FORTISVEX 37 Star U.S. Flag 3x5 Feet Nylon - Made in USA with Brass Grommets

37 Star U.S. Flag History

Nebraska entered the Union on March 1, 1867. Its star was added to the official flag on July 4 of that year, beginning a ten-year period that lasted through July 3, 1877. The thirty-seven-star design therefore belongs to the years of Reconstruction and to the centennial of American independence, rather than to the Civil War itself. U.S. Senate: Nebraska timeline; Smithsonian: flag chronology.

Admission was not routine. President Andrew Johnson opposed Nebraska’s statehood legislation, and Congress overrode his veto. The Senate identifies Nebraska as the only state admitted over a presidential veto. Three days after admission, Thomas W. Tipton and John M. Thayer took office as Nebraska’s first United States senators. The dispute involved who could vote in the proposed state: Nebraska’s constitution initially restricted voting to white men, while Congress required that racial limitation to be removed. The eventual admission thus connected the nation’s geographical expansion to the struggle over civil and political rights after emancipation. U.S. Senate: the statehood veto; Nebraska State Historical Society: equality and statehood.

The new state soon adopted the motto “Equality Before the Law” and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Those decisions give the thirty-seventh star a context beyond a numbered place in the Union. They also illustrate why a flag’s growth can be read alongside debates about citizenship and representation. The historical society cautions that the ideal did not eliminate discrimination, an important distinction between the public language of equality and the experience of the people living under it. Nebraska State Historical Society: the state motto.

The pictured canton contains five rows of eight, seven, seven, seven, and eight stars. Thirteen alternating stripes retain the familiar foundation of the national design. This is the gallery’s particular arrangement, not a claim that every period flag was identical. In 1876 Philadelphia hosted the Centennial Exposition, celebrating one hundred years since the Declaration of Independence, while thirty-seven remained the official star count. Colorado joined that August, but its star did not become official until the following July. Smithsonian: the Centennial Exposition; Smithsonian: thirty-seven- and thirty-eight-star periods.

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