"E. Pluribus Unum."

We are indebted to John Adams for our national motto, "E Pluribus Unum." It seems that while he was Minster to England, Sir John Prestwick, an eminent English antiquary, suggested it to him as a good motto to indicate the union of the colonies. He (John Adams) communicated this idea to the Secretary of Congress, Charles Thompson, who, on the 20th of June, 1782, reported to Congress his design for a government seal; in it the Latin legend was to be borne on a ribbon held in the beak of an eagle. Whence Sir John Prestwick received the idea no one knows, though the motto was in use on the Gentlemen's Magazine, first published in 1730, and may have struck his fancy by its applicability to the situation in America.

In a gastronomic poem, "Moretum," attributed to Virgil, the color of a well-made vegetable salad is thus described, "Color est e pluribus unus."

The great seal of the United States, as adopted by an Act of the Continental Congress, June 20th, 1782, and readopted by the new Congress, September 15th, 1789, provided for an obverse as well as a reverse design, but there is no evidence that the reverse was ever made. The eagle in its beak bears a ribbon with the motto "E Pluribus Unum." Originally the eagle held in its sinister talon a bundle of thirteen arrows, and the first seal was thus made; but when in 1841 a new seal was made to take the place of the old one, which had become worn, only six arrows were put into the eagle's talon. Whether this change, which was unauthorized by law, was made by design or by accident is not known. On coins, the motto was first used on a halfpenny, or cent, struck in New Jersey, 1786-87. The "New Jersey copper" of 1786 was a roughly cut circular disk, about one and one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter. The device on its obverse was a shield, like the United States shield, but with latitudinal lines in place of the blue field, and with no stars on it. The motto "E Pluribus Unum" followed the line of the circumference and was immediately thereunder. On the reverse was a plough, surmounted by a horse's head, with the motto "Nova Caesarea." The same design was followed for some years, one of the types of the coin being distinguished for the misspelling of its obverse motto, the u being omitted from the final syllable of the middle word, making it read Pluribs. Some newspaper writers have claimed for the State of New York the original use of the motto; but the first authentic New York coin bearing it appears to have been a gold coin issued by a goldsmith named Brasher in 1787, on which the order of words was reversed, making the motto read "Unum E Pluribus." Amateur collectors have a copper coin purporting to have been issued by New York at an earlier date, but it is regarded by competent judges as spurious, and it is not found among the specimens at the Federal mint in Philadelphia. The first gold coinage of the United States government was in 1795; in the following year the motto appeared on the gold quarter-eagle, printed on a scroll held in the beak of the eagle on the reverse. The silver coinage of the United States began in 1794, and in 1796 the quarter-dollar contained the motto attached as on the quarter-eagle just mentioned. On dimes, it appears for the first time in 1797, in a like position.