Part 3

Soon after the seal was adopted the obverse was cut in brass; but the identity of the engraver is unknown. It was intended to be impressed in wax over a paper wafer, and is found on a commission dated September 16, 1782, granting full power and authority to General Washington to arrange with the British for exchange of prisoners of war. The commission is signed by John Hanson, President of Congress, and countersigned by Charles Thomson, Secretary, the seal being affixed in the upper left-hand corner, instead of the lower left-hand corner as is now the custom. This, the first great seal to be made, continued in use for fifty-nine years, and having been cut almost as soon as the design was adopted may fairly be assumed to represent correctly the intentions of the makers of the seal.

The second or Lovell committee recommended a “less seal of the United States” of the same design as the great seal but of smaller diameter, but no other committee took cognizance of the custom which still prevails in many countries of having two principal seals of state. The idea had not, however, wholly disappeared when the Constitution was adopted, for in the first Congress John Vining of Delaware proposed (June, 1789) that a Home Department be provided for and that the Secretary be required to “keep the great seal, and affix the same to all public papers, when it is necessary; to keep the lesser seal, and affix it to commissions &c.”

In the debate which preceded the defeat of the bill, Alexander White of Virginia said the great seal might be kept by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and the lesser seal also.[29] No direct proposition was made, however, to create a lesser seal.

When the Congress under the Articles of Confederation ceased to exist and the new Government went into operation Charles Thomson continued in charge of the great seal and of the records of the old Government, until provision for their custody should be made. On July 24, 1789, Washington as President wrote to him:

You will be pleased, Sir, to deliver the Books, Records and Papers of the late Congress—the Great Seal of the federal Union—and the Seal of the Admiralty, to Mr. Roger Alden, the late Deputy Secretary of Congress, who is requested to take charge of them until further directions shall be given.

Thus terminated Thomson’s connection with the seal which he had done so much to design and have adopted. Alden afterwards described his own appointment as that of keeper of the seals and papers of the old Congress.

On June 27 the bill creating the Department of Foreign Affairs became a law, this being the first executive department provided for under the Constitution, but the Secretary was not made the keeper of the seal and it remained in Alden’s hands until the Department of State was created. The act creating this Department was entitled, “An act to provide for the safe keeping of the acts, records, and seal of the United States and for other purposes.” It enlarged the Department of Foreign Affairs into the Department of State, and named as the principal officer the Secretary of State. The third section of the act read:

_And be it further enacted_, That the seal heretofore used by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be, and hereby is declared to be, the Seal of the United States.

The fourth section read:

That the said secretary shall keep the said seal, and shall make out and record, and shall affix the said seal to all civil commissions to officers of the United States to be appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, or by the president alone. Provided, That the said seal shall not be affixed to any commission, before the same shall have been signed by the president of the United States, nor to any other instrument or act, without the special warrant of the president therefor.

It will be observed that the act described the “Seal of the United States” and not the “Great Seal of the United States,” although in all the preliminary reports and in the adopting act the term “Great Seal” was used. As no lesser seal of state was contemplated there was really no object in designating the only seal as the “Great Seal,” although for ordinary purposes it has never ceased to be called the “Great Seal,” and is so denominated in the decision of the Supreme Court where its uses are set forth. Before the seal was adopted the commissions of Congress read simply “By order of Congress,” being signed by the President. The countersigning was, “Attest Charles Thomson, Secretary.” When the seal came into use the form was, as it appears on Washington’s commission to exchange prisoners: “In testimony whereof we have caused these Letters to be made patent and the Great Seal of the United States of America to be thereunto affixed. Witness His Excellency John Hanson President of the United States in Congress assembled the Sixteenth day of September and in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty two, and of our Sovereignty & Independence the seventh.” After the adoption of the Constitution and before any custodian of the seal was provided by Congress, the wording ran: “In testimony whereof I have caused these letters to be made patent and the Seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed. Given under my hand the —— day of —— in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine,” this being signed by the President and not countersigned. This form continued in use after the Secretary of State became by law the keeper of the seal, and was not changed till August 3, 1790, when the recital was made to include the year of independence and was countersigned by Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State. Thus, singularly enough, the abandonment of the term “Great Seal of the United States” began with the Executive some months before it received legal sanction.

