The Flag Act of 1777 is thirty-one words long. Thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; a union of thirteen stars, white on blue, representing a new constellation. That is the entire specification.
It says nothing about proportion, nothing about the shade of red or blue, and nothing about how the stars should be arranged. For the next 135 years that silence was filled by whoever was sewing. Flags of the period carry stars in rows, in circles, in a single great star made of smaller ones. Navy flags ran long and narrow; garrison flags ran nearly square.
Stripes were the one thing that moved and then moved back. Vermont and Kentucky brought the count to fifteen in 1795, and it stayed there for twenty-three years — the flag Francis Scott Key watched over Fort McHenry has fifteen of each. In 1818 Congress returned the stripes to thirteen for the original colonies and fixed the stars as the part that grows.
