Late in the afternoon of July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress “_Resolved_, That Dr. Franklin, Mr. J. Adams and Mr. Jefferson be a committee to prepare a device for a Seal of the United States of America,”[1] this being the same committee, except for the omission from it of Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman, which had drawn up the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration had been signed about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and the members of the Congress assembling after dinner[2] desired to complete the evidences of the independence of the United States by formally adopting an official sign of sovereignty and a national coat of arms. It was intended that the device for the seal should be the device for the national arms, and the first and each succeeding committee having the business in charge construed its duty to be to devise the arms by devising the seal. In making the two identical the prevailing custom was observed, for seals are deemed proof of the coats of arms of the states or individuals using them. The great seal of France at the time the Declaration of Independence was signed contained as the obverse the arms of France, and upon the silver box containing the great seal of England when it was attached to a treaty was engraved the arms of England.[3] The great seal of England was itself, however, an exception to the general rule, as it did not at that time, nor for many years later, contain the arms of the Kingdom; but on the obverse the figure of the King on horseback and on the reverse of the King seated on the throne.[4] The committee to design the arms of the new nation had no national precedent to follow, for the arms of a kingdom are nearly always those of the sovereign or his family, and the new Republic could accept no individual’s arms. The several colonies, however, each had a seal, and these, as they were generally significant and simple, would have been a fair guide to the exigencies of a national seal. The members of the committee, however, had an idea that an allegorical picture significant of the fortunes and destiny of the United States would be more appropriate; but as none of them could draw they called into consultation Eugène Pierre Du Simitière, a West Indian Frenchman who lived in Philadelphia and had a reputation as an artist and author. John Adams, in a letter to his wife, August 14, 1776, told the story of the committee’s efforts to make the seal: