FORTISVEX 36 Star U.S. Flag 5x8 Feet Nylon - Made in USA with Brass Grommets

36 Star U.S. Flag History

Nevada became the thirty-sixth state on October 31, 1864. Its star entered the official national design on July 4, 1865, and the thirty-six-star period continued through July 3, 1867. This places the flag at a historical transition: Nevada joined while the Civil War was still being fought, but its official flag period began after the war’s principal Confederate armies had surrendered. Library of Congress: Nevada state guide; Smithsonian: flag chronology.

The final steps to statehood involved an extraordinary use of the telegraph. Nevada’s enabling legislation required its ratified constitution to reach the president. When the copies sent by ordinary routes had not arrived in Washington, officials transmitted the document by telegraph. The Nevada Legislature’s political history records a message exceeding sixteen thousand words, relayed through other cities to Washington, at a cost of more than four thousand dollars. President Abraham Lincoln then issued the admission proclamation. The new star thus recalls a statehood process shaped by both wartime politics and nineteenth-century communications. Nevada Legislature: Political History of Nevada.

A surviving thirty-six-star flag in the Library of Congress provides a separate glimpse of the period’s material culture. It is a color woodcut printed on linen, dated between 1864 and 1867, and appears in the library’s Civil War exhibition as a national symbol at the conflict’s close. That object documents historical use of the star count; it does not establish the maker, construction, or provenance of a modern reproduction. Library of Congress: The National Symbol.

The product illustration arranges thirty-six white stars in five rows of eight, six, eight, six, and eight. Thirteen red and white stripes complete the design. This is the pictured layout, not a claim that all thirty-six-star flags used the same pattern. Nebraska’s admission in 1867 led to the next official addition, bringing the flag to thirty-seven stars that July. The two dates, state admission and the later flag change, are essential to interpreting this short-lived national design. Smithsonian: official star-count periods.

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