Old Glory - (vexillology)

The Stars and Stripes stands for the land, the people, the government, and the ideals of the United States, no matter when or where it is displayed. Some other flags also stand for the United States, or its government, in certain situations. The Navy Jack, a blue flag with white stars, stands for the United States whenever it flies from a U.S. Navy ship.

A resolution offered by the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress at Philidelphia and adopted 14 JUN 1777 read:
Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternating red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.
This resolution establishing the flag was published 02 SEP 1777, and Washington didn't get the flags until [1783] after the Revolutionary War was over.

In 1782, the Congress of the Confederation chose these same colors for the newly designed Great Seal of the United States. The resolution on the seal listed meanings for the colors. Red is for hardiness and courage, white is for purity and innocence, and blue for vigilance, perseverance, and justice. The Stripes in the flag stand for the thirteen original colonies. There is no historical basis for assigning each star to a particular state.

The Stars and Stripes is the most popular name for the red, white, and blue national flag of the United States. Francis Scott Key first called the U.S. flag the Star-Spangled Banner in 1814 when he wrote the poem Defense of Fort M'Henry, the poem soon attained wide popularity as sung to the tune To Anacreon in Heaven and was officially made the National Anthem by Congress in 1931.

Imagine the flag with 50 stars and stripes. On 04 APR 1818, Congress ordered a new star to be added to the flag on the July 4th after a state joined the Union. Prior to this time a new star and stripe were added to the flag for each new state that joined the union.

William Driver, a sea captain from Salem, Massachusetts, gave the name Old Glory to the United States flag. One legend has it that when he raised the flag on his brig, the Charles Doggett, in 1824, he said I name thee Old Glory. But his daughter, who presented the flag to the Smithsonian Institution, said he named it at his 21st birthday celebration 17 MAR 1824, when his mother presented the homemade flag to him.

The first public assertion that Betsy Ross had sewn the first Stars and Stripes in June of 1776 appeared in a paper read before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on 14 MAR 1870, by William J. Canby, a grandson. However, Mr Canby on later investigation found no official documents of any action by Congress on the flag before 14 JUN 1777. Betsy Ross's own story, according to her daughter, was that George Washington, Robert Morris, and George Ross [an uncle], as representatives of Congress, visited her in Philidelphia in June 1776, showing her a rough draft of the flag and asking her if she could make one. However, the only actual record of the manufacture of flags by Betsy Ross is a voucher in Harrisburg, PA., for 14 pounds and some shillings for flags for the Pennsylvania navy. Francis Hopkinson, designer of a naval flag, declared he also had designed the flag and in 1781 asked Congress to reimburse him for his services. Congress did not do so.

The original pledge was published in the 08 SEP 1892 issue of The Youth's Companion a weekly magazine published in Boston Massachusetts. For years, the authorship was in dispute between James B. Upham and Francis Bellamy of the magazine's staff. In 1939, after a study of the controversy, the United States Flag Association decided that authorship be credited to Bellamy.

The original pledge contained the phrase my flag, which was changed more than 30 years later to flag of the United States of America. The phrase under God was added to the pledge on 14 JUN 1954 by an act of Congress.

Flag Day commemorates the adoption by the Continental Congress on 14 JUN 1777 of the Stars and Stripes as the U.S. flag. Although it is a legal holiday only in Pennsylvania, President Truman, on 03 AUG 1949, signed a bill requesting the President to call for its observance each year by proclamation.

          The American's Creed
    I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
    I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.