Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of the American Flag

Starting point is 00:00:00 The American flag is something that is recognized around the world. The flag isn't just flown on flag poles, but it's on clothing, lapel pins, bumper stickers, and it's used as a backdrop for all manner of politicians. However, there hasn't been just one American flag. In fact, in the almost 250 years the United States has been in existence, they have switched flags on average almost once a decade. Learn more about the history of the American flag and its many iterations on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:42 What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Every country has a flag. But as you'll soon see, there's something different about the flag of the United States. in that it has a built-in mechanism for being changed, which is the reason why I'm doing an episode on it.

Starting point is 00:01:21 But before we get into that, first a brief history of flags themselves. The original purpose of flags was to visually identify units on a battlefield. Eventually, the flags were used off the battlefield to identify who ruled a particular building or territory. They would usually fly the coat of arms of whoever the ruler of a particular area was. Eventually, the traditions of flags was extended to ships and republicans. and by the 18th century, pretty much every country had a flag that served as a means of national identification and unity. The subject of flags generally will be for a future episode. When revolution broke out between the 13 American colonies and the British in 1775, there were

Starting point is 00:02:00 no formal structures in place for the colonies to act as a cohesive unit, and there certainly were no formal flags. During the Battle of Lexington and Concord, or during the siege of Boston, for example, the colonists would probably have not flown any flags at all. There were no known flags representing the 13 colonies collectively at this point. It wasn't until the end of 1775 that the first flag to represent the collective colonies appeared. On December 3, 1775, American naval officer John Paul Jones raised a flag on the colonial warship Alfred in the port of Philadelphia. The flag was vaguely reminiscent of what we think of as the American flag today.

Starting point is 00:02:40 It consisted of 13 stripes, eight red, and seven white. In the upper left corner, where today there would be a field of blue with stars, there was instead the British Union Jack. The Union Jack wasn't rectangular, but rather was square. The flag has been called the Alfred flag, named after the ship at first flew on, but also called the Continental Colors and the Grand Union flag. The design almost certainly came from the British Red Ensign flag. The Red Ensign flag was used on British naval ships,

Starting point is 00:03:09 and it was solid red with the Union Jack in the upper left-hand corner. If you sew white stripes onto the Red Ensign flag, you get the Grand Union flag. It isn't known who designed the Grand Union flag, but the physical creation of the First American flag is credited to a woman by the name of Margaret Manny. Manny was a hatmaker in Philadelphia who also made flags for ships on the side. And if you were assuming that some other woman in Philadelphia created the first flag, I have more on that in a bit. The Grand Union flag wasn't official. Other flags appeared in the early days of the revolution as well. One popular flag was designed by a South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress,

Starting point is 00:03:49 and later a brigadier general in the Continental Army, by the name of Christopher Gadsen. Gadsden's flag consisted of an image of a coiled timber rattlesnake on a field of yellow with the phrase, don't tread on me below it. The rattlesnake had been a symbol of colonial unity since an image of a snake in pieces was printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1754. Gadsden gifted the flag to Commodore Essek Hopkins of the Colonial Navy, who unfurled it on the same ship, the Alfred, on December 20th, 1775, two weeks after the Grand Union flag was debuted.

Starting point is 00:04:21 The Gadsden flag was more cheeky than the Grand Union flag and didn't look as official, but it was used on naval vessels during the war. Commodore Hopkins adopted it as his personal flag. It was the Grand Union flag, however, that quickly caught on in popularity. The Continental Congress flew the flag, and it was reportedly used by George Washington as early as January 2, 1776 in Boston. Despite its popularity, the Grand Union flag was still very unofficial. It wasn't until 1777 that the Continental Congress formally approved their own American flag. The Flag Act of 1777 passed on June 14th stipulated the design of the flag, but it also left a lot to the imagination.

Starting point is 00:05:03 In fact, the language of the Act was so short, that I can read it to you in its entirety. Quote, Resolved that the flag of the 13 United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white, and that the Union be 13 stars, white in a blue field representing a new constellation. End quote. That's it. It didn't stipulate anything about the width-to-height ratio of the flag, it didn't specify how many points the stars were to have, and most importantly, it didn't say anything about how the stars were supposed to be arranged. The big thing is that they remove the Union Jack from the flag, something that Australia and New Zealand have still yet to do.

Starting point is 00:05:40 The most popular version of this flag is one with 13 stars forming a circle. This flag is often called the Betsy Ross flag, because, according to legend, she designed it. The story holds that several members of the Continental Congress approached her to create a flag. She supposedly not only came up with the design, but also used a five-point star instead of a six-point star. Betsy Ross was a real person. There's ample evidence proving that she was a flagmaker and was commissioned by several ships to make flags for them. However, the story of her creating the first American flag was something that was created over a hundred years after the fact by some of her descendants. During the American centennial in 1876, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren re-told the family story about how Betsy Ross made the first flag for General George Washington. However, there is no evidence that Betsy Ross designed the flag or created the first flag.

