Flag of Massachusetts

How to read it

The flag law, chapter 2, section 3 of the General Laws, makes the flag a white rectangle bearing the arms of the Commonwealth on both sides, “except that the star shall be white”. Section 1 describes the arms: a blue shield with “an Indian”, in the law’s words, dressed in shirt, leggings and moccasins, holding a bow in his right hand and an arrow, point downward, in his left, all of gold, and a silver five-pointed star in the upper corner; the crest is a right arm, bent at the elbow, clothed and ruffled, grasping a broadsword, all of gold, on a wreath of gold and blue; and the motto is in gold on a blue ribbon. The law sets no proportions or shades. The design goes back to the seal Nathan Cushing was appointed to devise in December 1780; the present drawing is by the illustrator Edmund H. Garrett, approved in 1898. The flag began as a militia colour going back to 1787 and became the state flag in 1908, Brigadier General Len Kondratiuk told the seal commission. The law also sets a naval and maritime flag: a white field with a green pine tree. The motto is also the state motto.

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What the motto means

The seal commission’s 2023 report traces the words to the English politician Algernon Sidney, who wrote them in the king’s book of mottoes while an ambassador at the court of Denmark. His full line means “This hand, an enemy of tyrants, seeks with the sword a quiet peace under liberty”, and the Massachusetts motto uses only the second half. The usual loose translation is “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty”; the report gives the literal sense as “she seeks with the sword a quiet peace under liberty”, “she” being the hand.

The commissions on a new seal and flag

For decades Indigenous leaders and community activists have called for new emblems, WAMC reports; the Boston Globe describes the current image as a colonist’s arm holding a sword above a Native American. A special commission set up under Chapter 2 of the Resolves of 2020, approved on January 11, 2021, voted unanimously on May 17, 2022 for a full redesign of the seal and motto, but ended without recommending a new design. A second commission, created by a measure in the 2024 state budget, was given the job of redesigning the seal, flag and motto. It chose three options for each from public entries, then missed its December 2025 deadline; in April 2026 Governor Maura Healey asked for an extension to December 15, the Globe reported. No new flag has been adopted, and section 3 still describes the white flag with the arms.

Telling it from Rhode Island’s flag

Both are white. Rhode Island’s has a gold anchor in a ring of 13 gold stars over a blue ribbon reading “Hope”. Massachusetts’s has a blue shield with a gold figure on it, the arm and sword above it and the motto on a blue ribbon below.