How Florida fiddled with state flag
One hundred and seventy years ago – in 1845 – Florida entered the United States as its 27th member and designed a state flag that failed almost immediately. Ever since, Florida has been fiddling with its banner.
The first flag carried a motto – “Let Us Alone” – that many people found offensive. A Vermont newspaper was appalled that “the new State of Florida has adopted a banner on which [those words] were emblazoned.” In Boston, the Courier termed the slogan “a rather strange one” for a territory coming into a union.
As a result of the controversy, historians believe the flag was never actually used. With the coming of the Civil War, other banners were raised when Florida seceded. According to the state’s website, “In God Is Our Trust” was the motto on one of them.
After the war, the reunited state required another new flag. First, it invented a state seal, which was put on cloth to make a banner. A Constitutional Convention in 1868 decided the legislature should “adopt a State Emblem having the design of the Great Seal of the State impressed upon a white ground of six feet six inches fly and six feet deep.”
The legislators approved a circular seal “having in the center thereof a view of the sun’s rays over a high land in the distance, a cocoa tree, a steamboat on water, and an Indian female scattering flowers in the foreground, encircled by the words, ‘Great Seal of the State of Florida: In God We Trust.’”
When the small seal was put on a white flag, critics said the banner needed more color, so diagonal red stripes were suggested. That notion became a constitutional amendment that voters passed in 1900.
The current flag remains about the same. But, as the state website confesses, “through the years, interpretations of the elements of the Great Seal have differed considerably. The steamboat, for instance, has been depicted in a variety of ways. The various images of the Indian female have drawn criticism from historians [who are] conscious of her clothing. The earliest official Great Seal pictured a mountainous background, something absent from the Florida terrain. Another effort showed a feather headdress on the Indian, a blunder in so much as Indian males wore the headdresses.”
A lot of banner – and a lot of changes – mark the history of the Florida state flag.
Somewhere I recalled seeing what I thought was Florida’s first state motto, “Leave Us Alone” and began to wonder where that notion I had came from after I tried to query the web looking for it and could find nothing even remotely close to it until I saw your article, ” How Florida fiddled with state flag.” “Lets Us Alone” seems quite appropriate these days. Thank you for sharing your historical knowledge which allowed me to confirm my sanity.