Americans first embraced their national symbol during the Civil War. In subsequent wars, our flag fervor has grown.
A single sentence in the Journals of the Continental Congress defines the object: “Re- solved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” We don’t know which member or committee introduced the Flag Resolution of June 14, 1777, and we don’t know if the measure was debated or who voted for it and against it. The Congress adopted the resolution without comment, not bothering to specify the flag’s shape, proportions or the size of the canton or field of stripes. Nor did the resolution say anything about the shape of the stars nor their pattern in the constellation.
The Betsy Ross myth notwithstanding, we really don’t know who designed the American flag, why it’s red, white, and blue, or why it features stars and stripes. The only thing we know for certain about the original flag’s symbols is that the 13 stars and 13 stripes stood for the first states. From today’s perspective, America’s first flag seems an afterthought, far from the archetypal symbol it would become in the 19th century, a period of territorial expansion and internal strife. It would be a stretch, in fact, to say that in 1777 Americans even recognized the Stars and Stripes as the national emblem or symbol. “The American flag as a sovereign flag did not occur until 1782,” says early American flag authority Henry Moeller. “In the 1777 period, the flag was not a device that was used by the average citizen. It was used for communication,” Moeller contends, primarily by the military, and mainly on Navy ships. Most historians of the period concur.
