North Carolina State Coat of Arms

The coat of arms places two allegorical figures on either side of a central scene. Behind them, a sailing ship and distant mountains represent North Carolina's geography from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian highlands. The two dates embedded in the design are what set it apart from every other state coat of arms in the country.

The coat of arms and the state seal share the same composition. The state seal adds a circular legend reading THE GREAT SEAL OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA around the outside. The coat of arms appears without that border in contexts where only the heraldic design is needed.

North Carolina adopted its coat of arms in 1776, the same year the colony organized itself as an independent state during the Revolutionary War. The design embedded two dates that were central to how North Carolinians understood their own role in the founding of the United States.

The first date, May 20, 1775, refers to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Citizens of Mecklenburg County near present-day Charlotte allegedly signed a local independence declaration a full year before the national Declaration of Independence. If authentic, it would make North Carolina the first place in America to formally break with Britain.

The second date, April 12, 1776, is not in dispute. On that day, North Carolina's Provincial Congress met in Halifax and passed the Halifax Resolves, formally instructing the state's delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence. It was the first official action by any colony to take that step. North Carolina's claim on this date is fully documented in surviving historical records.

The motto Esse Quam Videri, meaning To be rather than to seem, was formally adopted by the General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Elias Carr on February 21, 1893. Judge Walter Clark of the North Carolina Supreme Court selected the phrase from Cicero's De Amicitia, written in 44 BC. Clark had Senator Jacob Battle of Nash County introduce the bill.

The current standardized version of the coat of arms was adopted in 1971 under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 147-26. The 1971 revision updated proportions and rendering for modern official use while leaving the composition unchanged.

The North Carolina coat of arms uses two allegorical figures, a landscape scene, two historical dates, and a Latin motto. Each element was placed to make a specific claim about North Carolina's history and character.

Most state coats of arms use allegory: abstract figures that stand for ideas. North Carolina's design does something more specific: it records two actual calendar dates and dares anyone to check them. The Halifax Resolves on April 12, 1776, hold up; the Mecklenburg Declaration on May 20, 1775, has been challenged for two centuries.

The choice of Plenty rather than Justice as the second figure was not accidental. In 1776, North Carolina's founders were making an argument about what the new state offered: agricultural abundance alongside political liberty. Justice, with scales and a sword, would have framed the new government in legalistic terms. Plenty, with a cornucopia, framed it in terms of what the land could produce.

The motto Esse Quam Videri, placed below all of this, is a statement about authenticity. It was formally chosen in 1893, more than a century after the coat of arms was first adopted. By then, the state had been through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and a judge who had fought as a Confederate teenager and spent his career on the bench selected a Cicero phrase about the gap between performance and reality. The choice was fitting for a coat of arms that already carried one verified date and one disputed one.

The core composition of the North Carolina coat of arms has remained unchanged since 1776. Liberty, Plenty, the two dates, the coastal ship, the inland mountains, and the motto all remained part of the design through later renderings.

What changed over time was mostly artistic treatment. Historical illustrations show older ornamental framing and engraving style, while the modern standardized form adopted in 1971 regularized the composition for official state use.