Congress fixed the US flag at 13 stripes and a star for every state
On this day · 4 April 1818
The 1818 Flag Act froze the stripes at 13 and made the growing nation visible one star at a time.
By 1818 the United States had a problem of arithmetic. The 1794 flag law had added a stripe for every new state, and with the country still expanding, the banner was on its way to becoming an unworkable thicket of bars.
On April 4, 1818, President James Monroe signed a new act that solved it with quiet elegance. The flag would return to 13 horizontal stripes, one for each original colony, while the 20 stars in the blue canton would do the counting from then on. The law set the rule still followed today: one star added for each new state, taking effect the Fourth of July after admission.
The stripes would remember where the nation began; the stars would track where it was going.
The redesign drew on a plan from privateer Samuel Chester Reid, who argued the simplest pattern would age best. Two centuries and 30 more states later, the math still works.
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