History of the American flag: from 13 stars to the 50-star banner

The Flag Act of 1794: fifteen stars and fifteen stripes

For eighteen years, the thirteen-star, thirteen-stripe banner remained unchanged even as new states entered the Union. Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state on March 4, 1791, followed by Kentucky as the fifteenth state on June 1, 1792. Senators and representatives from the new states argued that the flag should reflect their equal standing in the Union.

In response, Congress passed the Flag Act of January 13, 1794, signed by President George Washington. Taking effect on May 1, 1795, the statute altered both the canton and the field of stripes:

“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, Anno Domini, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-five, the flag of the United States, be fifteen stripes alternate red and white. That the Union be fifteen stars, white in a blue field.”

This 1794 law produced the only official American flag in history with fifteen stripes, comprising eight red and seven white stripes. It flew during the quasi-war with France, the Barbary Wars, the Louisiana Purchase, and the War of 1812.

Most famously, Major George Armistead ordered two flags of this fifteen-star, fifteen-stripe design in 1813—a seventeen-by-twenty-five-foot storm flag and a massive thirty-by-forty-two-foot garrison flag—sewn in Baltimore by flagmaker Mary Pickersgill, her daughter Caroline, nieces Eliza and Margaret Young, African American indentured servant Grace Wisher, and possibly her mother Rebecca Young. According to the National Park Service at Fort McHenry, many historians believe the smaller storm flag flew during the rainy British naval bombardment, while the thirty-by-forty-two-foot garrison flag was raised over Fort McHenry on the morning of September 14, 1814. Seeing that fifteen-stripe garrison banner flying on the morning of September 14 inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the Star-Spangled Banner, preserved today at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

The Flag Act of 1818: thirteen stripes and one star per state

By 1817, five additional states had joined the Union without any update to the 1794 flag: Tennessee (1796), Ohio (1803), Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), and Mississippi (1817). Members of Congress recognized that continuing the 1794 formula of adding both a star and a stripe for every new state would soon turn the flag’s field into a blur of thin lines unreadable from a distance at sea.

Representative Peter H. Wendover of New York chaired a congressional committee to find a permanent solution. Consulting with Captain Samuel Chester Reid, a hero of the War of 1812, Wendover proposed keeping the stripe count fixed at thirteen while expanding only the stars in the union.

On April 4, 1818, President James Monroe signed the Flag Act of 1818 into law. The statute established three enduring rules that still govern the flag in 4 U.S.C. §§ 1–2:

1. Thirteen permanent stripes: Effective July 4, 1818, the flag returned permanently to thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white, honoring the thirteen original colonies.
2. One star per state: The blue union was set at twenty white stars for the twenty states then in the Union, with one additional star to be added upon the admission of every new state.
3. The Fourth of July effective date: Any new star addition takes effect on the Fourth of July immediately following a new state’s admission, preventing the flag from changing multiple times within a single calendar year.

Throughout the nineteenth century, as the United States expanded westward from twenty states in 1818 to forty-six states by 1908, the Flag Act of 1818 governed each transition. Because the 1818 act still left the exact geometric arrangement of stars unspecified, nineteenth-century flags displayed remarkable variety, including Civil War flags with thirty-four or thirty-five stars arranged in concentric circles, diamonds, or “Great Star” patterns where smaller stars formed one large five-pointed star.

The 1912 executive orders: Taft standardizes the 48-star flag

By the early twentieth century, the lack of geometric standards had created a logistical problem inside the federal government itself. According to the Smithsonian Institution, an investigation in 1912 found sixty-six different proportions and sizes of national flags in use across executive departments, naval yards, and military posts.

When New Mexico (January 6, 1912) and Arizona (February 14, 1912) joined the Union as the forty-seventh and forty-eighth states, President William Howard Taft acted to bring order to federal flag manufacturing. On June 24, 1912, Taft signed Executive Order 1556, followed on October 29, 1912, by an amending directive, Executive Order 1637.

Together, the 1912 executive orders established two historic precedents:

• Uniform star grid: The forty-eight stars were arranged in six horizontal rows of eight stars each, with a single point of each five-pointed star pointing straight upward.
• Exact geometric proportions: For every flag flown by federal agencies, taking the vertical hoist (width) of the flag as 1.0, the horizontal fly (length) was fixed at 1.9, the hoist of the blue union at 7/13 (spanning the top seven stripes), the fly of the union at 0.76, and the width of each stripe at 1/13 of the hoist.