Starting point is 00:06:33 She definitely was a flagmaker, but she was nowhere near George Washington at this time. In fact, she was one of several women in Philadelphia who made flags, such as the previously mentioned Margaret Manny and another woman named Rebecca Young. If you've ever seen the painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware, there's a flag behind him, which is the Betsy Ross flag. That couldn't have been present when Washington actually crossed the Delaware in December 1776, because that design wasn't used until the flag act of 1777. In addition to the Betsy Ross flag, other hand-sown flags from this period arranged the stars in any number of ways.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Sometimes they were in a square, sometimes a circle, sometimes a circle with one star in the middle. The first use of the official flag in combat was at the Siege of Fort Stanwicks in New York State in August of 1777. The oldest surviving 13-star flag can be found at the Commonwealth Museum of Massachusetts. It displays the stars in three rows of four, five, and four. I should make special note of one flag which flew at the Battle of Bennington in 1777. It was a 13-star flag, but it had the number 76 in the field of blue. Two stars were in the upper corners of the field of blue, with the rest forming an arc around the number 76, which represents the year of the Declaration of Independence.

Starting point is 00:07:50 The 13-star flag, in all its various forms, lasted throughout the war and through the Constitutional Convention. However, soon after, two more states joined the Union, Kentucky, and Vermont. 13 stars and stripes didn't represent the now 15 states, so a change had to be made. The Flag Act of 1794 changed the flag to accommodate the new states. The resolution was almost as short as the previous act. It read, quote, be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that from and after the first day of May, Anodominee 1,795,

Starting point is 00:08:26 the flag of the United States be 15 stripes alternate red and white, that the Union be 15 stars white in a field of blue, end quote. So now the flag had 15 stars and 15 stripes. You can probably see where this is going. The 15 stripe version of the flag was the one that flew over Fort McHenry and Baltimore during the Battle of Baltimore in 1814, and served as the inspiration for the Star-Spangled Banner, which is the United States National Anthem.

Starting point is 00:08:54 The actual physical flag that flew over Fort McHenry still exists. It's a huge flag created by Mary Young Pickersgill, and it's on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. More states were added to the Union. By the spring of 1818, there were now 20 states, and all the new ones weren't reflected in the flag. This led to the passage of the Flag Act of 1818, the third and final Flag Act, which define the American flag.

Starting point is 00:09:19 It too is also really short. It reads, quote, being enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that from and after the fourth day of July next, the flag of the United States be 13 horizontal stripes, alternate red and white, that the union be 20 stars white in a field of blue. And be it further enacted, that on the omission of every new state into the union, one star be added to the union of the flag,

Starting point is 00:09:45 and that such addition shall take effect on the 4th day of July, then next exceeding such admission. End quote. This is the law that is still on the books today. The thing to note is that this act didn't prescribe anything about the arrangement of the stars, the shape of the stars, or the dimensions of the flag. What it did do was set a firm schedule for flag updates when new states were admitted. Throughout the 19th century, there were periods where the flag was changed every year.

Starting point is 00:10:13 1845, 46, 47, and 48 all saw new flags with one star every year. Kansas centered the Union in 1861 to make 34 stars. When the southern states seceded, President Abraham Lincoln refused to remove any stars from the flag. The number of stars kept increasing, usually by increments of one as new states were added. However, in 1889, North and South Dakota were admitted to the Union. Many flag makers, anticipating the change, made flags with 39 stars, assuming that there would just be one state called Dakota. When two states were created, it made for 40 states, and all of the 39 star flags were rendered

Starting point is 00:10:52 useless. The addition of new states and stars continued until 1912, when Arizona and New Mexico were admitted. With these additions, there were now 48 states, and there were no more territories in contiguous North America. There was also the problem of the flag lacking any sort of actual design or anything beyond a vague description. There were over a dozen different variations of the flag in use at the time. On June 24, 1912, President William Taft issued an executive order, which, for the first time, specified the dimensions of the flag as well as the layout of the stars. There were to be six horizontal rows of eight stars each, with a single point of each star.

Starting point is 00:11:29 to be upward. The 48-star flag was the longest used in American history up until that point. It lasted from 1912 until 1959 when Alaska was granted statehood. The 49-star flag only lasted a single year, because Hawaii was admitted to the Union in August of 1959. As the Flag Act of 1818 stipulates that the flag only changes on the 4th of July after a state is admitted, the 50-star flag became official on July 4th, 1960. A contest determined the layout of the 50-star flag. The winner of the contest was a 17-year-old high school student from Lancaster, Ohio, by the name of Bob Heft. His design was selected for more than 1,500 submissions.

Starting point is 00:12:12 According to legend, he created the layout as a class project and received a B-minus. However, when it was selected as the official flag of the United States, his grade was changed to an A. The 50-star version of the flag became the longest-used version, surpassing the 48-star version in 2007. Subsequent executive orders and additions to the Civil Code have specified the exact shape, layout, and even RGB color values of the flag, so there is no longer any variation. However, what most people don't know is that all 27 previous versions of the American flag, with various numbers of stars, are still valid. The 50-star version of the flag is the quote-unquote official one, which flies on all government buildings and is in almost universal use.

Starting point is 00:12:55 However, the creation of newer flags never invalidated any older flags. So, technically, and I'm really splitting hairs here, the United States has 27 different flags. The story of the flag of the United States might not be done. People are already thinking of designs for a 51-star flag. As 51 is 17 times 3, the current thinking is that there would be six rows alternating 9-8-9-9-8-9-8. Some enthusiasts have even developed an algorithm that could handle all possible flags up to 100 stars if any states like California or Texas should decide to split up in the future.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Every country has a flag, but the United States is unique in that it has a built-in mechanism to change the flag every time the country changes. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links

Starting point is 00:14:08 in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of the American Flag

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