The law says the flag changes on July 4. Therefore, the 49-star flag came in on July 4, 1959, and the 50-star flag on July 4, 1960. This was intentionally arranged as a favor to the flag industry.
Hardly surprising, given that the whole premise of the thing was that they weren’t allowed to break away in the first place. It’d look pretty weird to be killing people to “preserve the union” under a flag that acknowledged the sundering of said union.
Powers &8^]
When I was a teenager I worked at a small conference facility and once day there was a home auction going on. One of the items was a medium sized box with some old clothes and an American flag. No one was bidding, so I raised my hand and won it for about $15.
When I got home and unfurled the flag, it was huge - at least six feet from top to bottom and longer from side to side – and it only had 45 stars. I later took it to college and it covered the entire wall of my dorm room. I still have it in a box in my attic. It has a few tears and one or two patches, but I’ve always meant to get it appraised and have never gotten around to it.
The 34 hours of artillery bombardment before they surrendered might have had something to do with it…
It’s pretty good analysis. Each state gets two Senators, so adding a state can mean a significant political power shift.
It’s similar, I’m ashamed to say, to the practice of adding one slave and one free state in our earlier history to preserve that political balance.