Key figures: Continental Congress, Francis Hopkinson, Betsy Ross (legendary attribution)
Summary
On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia, passed the Flag Resolution establishing an official national flag for the United States. The resolution read: “Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” The thirteen stripes represented the original thirteen colonies, while the stars in the blue canton symbolized a new nation taking its place among the powers of the earth.
The resolution was deliberately brief. It specified the number of stripes and stars and their colors but left unstated the arrangement of the stars, the number of points on each star, the relative proportions of the canton, and whether a red or white stripe should appear at the top. This ambiguity produced numerous early variants of the flag in the months and years that followed. There was no single official design enforced in the field; ships, forts, and army units flew flags that agreed on the broad elements but differed substantially in execution.
The resolution was passed during a moment of intense military pressure. The Continental Army had suffered reverses at Trenton and Princeton in the preceding winter and faced a summer campaign by British General William Howe. The establishment of a recognizable national symbol carried practical and symbolic weight: it affirmed the permanence of the new republic even as its survival remained uncertain, and it provided a unifying emblem for forces drawn from thirteen distinct colonial traditions.
Significance
Authorship and the Betsy Ross Legend
The most persistent popular account of the flag’s creation holds that Philadelphia seamstress Elizabeth “Betsy” Ross sewed the first Stars and Stripes in 1776 at the request of George Washington, Robert Morris, and Colonel George Ross. However, this story did not enter public circulation until 1870, when Ross’s grandson William Canby presented it in a speech to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Canby offered no contemporary documentary evidence; his account rested on family oral tradition. No official record from the Revolutionary era names Ross as the flag’s designer. Documentary evidence does confirm that she was a working flagmaker: a May 29, 1777, entry in the Pennsylvania Archives records a payment of over fourteen pounds to “Elizabeth Ross” for making ships’ colors, establishing her as a credible figure in the trade, though not as the originator of the national design.
A stronger documentary claim belongs to Francis Hopkinson, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Hopkinson submitted invoices to the Board of Admiralty in 1780 listing payment for designing “the flag of the United States of America,” among other government designs including the Great Seal and the first American coinage. Congress’s response denied full payment on the grounds that “he was not the only one consulted” in the design process — an acknowledgment that undercuts his exclusive claim but confirms his involvement. The majority of modern vexillologists and historians regard Hopkinson as the most probable designer, while acknowledging that the design process may have been collaborative.
Establishing a National Symbol
The Flag Resolution was the first official act by the federal government to define a national emblem, a step that carried significance beyond military utility. By specifying a common flag, Congress asserted that the thirteen states constituted a single nation rather than a temporary alliance of sovereign colonies. The imagery of “a new Constellation” — thirteen stars in a field of blue, evoking the stars of the night sky — expressed the aspiration that the United States would take a permanent place in the community of nations.
Flag Day, commemorating the June 14, 1777 resolution, was proclaimed as a national observance by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and formally designated by an act of Congress signed by President Harry Truman in 1949. The date marks the annual celebration of American national identity anchored in the Stars and Stripes.