Great Seal of Kentucky

Kentucky entered the Union on June 1, 1792, as the 15th state, carved from Virginia's western territory. The new Commonwealth needed a seal immediately, and the design that was adopted placed the motto "United We Stand, Divided We Fall" at its center, illustrating it directly with two embracing figures.

The motto came from "The Liberty Song," a popular Revolutionary-era ballad by Philadelphia lawyer John Dickinson, published in 1768. It resonated in Kentucky's early years, when the Commonwealth had to balance the independence of frontier settlers with the legal order of an established civil government.

Kentucky revised and standardized the seal's design over the following decades, refining details of the figures, the goldenrod wreath, and the border lettering. The current version is codified in Kentucky Revised Statutes § 2.020 and defines the seal for all official Commonwealth uses.

The seal's central image is uncommon among state seals because it depicts a specific action: two men embracing, one in frontier clothing and one in a gentleman's coat. Most state seals of the era used landscapes, coats of arms, or classical allegory. Kentucky's used a human gesture.

The frontiersman represents the settlers who crossed the Appalachians along Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road and built Kentucky's first communities beyond the mountain barrier. The statesman in formal dress represents civil government, law, and the constitutional order that turned those settlements into a Commonwealth. Together, the figures argue that frontier independence and established governance must hold together.

The Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Kentucky uses three main visual layers: the two embracing figures at center, the goldenrod wreath, and the motto border.

Kentucky's seal was authorized in 1792, but the law described only "two friends embracing" and the surrounding motto. Because the wording was so general, artists and engravers produced very different versions across the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Official keepers of the seal repeatedly inherited slightly different designs. Some versions show two men in formal dress, others show handshakes rather than embraces, and some make the frontier element much more explicit. In 1962, the General Assembly finally clarified the intended symbolism: a frontiersman and a statesman greeting one another.