Flag of Sons of Liberty (USA c. 1765, 13 stripes)

As resistance to London widened, nine stripes were no longer enough. In 1774 the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia with twelve colonies represented; Georgia joined in 1775. What had begun as protest against a single tax had become the common cause of all thirteen colonies. The Sons of Liberty adapted their sign and counted thirteen stripes from then on. In this form the pattern appears on pennants, ship's flags and in the cartoons of the years before the war. When the Continental Congress passed the first flag resolution of the United States in 1777, it took over precisely this number.

Meaning

The flag shows thirteen horizontal bands in red and white. The thirteen stood for the thirteen colonies that joined against the British crown — the same number that later passed into the flag of the United States and stands there to this day, while the stars grew with every new state. There is no canton, no coat of arms, no sign of any person: the stripes alone were the statement. Red and white the movement had already carried in the version with nine stripes; only the number changed, with the number of allies.