The American Flag exhibit at the Presidio was great. It was so fun to see all the different flags, and see how the flag evolved as our country evolved. I loved how the first flags had handsewn stars.

The curators made the exhibit so interesting by adding the history of each flag. In the 1800's, there was a big controversy about whether to add states that were "slave" states. Henry Clay's Missouri compromise of 1820 tried to settle this issue by having the government add one free state and a slave state at the same time. This compromise also established the 36° 30´ parallel as a dividing line in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory. Below it, new states would allow slavery; above it, slavery would be banned.

I'm sure this issue was covered in my American history classes, but I'd forgotten how contentious the slavery issue was and how long it had been brewing. Clay's Missouri compromise of 1820 postponed the outbreak of the Civil War.

In 1850, California entered the union as a free state, yeah Cali, which upset the balance of free and slave states since the western territory was not covered by the 1820 compromise. Henry Clay again helped to broker a compromise, whereby any state entering the union would decide on its own to be a free or a slave state. Kansas apparently went through a bloody fight over the slavery issue, but eventually entered the union as a free state.

The exhibit showed some flags from the North that left out the fifteeen slave states, called "exclusionary flags". Between 1860 and 1861, seven slave states withdrew from the Union because of slavery and started the confederacy. These slave states were South Carolina (Jesse Helms' state), Mississippi (home of Trent Lott) , Florida, Alabama (George Wallace's home state), Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. An additional 6 more slave states would join eventually join them.

Since I had the classic left wing liberal education, I started to speculate that those states that had entered the Union as slave states most likely voted for Bush in the 2000 election. I'm bad huh? You can blame that left wing liberal education of mine.

The exhibit also had some George Custer memorabilia, and I saw George Custer's belt buckle and one of his diaries. Custer graduated from West Point, and fought in the Civil War for the Union.

Othe items of interest was the arrangement of the stars and over the years and the stripes. There were some interesting star arrangements over the years. There was also an issue about the number of stripes for awhile too. The exhibit also noted that the practice of carrying the flag into battle started during the civil war, to tell the two sides apart.