May 5, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Goddesses of Justice and Liberty on Maryland's State Seal
by Ann Forfreedom
(Excerpt)
Standing between a Colonial Past and a Revolutionary Future
From the heart of Maryland's history, standing between a colonial past and a revolutionary future, Maryland's 1794 Justice and Liberty State Seal moves through time and space to touch us today. Designed by artist Charles Willson Peale, himself a Son of Liberty and an innovator of art and science, the two-sided silver seal features on its obverse, or front side, the Goddess of Justice, scales in hand, and the insignia of Goddess Liberty, including a Liberty Cap atop a Liberty Pike.
This is the story of a remarkable state seal and how it was forgotten, hidden, and rediscovered by a feminist writer after nearly a century of virtual oblivion. Born as the established order was being overthrown, this emblem has not lost its power to unnerve the authorities.
Maryland was not alone in presenting Great Goddesses on a Great Seal. During and just after the American Revolution, almost half of the 13 colonies that became states honored the Great Goddesses of their sovereignty and hopes by depicting them, or their symbols, on their state seals and state flags. New Jersey, for example, placed, and still honors, Goddess Liberty and also Ceres, the agricultural deity of abundance, on its state seal and state flag. New York depicted, and to this day honors, Goddess Liberty and her sister goddess, Justice, on its state seal and state flag.
Americans of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary eras embraced a secular view of ancient goddesses and gods, particularly those prevalent in ancient Greece and Rome. Though seen in secular ways, these Great Goddesses, and the powers and values they embody, are woven into many of the deepest aspects of life in the United States.
The Maryland governor and state legislators who accepted and formally adopted the female-oriented seal on February 5, 1794, were accustomed to breaking with colonial traditions. Most of them had fought in the American Revolutionary War, or knew Charles Willson Peale, and all were eager to create a new foundation for their new state. The Philadelphia artisans who engraved the seal, James Thackara and John Vallance, knew Peale and shared his vision.
Maryland's leaders had been occupied with other matters in 1777, and had allowed the old colonial seal, showing Lord Baltimore and the Calvert arms, to continue as an interim state seal. When Maryland ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1788, the state seal continued to reflect monarchical and male-centered power.
By 1793, when many Americans again were thinking about revolutionary ideals, as the French Revolution gained American sympathizers, interest grew in getting a new state seal for Maryland. Charles Willson Peale produced at least two alternative sketches for the front side of the proposed Maryland Great Seal. These sketches, now in Philadelphia, contained several elements, including Justice's scales and the bundle of rods topped with a pike (a form of the Roman fasces that came to be a symbol associated with Goddess Liberty), that were included in the final version.
The 1794 Justice and Liberty Seal of Maryland, which was in effect from early 1794 to mid-1817, presents symbols of Great Goddesses on both its sides. It is the front, however, that clearly breaks with the monarchical and patriarchal traditions.
This seal, with its female-oriented front side, proved popular with 19th-century artists and publishers of patriotic and historical prints and lithographs from 1819-1876. Professional artists, including Thomas Sully, illustrated prints of the Declaration of Independence (documents presented by publishers such as John Binns and Charles Magnus) with the seals of the original 13 states, and, usually, the seal for Maryland was the 1794 Justice and Liberty State Seal.
This seal was in effect during the War of 1812. This was Maryland's official seal when Baltimore flagmaker Mary Young Pickersgill created the large flag that flew over Fort McHenry, and when native Marylander Francis Scott Key composed the song, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Later, at the end of 1860, when South Carolina's secessionists met in Charleston, the banner that hung in their convention hall featured the seals of states they sought to attract, and the seal that represented Maryland was the 1794 Justice and Liberty Seal. In the centennial year of 1876, prints depicting the U.S. presidents and the state seals presented the 1794 seal as the seal of Maryland.
But in the 20th century, a veil of obscurity enveloped this beautiful seal. The Maryland state government seemed to forget about the front of the seal. However, the back of the seal could be seen on an ornamental mace in the House of Delegates.
By 1987, Maryland's State Archives, the official repository of the state's seals, completely omitted the 1794 obverse design from its poster about the state's Great Seals; the 1794 seal, created as a two-sided pendent seal, was misrepresented as a one-sided seal consisting only of the reverse, with no female image of Justice, and no Liberty Cap in sight.
In February, 2001, at the start of the 21st century, when I questioned a top official of the Maryland State Archives about the obverse design, I was told this design had never existed! In the following months, Maryland state officials continued to deny the existence of the obverse design, and then claimed the design existed but was not an official design. Instead of embracing the news that all Marylanders had been represented by an artistic and female-oriented state seal during the early years of Maryland's statehood, the State Archives officials resisted the news, refused to change the inaccurate 1987 poster, and continued to post inaccurate information on the State Archives Internet website.
The invisibility of the seal extends even to the numerous biographies of Charles Willson Peale, one of the better-known Revolutionary War-era artists. Not one mentions his design of Maryland's first post-Revolutionary War Great Seal. (Nor is there much about Peale's numerous paintings of important goddesses, such as Liberty, Justice, Minerva, Venus, Peace, and Plenty.)
What is on the front of the 1794 seal that so discomforted Maryland's 20th-century state government as to make that side invisible for almost a century? What is a state seal, especially today? What can it mean?
A state seal can appear on official documents and official buildings, in courtrooms, and sometimes on state flags, battle flags, battle monuments, and official badges. State seals have appeared on currency bills, coins, envelopes, and postage stamps, as well as on commemorative items, in advertisements, and in artworks and prints.
A state seal is not simply a stamp of official authority; it is a state's representation of itself to the world. How a state presents itself can speak volumes....
Copyright by Ann Forfreedom
Ann Forfreedom's article has been printed in its entirety, with numerous illustrations, in The Wise Woman, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2002. Contact: Ann Forfreedom, The Wise Woman, 2441 Cordova St., Oakland, CA 94602, USA; tel: (510) 536-3174; email:forfreedom3@earthlink.net.
A copy of that issue is being kept in the Peale Archive at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. Another is being kept in the Maryland Historical Society Library, in the Local and Family History Collection, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Copyright 2001, 2002 by Ann Forfreedom. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, redistributed, or posted, in print or on the air or on the Internet, without written permission. This excerpt appears here with permission by Ann Forfreedom.