With the Revolutionary War in its third year, the Continental Congress passed a brief resolution establishing the design of the American flag: thirteen alternating red and white stripes and thirteen white stars on a blue field, representing a new constellation. The resolution offered no instructions on star arrangement, leaving early flagmakers, including Betsy Ross according to enduring legend, to improvise. The date is now observed annually as Flag Day.
The Continental Congress, buried in the logistics of fighting a war against the world's most powerful navy, took a single day in June 1777 to settle a matter of national identity. Their resolution was terse: 'Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.'
No record survives of debate, no committee report, no named designer. The vagueness was practical—thirteen stars could be arranged in rows, a circle, or scattered at a flagmaker's discretion, and early flags varied wildly. The famous circular pattern attributed to Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia upholsterer, rests on family testimony recorded decades later, not contemporary documentation, though she did sew flags for the Pennsylvania navy.
The flag flew through the war's darkest and brightest moments before Congress had even settled on a permanent design law. Not until 1916 did President Wilson establish June 14 as Flag Day, and not until 1949 did Congress make it a formal, though not federal, observance.