Vermont State Motto

Vermont declared independence on January 15, 1777 — not from Britain, but from New York and New Hampshire, both of which claimed Vermont's territory. Vermont was not fighting to join the United States; it was fighting to exist at all. By July 8, 1777, the republic had its name, derived from the French vert mont meaning green mountains. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys had been resisting New York land grants since the 1760s.

Vermont operated as an independent republic for fourteen years — longer than any other territory before joining the United States. It had its own currency, its own postal system, its own constitution (the first in the world to explicitly ban slavery and grant universal male suffrage), and its own foreign policy. Vermont negotiated with British representatives in Canada and maintained a diplomatic posture independent of the Continental Congress.

Ira Allen, Ethan Allen's younger brother, designed the Great Seal for the Vermont Republic in 1778 at age 27. Reuben Dean of Windsor carved the physical seal. The Vermont General Assembly accepted it by resolution on February 20, 1779. When Vermont finally joined the United States as the 14th state on March 4, 1791, the legislature readopted the same motto for the new state seal — carrying a republic's motto into the union.

Daniel Webster delivered his Second Reply to Hayne in the U.S. Senate on January 26-27, 1830 — described as the most famous speech in Senate history. Webster closed with the words: 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!' That phrase became North Dakota's state motto in 1889. But Webster derived it directly from Vermont's earlier phrase.

The connection is documented. Writer Dorothy Canfield Fisher explicitly traced Webster's 'Liberty and Union' to Vermont's 'Freedom and Unity,' noting that the Vermont motto — created for a republic that had to balance its own independence with the larger union — provided the philosophical framework Webster used to argue against nullification and state secession 50 years later.

Vermont's motto thus runs through American political history in two directions: it captured the founding tension of a republic that valued individual freedom but needed collective action, and it provided the intellectual vocabulary for one of the most celebrated defenses of federal union in American history. A phrase Ira Allen chose at 27 helped shape how Daniel Webster argued against secession — an argument tested 30 years later in the Civil War.

Vermont's Great Seal shows a pine tree at the center of the shield, surrounded by sheaves of wheat and a cow in the lower portion, with mountains in the background. The pine tree has fourteen branches — widely interpreted as representing Vermont's status as the 14th state. The number is consistent with the seal's other symbolism.

The motto 'Freedom and Unity' appears on a scroll beneath the shield, with two crossed pine branches between the shield and the scroll. This design is Ira Allen's 1778 original, though the original seal wore out by 1821 and a more pictorial version replaced it. In 1937, the Vermont legislature returned to Allen's original design — the version currently in use.

Governor Thomas Chittenden, Vermont's first governor during both the republic and early statehood periods, valued the motto so deeply that it appears in his epitaph. In 2015, high school student Angela Kubicke proposed a second ceremonial motto — Stella quarta decima fulgeat, Latin for 'May the fourteenth star shine bright' — which the legislature adopted. 'Freedom and Unity' remains the primary official motto.