THE SECOND SEAL (1841)
Face p. [43]
This entire report is in Thomson’s handwriting and is endorsed by him: “Device for a Great Seal for the United States in Congress Assembled. Passed June 20, 1782.” In the journals of Congress the “Remarks and explanation” are left out, but they constitute an essential part of the fundamental law as Congress adopted it.
The different features of the seal had all been in common use in America. In the North Carolina paper currency of 1775 appears a bundle of thirteen arrows; in the Maryland currency of the same year a hand grasping an olive branch with thirteen leaves; on a fifty-dollar bill issued in 1778 is an unfinished pyramid, with the motto “Perennis;” in the Massachusetts copper penny of 1776 are thirteen stars, surrounding an eagle; the flag had the thirteen stripes, and so had the seal of the Board of Admiralty, adopted May 4, 1780.
Soon after the seal was adopted the obverse was cut in brass; but the identity of the engraver is unknown. It was intended to be impressed in wax over a paper wafer, and is found on a commission dated September 16, 1782, granting full power and authority to General Washington to arrange with the British for exchange of prisoners of war. The commission is signed by John Hanson, President of Congress, and countersigned by Charles Thomson, Secretary, the seal being affixed in the upper left-hand corner, instead of the lower left-hand corner as is now the custom. This, the first great seal to be made, continued in use for fifty-nine years, and having been cut almost as soon as the design was adopted may fairly be assumed to represent correctly the intentions of the makers of the seal.
The second or Lovell committee recommended a “less seal of the United States” of the same design as the great seal but of smaller diameter, but no other committee took cognizance of the custom which still prevails in many countries of having two principal seals of state. The idea had not, however, wholly disappeared when the Constitution was adopted, for in the first Congress John Vining of Delaware proposed (June, 1789) that a Home Department be provided for and that the Secretary be required to “keep the great seal, and affix the same to all public papers, when it is necessary; to keep the lesser seal, and affix it to commissions &c.”
In the debate which preceded the defeat of the bill, Alexander White of Virginia said the great seal might be kept by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and the lesser seal also.[[29]] No direct proposition was made, however, to create a lesser seal.
When the Congress under the Articles of Confederation ceased to exist and the new Government went into operation Charles Thomson continued in charge of the great seal and of the records of the old Government, until provision for their custody should be made. On July 24, 1789, Washington as President wrote to him:
You will be pleased, Sir, to deliver the Books, Records and Papers of the late Congress—the Great Seal of the federal Union—and the Seal of the Admiralty, to Mr. Roger Alden, the late Deputy Secretary of Congress, who is requested to take charge of them until further directions shall be given.
Thus terminated Thomson’s connection with the seal which he had done so much to design and have adopted. Alden afterwards described his own appointment as that of keeper of the seals and papers of the old Congress.
On June 27 the bill creating the Department of Foreign Affairs became a law, this being the first executive department provided for under the Constitution, but the Secretary was not made the keeper of the seal and it remained in Alden’s hands until the Department of State was created. The act creating this Department was entitled, “An act to provide for the safe keeping of the acts, records, and seal of the United States and for other purposes.” It enlarged the Department of Foreign Affairs into the Department of State, and named as the principal officer the Secretary of State. The third section of the act read: