A red saltire on white with the state seal: the flag of Florida has had the cross since 1900, and where it comes from is still debated.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Civil and stateFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 2:3 ratio, white, with a red saltire (a cross in the shape of an X that runs from corner to corner) and the state seal in the centre.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
Florida was Spanish for almost three centuries, from 1513, and in 1821 it passed to the United…
Until 1861 it had no official flag
In 1868, after the war, it adopted a white flag with the state seal
The saltire was added in 1900, and it is still discussed why: some link it to the Burgundian cross…
On 21 May 1985 a new official drawing of the seal is fixed
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Florida is white with a red saltire and the state seal in the centre. The saltire was added in 1900, and it is still discussed why: some link it to the Burgundian cross of Spanish times, others to the flag of the Confederacy.
Florida was Spanish for almost three centuries, from 1513, and in 1821 it passed to the United States. Until 1861 it had no official flag. That year it seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate states in the civil war, and used several flags.
In 1868, after the war, it adopted a white flag with the state seal. At the end of the 19th century the former governor Francis P. Fleming proposed adding a red saltire, and voters approved it in a referendum on 6 November 1900.
Florida has had five flags of its own since 1861.
1861
On seceding from the Union, Florida uses for a few months the old Texan naval flag.
1861-1865
The flag designed by Governor Madison S. Perry, with the seal on a blue stripe next to the flagpole.
1868-1900
Only the state seal on white.
1900-1985
The red saltire is added, approved in a referendum.
1985
On 21 May 1985 a new official drawing of the seal is fixed.
Red saltire
according to Fleming’s explanation, it served so that the white flag would not look like a surrender. Others see in it the Burgundian cross of Spanish times, and others a memory of the Confederacy. No document survives that clarifies it.
Seal
the great seal of the state, with a sabal palm, an indigenous woman, a steamship and a rising sun.
The 1868 flag was almost entirely white. According to one explanation, Fleming proposed the saltire because, hanging without wind, it looked like a white flag of truce.
Florida did not keep the documents of its legislature from before 1969, so nobody can prove what the legislators of 1899 meant with the saltire.
Only three United States state flags carry the motto ‘In God We Trust’: those of Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.
Five governments have flown their flags over Florida: Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Confederate States. One of its cities, Pensacola, calls itself for that reason ‘the city of five flags’.
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Test what you have read about the flag of Florida.
Text based on the article “Flag of Florida (Wikipedia en inglés)” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Template:Brendon Tiana, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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