Mississippi State Motto: Virtute et Armis

Mississippi's state motto is Virtute et Armis, a Latin phrase meaning By Valor and Arms. It was adopted in 1894 through an extraordinary legislative session, 77 years after Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10, 1817.

The motto appears on the state coat of arms, not on the current state flag. Mississippi's flag, redesigned in 2021, displays the phrase In God We Trust instead.

Virtute is the ablative case of virtus, meaning by valor or by courage. Et means and. Armis is the ablative of arma, meaning by arms or by weapons.

In Latin, the ablative case indicates the means of action. The full phrase means: achieving something by means of both valor and arms.

Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10, 1817, but went 77 years without an official coat of arms. On February 7, 1894, the legislature appointed a committee to design one. Historical records link the motto to James Rhea Preston, the state superintendent of education, who proposed the Latin phrase for the red scroll in the coat of arms design.

An extraordinary legislative session in 1894 approved the coat of arms under Chapter 37 of the Laws of the Extraordinary Session. The same session also adopted a new state flag with a Confederate battle cross canton. Both decisions came from the same post-Reconstruction legislature.

In 1906, during a revision of the Mississippi Code, the coat of arms law was accidentally omitted. In May 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that the state technically had no official coat of arms. Governor Ronnie Musgrove signed a new law on February 7, 2001, exactly 107 years after the original adoption, formally restoring the 1894 design. The motto and coat of arms are now codified in Mississippi Code § 3-3-41.