| rdfs:comment
| - In the 1790s, as Vermont and Kentucky entered the union, the flag was updated with 15 stars and stripes. With the acceptance of Tennessee in 1792, however, it became clear that a star and strip per state would quickly "clutter" the flag, so the number of stripes was reduced to 13 with the first Flag Act (1793), and the 13 stripe flag was made official, with a new star to be added for every state. However, no specific design was named, so the well-known "circle" flags continued to be used. Ohio (1803) brought the number of stars to 17, and that flag, with 13 stripes, was the one that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner" during the Siege of Baltimore in the First American War.
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| abstract
| - In the 1790s, as Vermont and Kentucky entered the union, the flag was updated with 15 stars and stripes. With the acceptance of Tennessee in 1792, however, it became clear that a star and strip per state would quickly "clutter" the flag, so the number of stripes was reduced to 13 with the first Flag Act (1793), and the 13 stripe flag was made official, with a new star to be added for every state. However, no specific design was named, so the well-known "circle" flags continued to be used. Ohio (1803) brought the number of stars to 17, and that flag, with 13 stripes, was the one that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star Spangled Banner" during the Siege of Baltimore in the First American War. After the war, it took until 1820 for the next revision of the flag, to reflect the entrance of Illinois (1818) and Maine (1820), and now 19 stars. A 20 star flag was created in 1821 with the entrance of Missouri, and now this flag law laid out the rules for the US flag: namely that the stars should only be displayed in rows, with the number of stars per row to be announced by the President via Executive Order. Only Congress maintained the right to completely change the flag, however. The introduction of Florida, Michigan and Indiana (1837), Louisiana and Mississippi (1840), Arkansas (1841), Wisconsin (1842), Texas, Iowa (1847) and West Virginia (1852) had no problems entering the union flag wise, and raised the number to 30. The aftermath of the War of Confederate Independence posed a delicate problem to the US Congress over the flag: was it advisable to maintain the current 30 star design, or would it be better to only have stars for the states that were now in the union? And considering that four of the original 13 states (Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia) broke away, should the stripes be reduced to only nine? Many Democrats demanded that they remain the same as they believed the Confederacy broke away unlawfully, while the Liberal Party lead by Abraham Lincoln proposed to reduce the number of stars, to put the war behind the States. Eventually, a compromise was worked out: the stripes would remain the same, to maintain continuity, while the stars would be reduced to the present number of states. This was further complicated by the union of Rhode Island and Connecticut, which reduced the stars to 17 with the new Flag act of 1864. The number of stars once again increased with the entrance of Minnesota (1867), Nebraska (1868), Cimarron (1887), Dakota (1888), and Sequoyah (1900), bringing the number to 22 in time for the Second Global War. After the war, with the vast Oregon Territory, as well as Northern Virginia (1920) and Kentucky (1922) being annexed by the US, the number of stars once again grew: Colorado (1920), Montana (1921), Colombia (1925), Deseret (1928) and Oregon (1929) as the 29th state of the Union. After the Third Global War, California was introduced as a state only in 1954, bringing the number of states once again to 30, where it has remained to this day.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)