Use | State flag |
---|---|
Proportion | 2:3 |
Adopted | May 6, 1868 (modifications made in November 1900 and May 1985) |
Design | A red cross on a white field, with the state seal in the center. |
The flag of Florida consists of a red saltire on a white background, with the state seal superimposed on the center. [1] The flag's current design has been in use since May 21, 1985, after the design of the Florida state seal was graphically improved and officially sanctioned for use by state officials.
In 2001, a survey conducted by the North American Vexillological Association ranked Florida's state flag 34th in design quality of the 72 Canadian provincial, U.S. state and U.S. territorial flags ranked. [2] It is one of three U.S. state flags to feature the words "In God We Trust" (the U.S. motto since 1956), with the other two being those of Georgia and Mississippi.
Spain was a dynastic union and federation of kingdoms when Juan Ponce de León claimed Florida for the Spanish Crown on April 2, 1513. Colonial authorities used several banners or standards during the first period of settlement and governance in Florida, such as the royal standard of the Crown of Castile. As with other Spanish territories, the Burgundian saltire was generally used in Florida to represent collective Spanish sovereignty between 1513 and 1821. [3]
In 1763, Spain passed control of Florida to Great Britain via the Treaty of Paris, following the latter's victory over France in the Seven Years' War, in exchange for other territory. Great Britain used the original union flag with the white diagonal stripes in Florida during this brief period. The British also divided the Florida territory into East Florida, with its capital at St. Augustine, and West Florida, with its capital at Pensacola. The border was the Apalachicola River.
Spain regained control of the Florida Provinces (las Floridas) after the Siege of Pensacola and the Treaty of Paris following the American Revolutionary War, when Britain ceded its territories east of the Mississippi River. In 1785, King Charles III chose a new naval and battle flag for Spain, which had become a more centralized nation-state, and its crown territories. This tri-band of red-gold-red was used with the Burgundian saltire in the provinces of East and West Florida until they joined the United States in 1821. Florida was admitted to the Union in 1845.
Between 1821 and 1861, Florida had no official flag. The inauguration of Governor William D. Moseley in 1845 featured a flag with bars of blue, gold, red, white and green, along with the motto "Let Us Alone." However, this never was an official state flag. [4]
In January 1861 Florida declared that it had seceded from the Union and declared itself a "sovereign and independent nation," [5] reaffirming the Preamble in the Constitution of 1838. [6] The state used the Naval Ensign of Texas as a provisional flag between January and September 1861. [7] It also used this flag when Floridian forces took control of U.S. forts and a Navy yard in Pensacola. Colonel William H. Chase was commander of Floridian troops, and the flag is also referred to as the Chase Flag.
Later that year, the Florida Legislature passed a law authorizing Governor Perry to design an official flag. His design was the tri-band of the Confederacy but with the blue field extending down and the new seal of Florida placed within the blue field. As a member of the Confederacy, Florida saw use of all three versions of the Confederate flag. The Bonnie Blue flag, previously the flag of the short-lived Republic of West Florida, was briefly used as an unofficial flag of the Confederacy. It features a single five-point star centered in a blue background.
Between 1868 and 1900, the flag of Florida was the state seal on a white background. In a discrepancy, however, a later version of the state seal depicts a steamboat with a white flag that includes a red saltire, similar to Florida's current flag.[ citation needed ] In the late 1890s, Florida governor Francis P. Fleming advocated adding a red St. Andrew's Cross so that the flag would not appear to be a white flag of truce if hanging limp on a flagpole. Floridians approved the addition of St. Andrew's Cross by popular referendum in 1900. [8] The red saltire of the Cross of Burgundy represents the cross on which St. Andrew was crucified, and the standard is frequently displayed today in Florida's historic Spanish settlements, such as St. Augustine. [9]
Some historians interpret the addition of a red saltire as a commemoration of Florida's contributions to the Confederacy by Governor Francis P. Fleming, who served in the 2nd Florida Regiment, Confederate army. [10] The addition was made during a period promoting the "Lost Cause" of the antebellum South, around the time of the flag's change. [11] [12] According to historian John M. Coski, the Florida legislature adopted its new flag near the time when it disenfranchised African Americans and passed new Jim Crow laws and segregation. [13] Other former Confederate slave states, such as Mississippi and Alabama, also adopted new state flags around the same time that they instituted segregation laws. [13]
Not all historians agree with assertions about association with the Confederacy. [14] James C. Clark, a lecturer in the University of Central Florida's history department, does not believe that Fleming's new flag had anything to do with the Confederacy. [14] "That St. Andrew's Cross that Fleming added, the red cross, dates back to the original flag the Spanish flew over Florida in the 16th century." [15] Similarly, Canter Brown Jr., a Florida state-educated historian who has written extensively on Florida history, says he has "seen no specific evidence linking this flag to the Confederate one." [15]
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy was composed of eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
The current flag of Alabama was adopted by Act 383 of the Alabama Legislature on February 16, 1895:
"The flag of the State of Alabama shall be a crimson cross of St. Andrew on a field of white. The bars forming the cross shall be not less than six inches broad, and must extend diagonally across the flag from side to side." – (Code 1896, §3751; Code 1907, §2058; Code 1923, §2995; Code 1940, T. 55, §5.)
