Massachusetts State Motto

Algernon Sidney wrote the full phrase around 1659 or 1660 while serving on a British diplomatic delegation in Copenhagen, negotiating peace between Denmark and Sweden. The University of Copenhagen kept an album where distinguished visitors inscribed mottoes. Sidney wrote: 'Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem' — 'This hand, an enemy to tyrants, seeks with the sword peaceful repose under liberty.' Massachusetts adopted only the second half.

Sidney returned to England and spent years opposing the absolute monarchy of Charles II. In 1683, he was arrested on a charge of treason. His unpublished manuscript Discourses Concerning Government — arguing that people have the right to resist tyrannical government — was used as evidence against him. He was convicted and executed on December 7, 1683.

Sidney became a hero to American colonists. His Discourses Concerning Government circulated widely in the decades before the Revolution. Thomas Jefferson listed Sidney alongside John Locke as a foundational source for the Declaration of Independence. When Massachusetts needed a motto in 1775, choosing Sidney's words was a deliberate statement: the colony aligned itself with a man who died opposing the same crown they were defying.

The Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Massachusetts's Provincial Congress governed the colony instead of British authority. Governor General Thomas Gage, the royal governor, held the official provincial seal. The colony needed a new one — without it, no official document could be authenticated.

On July 28, 1775, the General Court ordered a committee to design a new seal. The committee — including Major James Otis, Dr. John Winthrop, and Major Joseph Hawley — reported a design on August 5. Paul Revere received the commission to engrave it. He had made his midnight ride just three months earlier, on April 18-19. Working as a silversmith and engraver, he created copper plates for the new seal. His original signed bill still exists in the Massachusetts Archives.

The 1775 seal showed a patriot figure wearing a tricorn hat, holding a broadsword raised in one hand and a Magna Carta scroll in the other. The Sidney motto curved around the edge. It was a direct visual argument: an armed citizen defending constitutional law against tyranny.

When Massachusetts ratified its state constitution in 1780, it needed a new state seal. The General Court appointed a committee including Nathan Cushing to design one. The new design returned to imagery from the original 1629 Massachusetts Bay Colony seal: a Native American figure holding a bow and arrow. The 1775 Revolutionary-era imagery — and the Sidney motto — was dropped entirely. For 105 years, from 1780 to 1885, the Latin phrase had no official presence on Massachusetts seals.

The legislature passed a law on June 4, 1885, providing a detailed description of the state seal. The new description specified the coat of arms with the Native American figure, the star, the crest of an arm holding a broadsword, and the motto on a blue ribbon beneath the shield. The Sidney phrase returned after more than a century of absence — not restored out of sentiment, but systematized as part of a legislative effort to formalize the seal's legal description.

Governor Charlie Baker signed legislation on January 11, 2021 establishing a commission to study the Massachusetts state seal and motto. The commission included six Indigenous leaders from Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Massachusett nations, along with legislators, historians, and community representatives.

The commission voted unanimously on May 17, 2022 to recommend changing both the seal and the motto. Concerns centered on the seal's imagery — a colonial arm holding a broadsword above a Native American figure — which commission members said depicted a relationship of domination. The motto's connection to armed force was also questioned in context.

A new advisory commission established in 2024 received over 1,150 public design submissions. Three finalist proposals for a new seal and motto were unveiled in August 2025, with public hearings scheduled for fall 2025. As of 2026, the official motto remains 'Ense Petit Placidam Sub Libertate Quietem' while the redesign process continues.