Iowa State Motto

Iowa Territory was created on July 4, 1838. By 1844 the population had grown past 75,000 and territorial leaders applied for statehood. Delegates drafted a constitution with generous boundaries — including territory Iowa believed it had won in the boundary dispute with Missouri. Congress accepted the application but amended the proposed boundaries, making Iowa significantly smaller.

Iowans voted on the reduced boundaries and rejected them: 7,019 to 6,023. They turned down statehood. It was a direct assertion of territorial rights against federal modification — the same logic that would later define the motto. A second constitutional convention met in May 1846 and agreed to compromise boundaries. Congress approved the revised constitution and President James K. Polk signed the admission act on December 28, 1846, making Iowa the 29th state.

The First General Assembly met in early 1847 determined to establish Iowa's official identity. A three-member committee from the Iowa Senate was tasked with designing the Great Seal and suggesting a motto. No records identify the individual committee members by name. The seal and motto were adopted together on February 25, 1847 — 58 days after statehood.

The motto uses two parallel statements. 'Our liberties we prize' is a declaration of value — the liberties Iowans hold are worth protecting. 'And our rights we will maintain' adds commitment — not just that rights are valued, but that they will be actively defended. The future tense 'will maintain' transforms the phrase from a sentiment into a pledge.

Iowa entered the Union as a free state. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which governed the territory, had banned slavery from the beginning. The boundary disputes with Missouri — a slave state to the south — gave the motto's language about maintaining rights an immediate political context. The phrase was not abstract: it described real tensions Iowans had just navigated.

Iowa's choice of plain English was deliberate at a time when many states were choosing Latin phrases. The committee wanted wording that all citizens could understand without classical education — a democratic impulse reflected in the motto's direct, accessible phrasing.

Iowa's motto contains eleven words — making it one of the longest official state mottos in the United States. Most state mottos are four words or fewer. Rhode Island's motto is a single word: 'Hope.' Arizona's is two words: 'Ditat Deus.' Iowa's eleven-word declaration is unusual in its length and its complete sentence structure.

The length reflects the motto's origin as a direct declaration rather than a classical allusion. Latin mottos borrowed compressed phrases from Virgil or Seneca that carried weight through literary association. Iowa's English motto had to carry its meaning in full, stated plainly. The two-clause structure — 'we prize' and 'we will maintain' — creates a rhythm that sounds like an oath.

The motto was never adopted as a standalone law. It exists within Iowa Code as part of the Great Seal description, not as a separate motto statute. This is common for states that embedded their mottoes in seal legislation and never passed an independent motto act afterward.

The motto's pledge 'we will maintain' proved consequential when the Civil War began in 1861. Approximately 75,000 Iowans served in the Union army — roughly one in five adult men in the state. About 13,000 died and another 8,500 were wounded. Iowa had been a state for only 14 years when the war ended.

The seal that carries the motto depicts a citizen soldier at its center holding an American flag. A plow stands behind him. The Mississippi River with the steamboat Iowa flows in the background. Iowa's founders built military readiness and agricultural purpose into the same image — defending freedoms and building the state were parallel commitments, not competing ones.