The flags of the Confederate States of America have a history of three successive designs during the American Civil War. The flags were known as the "Stars and Bars", used from 1861 to 1863; the "Stainless Banner", used from 1863 to 1865; and the "Blood-Stained Banner", used in 1865 shortly before the Confederacy's dissolution. A rejected national flag design was also used as a battle flag by the Confederate Army and featured in the "Stainless Banner" and "Blood-Stained Banner" designs. Although this design was never a national flag, it is the most commonly recognized symbol of the Confederacy.
The "Bonnie Blue flag" was a banner associated at various times with the Republic of Texas, the short-lived Republic of West Florida, and the Confederate States of America at the start of the American Civil War in 1861. It consists of a single, five-pointed white star on a blue field. Its first use being as early as 1810, it is considered the first lone star flag in U.S. history.
A saltire, also called Saint Andrew's Cross or the crux decussata, is a heraldic symbol in the form of a diagonal cross. The word comes from the Middle French sautoir, Medieval Latin saltatoria ("stirrup").
The flag of the U.S. state of Georgia bears three horizontal stripes and features a blue canton containing a ring of 13 white stars that encircle the state's gold-colored coat of arms. The ring of stars that encompass the state's coat of arms represents Georgia as one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Its current iteration was adopted on February 19, 2003.
The flags of the U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia exhibit a variety of regional influences and local histories, as well as different styles and design principles. Modern U.S. state flags date from the turn of the 20th century, when states considered distinctive symbols for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Most U.S. state flags were designed and adopted between 1893 and World War I.
Francis Philip Fleming was an American Democratic politician who served as the 15th governor of Florida from 1889 to 1893. A Confederate soldier and lawyer before Governor, Fleming's "racist record is undisputed".
The flag of Mississippi consists of a white magnolia blossom surrounded by 21 stars and the words "In God We Trust" written below, all put over a blue Canadian pale with two vertical gold borders on a red field. The topmost star is composed of a pattern of five diamonds, an Indigenous symbol; the other 20 stars are white, as Mississippi was the 20th state to join the Union. The flag was adopted on January 11, 2021.
"Six flags over Texas" is the slogan used to describe the six sovereign countries that have had control over some or all of the current territory of the U.S. state of Texas: Spain, France (1685–1690), Mexico (1821–1836), the Republic of Texas (1836–1845), the United States, and the Confederate States (1861–1865).
The Republic of West Florida, officially the State of Florida, was a short-lived republic in the western region of Spanish West Florida for just over 2+1⁄2 months during 1810. It was annexed and occupied by the United States later in 1810; it subsequently became part of Eastern Louisiana.
The coat of arms of Alabama depicts a shield upon which is carried the symbols of the five states which have at various times held sovereignty over a part or the whole of what is now Alabama. These are the ancient coat of arms of France, the ancient coat of arms of Crown of Castile for Spain, the modern Union Jack of the United Kingdom and the battle flag of the Confederate States. On an escutcheon of pretence is borne the shield of the United States. The crest of the coat represents a ship which brought the French colonists who established the first permanent European settlements in the territory. Below is the state motto: Audemus jura nostra defendere, meaning "We dare defend our rights."
William Tappan Thompson. He co-founded the Savannah Morning News in the 1850s, known then as the Daily Morning News. One of his most notable works was Major Jones's Courtship, an epistolary novel. Thompson's best-known fictional character was Major Joseph Jones.
Saint Patrick's Saltire or Saint Patrick's Cross is a red saltire on a white field. In heraldic language, it may be blazoned argent, a saltire gules. Saint Patrick's Flag is a flag composed of Saint Patrick's Saltire. The origin of the saltire is disputed. Its association with Saint Patrick dates from the 1780s, when the Anglo-Irish Order of Saint Patrick adopted it as an emblem. This was a British chivalric order established in 1783 by George III. It has been suggested that it derives from the arms of the powerful Geraldine or FitzGerald dynasty. Some Irish nationalists and others reject its use to represent Ireland as a "British invention" "for a people who had never used it".
Florida participated in the American Civil War as a member of the Confederate States of America. It had been admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845. In January 1861, Florida became the third Southern state to secede from the Union after the November 1860 presidential election victory of Abraham Lincoln. It was one of the initial seven slave states which formed the Confederacy on February 8, 1861, in advance of the American Civil War.
The history of Pensacola, Florida, begins long before the Spanish claimed founding of the modern city in 1698. The area around present-day Pensacola was inhabited by Native American peoples thousands of years before the historical era.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the U.S. state of Florida:
Although the Confederate States of America dissolved at the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865), its battle flag continues to be displayed as a symbol. The modern display began during the 1948 United States presidential election when it was used by the Dixiecrats, southern Democrats who opposed civil rights for African Americans. Further display of the flag was a response to the civil rights movement and the passage of federal civil rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s.
The 2001 Mississippi flag referendum was a legislatively referred state statute appearing on an April 17, 2001 special election ballot, an election held specifically for this referendum.
The flag changes in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida coincided with the passage of formal Jim Crow segregation laws throughout the South. Four years before Mississippi incorporated a Confederate battle flag into its state flag, its constitutional convention passed pioneering provisions to 'reform' politics by effectively disenfranchising most African Americans.