Thirty-Four Star Flag (1861)
Bicentennial Flag Memorial
Between 1818 and 1861 no less than 13 changes were made in the Stars and Stripes as a result of the westward expansion. With the admission of Kansas in 1861, the [S]tars and [S]tripes became a thirty-four star flag. It was this flag that would be carried by the North many times during the Civil War. It first served under fire June 21, 1861 along a little creek in northern Virginia called Bull Run. The rising sectional hatred and the secession of southern states produced sentiment to change the flag's design which would better reflect the new association or lack thereof.
Some wanted to remove a star for each seceded state. Others wanted to omit stars for the border states as well. And some even wanted to reduce the number of stripes to reflect the secession of four of the original thirteen colonies. President Lincoln received perhaps the oddest proposal from Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. His idea was to divide the flag diagonally with the upper twenty-three stars and stripes going to the North and the lower eleven stars and stripes going to the South.
President Lincoln gave firm "No's" to all suggested tinkering, saying that this was not a war between two nations but an insurrection of eleven states against the lawful federal government. In his view, the seceding states still remained in the Union and the national flag should remain unchanged.
Courtesy hmdb.org