VI THE ILLEGAL SEAL

In ancient times a seal to authenticate a document was always impressed upon wax, or metal, or even upon clay; but this gave place to the more convenient method of impressing the seal directly upon the paper by the use of two faces of a die. It was, presumably, a desire to introduce this improvement which prompted the Department of State in 1841 to discard the seal of 1782 and have a new die cut. The work was ordered without any specific appropriation being made for the purpose by Congress, and was entrusted to Edward Stabler, of Sandy Spring, Md., where he was postmaster from 1828 to 1883, who cut many government seals, and had a reputation as a seal engraver. He was doubtless permitted to design the seal in his own way, and it was accepted without notice being taken of its palpable deficiencies from an artistic and heraldic point of view and its failure to satisfy the plain requirements of the law in the important particular of the number of arrows in the eagle’s sinister talon.

In reply to a letter from John D. Champlin, jr., in 1877, the Department of State said of the seal:

This change [from the design of the seal of 1782] does not appear to have been authorized by law, and the cause of it is unknown.[30]

The inaccuracies of the design of the arms on this seal were the subject of grave criticism from time to time. In the Galaxy Magazine for May, 1877, Mr. Champlin pointed out the improper arrangement of the pales, the red being twice as wide as the white, and the fatal disregard of the law requiring thirteen arrows in the eagle’s sinister talon. “Is it possible,” he said, “that an arbitrary alteration can be made in the great seal of the United States by the officials temporarily in charge of it? And if so, what is to prevent some future Secretary of State, with notions of his own in regard to heraldic bearings, from discarding the old seal altogether, in favor of some creation of his own?”

This seal was cut when Daniel Webster was Secretary of State, and a fair explanation of its deficiencies is that he knew nothing about the details of the prescribed design, and entrusted the business of securing a new seal to his subordinates, who were equally ignorant; and they in turn entrusted it to the engraver. Unquestionably, the Secretary of State has no authority to change the device of the arms, as it is prescribed by law, in the slightest degree, nor could the President himself properly authorize such a change. As the seal was created by Congress it would require an act of Congress to alter it. In this respect it is different from the arms of a monarchy. The arms of Great Britain, for example, being formed from those of different monarchs, have, in fact, undergone three changes since American independence—in 1801, when the arms of France were excluded and the arms of Hanover placed “over all on an escutcheon of pretense,” “ensigned with the electoral bonnet;” in 1816, when the bonnet was changed for the Hanoverian crown; and upon the death of William IV, when the present arrangement was made. How far the Secretary of State, as the custodian of the seal, may deviate from the original design in having a new one cut, provided he adheres to the terms of the creating law, is another question, which, as we shall see presently, was finally decided in favor of the conservative side.

The centennial anniversary of the adoption of the seal was marked by a revival in interest concerning it, and C. A. L. Totten, then a first lieutenant in the Army, called the attention of the Treasury Department to the fact that the reverse had never been cut, suggesting that the time was appropriate for placing it upon a medal or coin. This met with the approval of the Department, so far as a medal was concerned, and under the supervision of Hon. A. Louden Snowden, then Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, a medal was struck in commemoration of the centennial anniversary of the adoption of the seal. The obverse closely resembled the first important illustration of the seal made after its adoption. This appeared in the Columbian Magazine for September, 1786, and was a spirited engraving. It differed from the official interpretation in the distribution of the stars, which were put about the eagle’s neck and head, instead of in a circle above the head. The olive branch had sixteen leaves and no fruits, and the rays of the sun extended through the clouds. The reverse of the medal contained the dates 1782 and 1882, to indicate its purpose, beside the mottoes.[31]

Notice has already been taken of Mr. Champlin’s article in which he criticised the seal of 1841, which the Department had been using for so many years, notwithstanding its glaring errors. His criticism, Mr. Totten’s agitation of the question of cutting the reverse, and the striking of the great seal medal were the moving causes of the important action of the Secretary of State, Theodore F. Frelinghuysen, in 1883.