The forty-eight-star flag took effect on July 4, 1912, and served for forty-seven years, through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War, before Alaska and Hawaii achieved statehood. During this same era, Congress also codified civilian display customs into the 1942 U.S. Flag Code and standardized the official textile shades explained in our guide to American flag colors meaning.

The 1959 executive orders and the 50-star design of 1960

After nearly five decades without a new state, the star count changed in two consecutive years at the end of the 1950s.

Executive Order 10798 and the 49-star flag (1959)

On January 3, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the proclamation admitting Alaska as the forty-ninth state, along with Executive Order 10798, which prescribed the official design for the forty-nine-star flag. Based on recommendations from a cabinet and heraldic committee, the forty-nine-star union arranged the stars in seven staggered horizontal rows of seven stars each. The forty-nine-star flag became official on July 4, 1959, and served for exactly one year.

Executive Order 10834 and the 50-star flag (1960)

Less than eight months after Alaska’s statehood, Hawaii was admitted to the Union as the fiftieth state on August 21, 1959. That same day, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10834, which revoked Executive Order 10798 of January 3, 1959 (the 49-star flag order) and established the design and exact mathematical specifications for the fifty-star flag.

Part I of Executive Order 10834 retained Taft’s overall proportions while defining the staggered fifty-star grid of nine horizontal rows alternating between six stars and five stars (6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6):

Flag Element (EO 10834 Symbol)	Proportion Relative to Hoist (1.0)	Description
Hoist (width) of flag (A)	1.0	Vertical height of the flag along the staff
Fly (length) of flag (B)	1.9	Horizontal length of the flag
Hoist (width) of union (C)	0.5385 (7/13)	Spans the top seven alternating stripes (four red, three white)
Fly (length) of union (D)	0.76	Horizontal length of the blue canton
Diameter of star (K)	0.0616	Outer circle diameter of each five-pointed star
Width of stripe (L)	0.0769 (1/13)	Height of each of the seven red and six white stripes

In accordance with 4 U.S.C. § 2, the fifty-star design became the twenty-seventh and current official flag of the United States at 12:01 a.m. on Independence Day, July 4, 1960, when it was formally raised over Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Having flown for more than six decades, the fifty-star banner is the longest-serving official design in American history.

Timeline of the 27 official versions of the U.S. flag

Every official change to the American flag since 1777 has followed the admission of new states, taking effect on July 4 (except for the initial 1777 resolution and the May 1, 1795 implementation of the 1794 Act):

Version	Stars	Stripes	Effective Date	States Represented in the Addition
1st	13	13	June 14, 1777	Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island
2nd	15	15	May 1, 1795	Vermont, Kentucky
3rd	20	13	July 4, 1818	Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi (stripes restored to 13)
4th	21	13	July 4, 1819	Illinois
5th	23	13	July 4, 1820	Alabama, Maine
6th	24	13	July 4, 1822	Missouri
7th	25	13	July 4, 1836	Arkansas
8th	26	13	July 4, 1837	Michigan
9th	27	13	July 4, 1845	Florida
10th	28	13	July 4, 1846	Texas
11th	29	13	July 4, 1847	Iowa
12th	30	13	July 4, 1848	Wisconsin
13th	31	13	July 4, 1851	California
14th	32	13	July 4, 1858	Minnesota
15th	33	13	July 4, 1859	Oregon
16th	34	13	July 4, 1861	Kansas
17th	35	13	July 4, 1863	West Virginia
18th	36	13	July 4, 1865	Nevada
19th	37	13	July 4, 1867	Nebraska
20th	38	13	July 4, 1877	Colorado
21st	43	13	July 4, 1890	North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho
22nd	44	13	July 4, 1891	Wyoming
23rd	45	13	July 4, 1896	Utah
24th	46	13	July 4, 1908	Oklahoma
25th	48	13	July 4, 1912	New Mexico, Arizona
26th	49	13	July 4, 1959	Alaska
27th	50	13	July 4, 1960	Hawaii

Notably, under U.S. law, no official version of the American flag ever becomes obsolete. Any of the twenty-seven historic configurations, from the thirteen-star banner of 1777 to the forty-eight-star banner of World War II, remains a legal United States flag eligible for respectful display under flag etiquette and commemoration on Flag Day, whether flown on a porch staff or honored in classic American flag shirts.