Out of the Many, One
In the title “United States of America,” the emphasis is necessarily on the word united. When America was in its infancy and seeking to establish itself as a sovereign nation, it faced many challenges, not the least of which was that King George of England was not interested in letting his colonies in America go free. If these colonies were to establish themselves as a nation apart from British rule, they were going to have to do so by defeating the most powerful army on the earth, namely, the British Army. To do so, it would have to pull together a formidable army out of a scattered rag-tag group of colonial militia. Yet, perhaps the most daunting task in this mission was the pulling together thirteen separate colonies and convincing them of the need to rally around a single vision and mission. This would not be easy.
Each of these thirteen colonies had been established with its own sense of autonomy and the rhetoric for revolution had only fueled the autonomous spirit. Yet, the Fathers of the Revolution understood the necessity of the unity of these colonies. Therefore, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were commissioned to develop a seal around which unity in colonies could be fostered. The seal that they suggested contained the Latin phrase e pluribus unum — out of many, one.