The Seal of the Confederate States was used to authenticate certain documents issued by the federal government of the Confederate States. The phrase is used both for the physical seal itself, and more generally for the design impressed upon it. On May 20, 1863, C.S. Secretary of StateJudah Benjamin instructed James Mason to arrange for its manufacture in London. The seal was first used publicly in 1864.
Design
The Seal of the Confederate States prominently features the Statue of Washington in the capital square at Richmond. In the seal, Washington is surrounded with a wreath made of some of the main agricultural products of the Confederacy: wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar cane. The top margin features the words 'The Confederate States of America: 22 February 1862'. This date reflects the establishment of the federal government under the new Confederate Constitution when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the President of the Confederate States on Washington's birthday, 1862, in the capital square at Richmond, then the nation's capitol. The bottom margin contains the national motto, Deo vindice, meaning ' God our defender/protector'. C.S. Senator Thomas Semmes, in proposing the motto, took pains to stress that both the provisional and the permanent Confederate constitution "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." The religious motto reflected the view of, probably, most Confederate citizens: that slavery was condoned by Christianity and thus, by extension, the Confederacy was.
History
According to the Richmond Whig of September 25, 1862, a design that passed the Senate represented in the foreground a Confederate soldier, in position to chargebayonet; in the middle distance, a woman with a child in front of a church, both with hands uplifted in the attitude of prayer; for a background, a homestead in the plain, with mountains in the distance beneath the meridian sun; the whole surrounded by a wreath composed of the stalks of sugar-cane, the rice, the cotton and the tobacco plants, the margin inscribed with the words 'Seal of the Confederate States of America' above, and 'Our Homes and Constitutions' beneath. This seal was never used. The final design was approved on April 30, 1863, and a set of embossing dies ordered from the London engraver Joseph Wyon. The seal was first used publicly in 1864. The dies eventually reached Richmond before the end of the war. However, due to the risks of running the Union blockade, the accompanying embossing press was only shipped as far as Bermuda. The dies 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 seal is kept at Richmond's American Civil War Museum. The press is in the BNT Museum at the Globe Hotel, St. George's.
