Muhammed Ali Week 5: A Brief History of the American Flag
A Brief History of the American Flag
The American flag has been an ever changing symbol of the United States. Ever since its inception in 1776, the flag has undergone both subtle and drastic alterations, reflecting the growing and advancing state of the country.
It’s widely believed that the first official American flag was created by Betsy Ross in 1776 under the commission of George Washington himself. Although there is no hard evidence to prove any of this information, it is a story that has been told for an extremely long period of time and is accepted by a large group of people. The flag featured a similar design to what we have now, but instead of 50 stars, there were only 13. These 13 stars were lined up in a circle laid on top of the blue section in the top-left corner.
A year later, American lawyer Francis Hopkinson redesigned the flag and made it resemble today’s flag to an even further degree. Though no new states (and therefore stars) were added yet, the 13 stars were reorganized in a way that filled the rectangular blue space more evenly. This became known as the Hopkinson Flag.
In 1818, the flag was modified to bear 20 stars and became simply known as the 20-Star Flag, still organized in the rectangular pattern Hopkinson had normalized. Because of the additional 7 states made a part of the country, the government found it appropriate to update the flag to reflect the number of states accurately. They did this again in 1822 with the addition of Missouri as the 24th state, and once more in 1912 with the addition of Arizona as the 48th state.
Finally in 1969, after the purchasing of Alaska from Russia and the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, the US designated the 50-star flag seen waving all across America today as the official flag of the country.
The United States flag has not always looked the same, and many variations, both official and unofficial, have been hoisted up throughout the country’s 247 years of existence. Its changes and modifications demonstrate the evolution of not only the number of states, but of the country as a whole as well.
Hi, Muhammed! It’s very interesting to see all the different flags that the US once used as their official flag. I only knew of the second, fourth, and twelfth flags shown in the picture; I didn’t know that things changed so much over the years! You explained that the flags had stars to symbolize the states so it’s logical to see the amount of stars increasing over the years. With the amount of times that the US changed their flag, I wonder if the US would gain any new states in the future. Would they have to change the flag to have a new amount of stars in order to account for all the states? What would happen to the current flag then? Would everyone have to replace it with a new one? If this is true, is there anyone so still has the designs of the other 11 flags in their households? The topic of flags fills me with many questions. I was also surprised to see that a flag did not have any blue and there was a yellow flag. They really stuck out like sore thumbs. Apparently the yellow flag is the Gadsden flag, a flag made in 1775. It was flown during the American Revolution. I’m surprised that I’ve never seen it before.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHi Muhammed! It’s interesting to learn how the flags of America evolved over time. Your blog conveys a factual tone that provides an informative read about how the U.S. flag had many different forms to it. I never knew that the U.S. flag had only 13 stars on the flag which became 50 stars over time. It really shows the evolution of the country and possibly the diverse spread of languages that arose throughout the states that brought diversity to the country. I thought you did well in providing a chronological order of how the flag evolved to tie it back to the idea of how the increased admission of new states demonstrated the evolution of the country. The increase in the number of states overtime makes me curious to wonder about the science behind how each state has its own land. Overall, I thought your blog captured new information that I never knew of and definitely recommend elaborating on how the changes in the design of flags reflect the evolution of the country.
Hi Muhammed. I love the deep dive and history lesson into the history of the American flag. I love the image of how the American flag developed over the development of the United States. I wonder what went into the planning of the star in a star variant of the flag as why not arrange them in rows? I like how you made it simple to under to understand and providing chronological context of each variant. I also admit that this blog was what inspired me to write my blog about the rules of the display of the flag. Overall, I found this blog very interesting and love how simple it was to understand and how you showed the justification behind each. variant and change of the flags.
ReplyDelete