The first national flag of the Confederate States of America featured a circle of seven white stars, one for each state, on a field of blue. It is now in the collection of the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. Additional stars were added to the flag in 1861, upon the admission of Kansas and again in 1865, when a new star was needed to represent West Virginia.Resource: ultimateflags.com

In March of 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a Committee on the Flag to find a national banner to demonstrate the new country’s sovereignty and independence from the Union. The committee was swamped with so many models and designs that its chairman, William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, lost track of them. Miles favored his own design, which bore a white rectangle that suggested the “Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race.”

Tracing History: The Confederate First National Flag CSA

His proposal would have displayed the horizontal bars of red, white and blue from the American flag in the canton, or union corner, with a circle of eleven white stars representing the original southern states in the center. Miles’ version was defeated by the CSA Congress, which opted for a flag that resembled the old American flag. The committee renamed the flag the Stars and Bars to distinguish it from the original American banner. This CSA National flag, which had already been adopted by the Army of Northern Virginia, became a symbol of the new nation for both its supporters and detractors.