1777 resolution and was proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, then established by Congress in 1949. The Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 for a magazine campaign to put flags in schools, is still recited by millions of American schoolchildren. The flag and the pledge grew up together, and both became part of everyday American life.
What the Colors and Symbols Mean
The flag’s design is simple, but every part of it has meaning. The 50 stars stand for the 50 states. The 13 stripes, seven red and six white, stand for the 13 original colonies. The stars are white on a blue field, and the field is called the canton. The arrangement is fixed by law, but the symbolism is older than the flag itself.
The colors come from the Great Seal of the United States, adopted in 1782. Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress who presented the seal, explained the colors this way: white stands for innocence and purity, red stands for hardiness and valor, and blue stands for vigilance, perseverance, and justice. Those meanings were written for the seal, but Americans have applied them to the flag ever since.
The flag has earned nicknames over the years. “Stars and Stripes” is the oldest and most common. “Old Glory” came from Captain William Driver, a sea captain from Salem, Massachusetts, who named his large flag Old Glory in 1831 and carried it on his voyages. When the Civil War came, Driver hid the flag from Confederate sympathizers in Tennessee and later gave it to the Union army. The name stuck, and Americans still call the flag Old Glory today.
The flag is also a fixture of American travel and public life. Fort McHenry, where the Star-Spangled Banner flag flew in 1814, is now a national monument and historic shrine, one of the historic places covered in our guide to national parks and USA facts. Seeing the places where the flag’s story happened makes that story feel real in a way no textbook can match.
Flag Etiquette Every American Should Know
The United States Flag Code, adopted in 1942, sets out the rules for treating the flag with respect. You do not need to memorize the whole code, but a few rules are worth knowing.
- Never let the flag touch the ground. It should always be held or flown clear of the ground, the floor, and water.
- Light it at night. If the flag flies after dark, it should be properly illuminated. Otherwise, it should be taken down at sunset.
- Raise it briskly, lower it slowly. The flag should be hoisted quickly and lowered with ceremony.
- Fly it at half-staff for mourning. When the president or a governor orders it, the flag is lowered to half-staff to honor the dead, and it is always raised to the top first before being lowered to half-staff.
- Never use it as clothing, drapery, or advertising. The Flag Code says the flag should not be worn as clothing or used as decoration, a rule that is widely ignored on T-shirts and napkins but still stands in the code.
- Retire a worn flag by burning. When a flag is too worn to fly, it should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning. Veterans groups and Scout troops hold flag retirement ceremonies for this purpose.
These rules are customs rather than criminal laws. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects the right to burn the flag in protest, even though the Flag Code says a worn flag should be burned only as a respectful retirement. That tension between the code’s rules and the Constitution’s protections is itself part of the flag’s story.
Conclusion: A Flag That Keeps Growing
The history of the US flag reminds us that the flag was never a finished object. It began as a compromise in a committee room, it changed every time a new state joined the Union, and it was shaped by ordinary people: a Philadelphia upholsterer, a Baltimore seamstress, a lawyer watching a battle from a ship, and a 17-year-old student with a pair of scissors. That is why Americans feel so strongly about it. The flag does not belong to the government. It belongs to the people who made it, carried it, and lived under it.
The next time you see the flag, look at it closely. Count the stripes and think of the 13 colonies. Count the stars and think of the 50 states. Remember that it took nearly 200 years to reach its current form, and that the version flying today was designed by a teenager for a school project. Then keep exploring the American story. Plan a road trip through the country the flag represents with our guide to Route 66 history, and discover another great American symbol in our story about bald eagles in the USA. Share this article with someone who loves American history, and tell us in the comments which part of the flag’s story surprised you most.