Great Seal of the Confederate States of America

Great Seal of the Confederate States
Details
Armiger Confederate States of America
Adopted April 30, 1863
Use Intended for commissions and more, but dies arrived too late in war to be used

The Great Seal of the Confederate States was the official seal of the government of the Confederate States, which consisted of eleven states that declared that they had voted to secede from the United States of America, leading to the American Civil War.

Overview

The seal prominently features George Washington on horseback, in the same position as the 1858 Virginia Washington Monument, located adjacent to the Confederate Capitol in Richmond, Virginia.[1] Washington is pictured in his uniform of the Revolution securing American independence.

Washington's first equestrian statue was by Henry Kirke Brown, erected in New York City in 1856. It has since been moved to Union Square in the center of the park. There, the tri-corner hat is held in his left hand rather than atop his head, as depicted in the equestrian statue at the Virginia Capitol, in Richmond. The Union Square statue is duplicated at the Washington Monument at West Point, a bronze statue cast by Clarence P. Towne, dedicated in 1916. Washington was a model for the Confederacy due to his importance in founding a new nation. He was a model in personal character, a military leader for independence, a new nation's political leader, and, not unimportantly for the Confederacy, a slaveholder.

Washington is surrounded with a wreath, which is made of some of the main slave-cultivated agricultural products of the Confederacy: wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar cane. The top margin of the seal features the words "The Confederate States of America: 22 February 1862". This date on the seal commemorates the establishment of the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia with the inauguration of Jefferson Davis after the only Confederate general election, and is also Washington's birthday.[2]

Motto

The bottom margin contains the national motto, Deo Vindice (variously translated as "Under God, [Our] Vindicator", "With God as [Our] Champion", "With God as [Our] Judge", and "Under the Guidance and Protection of God"). The Confederate Senator Thomas Semmes, in proposing this motto, took pains to stress that the Confederacy had "deviated in the most emphatic manner from the spirit that presided over the construction of the Constitution of the United States, which is silent on the subject of the Deity".[3][4] The religious motto reflected the view that most contemporary Confederates held, that slavery was condoned by their religion, and thus by extension, the Confederacy was supported by their deity.[5]

History

In September 1862, a preliminary seal was proposed for the Confederacy that depicted a Confederate soldier with a bayonet in the foreground, with a woman, child, church, and mountains in the background underneath a shining sun, surrounded by a wreath made from the four slave crops of sugar cane, rice, cotton, and tobacco. However, this design was never used.[6]

The design of the seal was finalized on April 30, 1863, and a set of embossing dies ordered from the London engraver Joseph S. Wyon.[7] The seal dies eventually reached Richmond before the end of the war. However, due to the risks of running the naval blockade upon the Confederacy, the accompanying embossing press was only shipped as far as Bermuda. The dies (crafted in silver) were thus unlikely to ever have been used in any official capacity.

Both sets of artifacts initially passed through private ownership before ultimately entering museum collections. The dies now reside in Richmond's Museum of the Confederacy; and the embossing press, equipped with brass replica dies, is in a National Trust Museum in St. George's, Bermuda.

Gallery

See also

References

  1. ↑ "National Register of Historic Places nomination" (PDF). Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved 5 June 2012.
  2. ↑ "Great Seal of the Confederacy". Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
  3. ↑ "The Great Seal of the Confederacy". Retrieved 22 June 2013.
  4. ↑ Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. XVI. Richmond, Va. January–December 1888. pp. 416–422.
  5. ↑ Rhea, Gordon (January 25, 2011). "Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought". Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust. Archived from the original on March 21, 2011. Retrieved March 21, 2011. It was a corollary that to attack slavery was to attack the Bible and the word of God. If the Bible expressly ordained slave holding, to oppose the practice was a sin and an insult to God's word... [S]lavery was the will of God, and those who opposed the institution – the abolitionists – were by definition anti-God.
  6. ↑ Preble, George Henry (1880). History of the Flags of the United States of America: Second Revised Edition. Boston: A. Williams and Company. pp. 523–525. OCLC 645323981. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  7. ↑ "Object Record: Great Seal of the Confederacy". National Museum of American History. Retrieved 6 November 2011.

External links

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