The first committee on the seal recommended a reverse, and so did succeeding committees, and a reverse was provided for in the creating act. From this it would appear certain that the original idea was to use a pendant seal of wax with an impression on either side of it. Pendant seals were then common and are still used in many cases. In affixing such a seal to a treaty it is so large that the wax would inevitably break if it were unprotected, so it is enclosed in a metal box, usually of gold or silver, highly ornamented. After the United States secured a great seal it affixed the same one to all its acts, and did not have a separate pendant treaty seal until about 1856, when one was made at the State Department’s instance, or upon an understanding with the Department, by Samuel Lewis, a jeweler in Washington. It was cut in iron, weighing about 20 pounds, and was 6 to 8 inches in diameter. The design followed the law accurately, but the treatment was realistic rather than heraldic. This seal was kept by Mr. Lewis, being, as it appears, his property, and whenever a seal for a treaty was required he furnished an imprint in wax with the silver or gold box in which it was to be placed, the box having upon the cover the arms stamped in relief. The cords or ribbons passing through the treaty were adjusted through the wax at the Department of State. The seal as thus attached to the treaties made by this Government with foreign powers for thirteen years compared favorably with the treaty seals used by other governments. In 1869 the use of the separate seal for treaties was abandoned, and the practice of fixing the regular seal to the paper itself was reverted to, and now maintains.

[Illustration: [Seal]]

VII THE THIRD SEAL

January 10, 1883, the Secretary of State, Theodore F. Frelinghuysen, addressed the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives, Samuel J. Randall, asking for an appropriation of $1,000 to pay for having a new seal of the United States made. “Since the year 1782,” his letter said, “when the device was adopted, there have been, it is believed, but two dies of the obverse of the seal, the only side which has been employed up to this time for sealing documents. The reverse of the seal has never been engraved by the Government. The original die of the obverse, after being in use for about sixty years, was replaced by the present die, which has become very much worn and no longer gives clear impressions. It is also to be observed with respect to the latter that it does not strictly conform to the device established by law. It seems to me, therefore, to be eminently important that a new and correct die be made without delay.” He also advised that the reverse be cut as a compliance with the law and “a proper respect to pay to the founders of this Government, at this time, to carry out the purpose so clearly expressed by them in Congress, June 20, 1782.”

Falling in with this recommendation Congress appropriated, July 7, 1884 (23 Stat., 394), $1,000 “to enable the Secretary of State to obtain dies of the obverse and reverse of the seal of the United States, and appliances necessary for making impressions of the same.”

Mr. Theodore F. Dwight, Chief of the Bureau of Rolls and Library of the Department of State, supervised the work of designing the new seal. He called into consultation the eminent historical scholar, Justin Winsor, and Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, of Harvard; William H. Whitmore, the genealogist, author of Elements of Heraldry (New York, 1866), at that time the only work on heraldry by an American; John Denison Chaplin, jr., an authority on engraving, associate editor of the American Cyclopædia and later of Scribner’s art cyclopædias; and James Horton Whitehouse, chief designer of Messrs. Tiffany & Co., New York. The subject was thus considered from the three points of view of history, heraldry, and art. Professor Norton wrote:

A. It is greatly to be regretted that the device adopted by congress in 1782 is of so elaborate and allegorical a character. The most skilful treatment of it could hardly make it satisfactory as the design for the seal of a great nation. * * *

B. But as this is now the established device, the best way, I believe, to deal with it, would be to treat it as conventionally as possible,—giving it a strictly heraldic character. * * *

As to the reverse, the device adopted by Congress is practically incapable of effective treatment; it can hardly (however artistically treated by the designer) look otherwise than as a dull emblem of a masonic fraternity. * * *

Mr. Winsor commented upon Professor Norton’s notes. He agreed that the seal was not a good coat of arms. He thought, however, that it had not been the purpose of Congress “to show an heraldic bird”—that “the American eagle displayed proper” could not be an heraldic eagle. “Whether present authorities,” he continued, “can venture to correct their [the Congress’] bad taste, may be a question.” Of the reverse, he declared it was “both unintelligent and commonplace. If it can be kept in the dark as it seems to have been kept, why not keep it so?” On January 2, 1884, he wrote to Mr. Dwight:

When you say “It might be best to reproduce the original die,”—you suggest what is really my opinion. There is a certain naïvely Archaic look about it which is honest and covers a multitude of artistic sins, in a way that will not be easy to do by a modernization of it. I like to preserve such original devices.

Mr. Whitmore did not agree with Mr. Winsor. He wrote December 30, 1884:

I feel assured that the treatment should be heraldic. An eagle _displayed_ must be an heraldic one. The term American eagle, I infer, means a bald-headed eagle, not the European type which shows in heraldry a tuft or crest on his head. This is allowable, just as a double-headed eagle is.

The best examples give the wings raised to the shoulder and then dropping, which is more graceful and natural.

