Betsy Ross and General George Washington

June 14, 1777: During the American Revolution, the
Continental Congress adopts a resolution stating that
“the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate
stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen
stars, white in a blue field, representing a new
Constellation.” The national flag, which became
known as the “Stars and Stripes,” was based on the
“Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental
Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white
stripes. According to legend.

Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross designed the new
canton for the Stars and Stripes, which consisted of a
circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the request
of General George Washington. Historians have been
unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.

On May 13, 1846, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly voted in favor
of President James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas.

Under the threat of war, the United States had refrained from
annexing Texas after the latter won independence from Mexico in
1836. But in 1844, President John Tyler restarted negotiations with
the Republic of Texas, culminating with a Treaty of Annexation.

The treaty was defeated by a wide margin in the Senate because it
would upset the slave state/free state balance between North and
South and risked war with Mexico, which had broken off relations
with the United States. But shortly before leaving office and with
the support of President-elect Polk, Tyler managed to get the joint resolution passed on March 1, 1845. Texas was admitted to the
Union on December 29. 

James Knox Polk
(November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849)

On this day in 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution,
recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist 
Papers and fourth president of the United States, was born on a
plantation in Virginia.

Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a four-year course of study in two years and, in 1769,
helped found the American Whig Society, the second literary and
debate society at Princeton (and the world), to rival the previously established Cliosophic Society.

On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a
joint session of Congress to urge the passage of legislation
guaranteeing voting rights for all.

Using the phrase “we shall overcome,” borrowed from African
American leaders struggling for equal rights, Johnson declares
that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.”

Johnson reminds the nation that the Fifteenth Amendment, which
was passed after the Civil War, gave all citizens the right to vote
regardless of race or color.

President Johnson (right) meeting with civil rights leaders.

President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1965
Civil Rights Bill, also known as The Voting
Rights Act.

The U.S. Congress IN 1807 passed an act to “prohibit the importation
of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United
States…from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.”