As to the reverse he said: “It is a thankless task to arrange it, as Prof. Norton says; use it as little as possible.” Mr. Whitmore submitted designs which were intended to be an improvement heraldically on those under consideration, which he criticised, especially with reference to the arrows, the form of which had been changed under Mr. Dwight’s direction so as to represent a distinctively American Indian arrow. Mr. Dwight conformed to Mr. Whitmore’s suggestion, and “the technical form of barb” arrow was restored. Of the die of 1782 Mr. Dwight wrote to Mr. Whitmore January 6, 1885: “Is not that die to be regarded as in some sense sanctioned by long use, in view of its origin, as entitled to the same authority as a law?” In regard to the crest Mr. Dwight said: “On referring to the order of 1782 on this point, it seems that we have no liberty to depart from that form, as it reads: ‘A glory, or, breaking through a cloud proper, and surrounding thirteen stars.’ It has been advised that an appearance of more splendor would be gained by allowing the rays of the glory to extend beyond the clouds, as though piercing them; but to that advice I do not feel warranted in agreeing, as the old die gave no authority therefor.” Of the reverse he said: “For the present purposes we shall not order the reverse; as Mr. Winsor remarks, it has been so long kept in the dark, a few months more of shade will do it no harm. I would like to have your opinion if adverse to the cutting of that side. The law distinctly specifies it and it was not cut presumably at the same time as the obverse, because the latter was urgently needed, even as to day. The subject was probably lost sight of at that time, when all the thoughts of the fathers were engaged in the foundation of the Republic. I do not expect that the reverse can be conveniently used for the purpose of sealing documents, but it is not in my opinion improper that the device should be determined and cut.”

December 13, 1884, Messrs. Tiffany & Co. submitted the designs.

After having studied carefully the description of the devices as adopted by Congress in 1782, and considered also the suggestions and remarks that we have of late seen and received regarding the same, we have carried them out strictly according to the rules of heraldry. * * *

The eagle is the American bald eagle and has been drawn after careful studies and made as natural as the rules of heraldry will permit. We have decided that the third feather shall be the one extending to the end of the wing. The escutcheon on the eagle’s breast is drawn as described, the direction of the lines indicating the colors. As no stars are mentioned in the chief, they have not been introduced here. The suggestion to suspend the shield from the neck of the eagle by a ribbon or cord, we have not carried out, as it would not be proper and would rob the whole arms of its dignity.

The rays are purposely not extended beyond the clouds. All that is desirable in that direction has been done, but to allow them to project in the manner spoken of and as we often see them cut, would be to convey a wrong and very weak idea of the original intention. We have used the classical olive and have decided not to introduce the flowers; the fruit (13) and the 13 leaves speak for themselves in a very clear and positive manner, but the flowers, while they suggest a growing and fruitful future, would as no special number could be used, give an uncertainty not desirable, as it would always be supposed that the particular number of flowers used must have a meaning while that meaning is not there.

Indications of color should not be given in the olive branch, fruit, arrows, scroll, etc.; they should be represented as termed in heraldry ‘proper’.

Regarding the reverse the pyramid is drawn to the scale of the great pyramid; the side seen in perspective to the right means East, this view being desired. The eye and the date on the foot of the pyramid should not be incised; on ancient monumental work and work of that character the die is sunk, or the impression it of course would be in relief.

The letters used in the Latin are the simple and particular Roman letters used, and in fact is the best letter used for the purpose.

Regarding the scroll containing the “E pluribus unum” we consider the present form altogether the best to use as the sheet scroll mentioned would interfere with the eagle, while the old form of scroll falls in well with the general design. The dies will be cut in steel.

This letter may be said to be the argument for the Whitehouse designs. They were submitted to Mr. Champlin, who wrote, January 7, 1885:

It seems to me useless to regret that Congress did not adopt in 1782 a different device for the great seal of the United States. The present device was legally adopted and all we can do is to follow the provisions of the act, having an eye, of course, to general heraldic propriety; but even if the laws of heraldry are transgressed in some minor particulars, I think we still are bound to follow the letter of the law, despite the rules of heraldry. If we must have a strictly heraldic seal, let us go to work ab initio and change the law.

If this be, as I believe it to be, the true way of dealing with the question, let us see whether the designs furnished by Tiffany & Co. fulfill the provisions of the law.

1. The law reads “Paleways of thirteen pieces, argent and gules, a chief, azure”. The drawing marked A is correct in this particular. This differs from the order of the stripes on the national ensign. * * * The pales should all be of the same width.