What does it represent?

E Pluribus Unum represents the unity of the many states under one federal government, and by extension the unity of the many peoples that make up the American nation. The Latin phrase, meaning Out of many, one, has appeared on the Great Seal of the United States in a banner held in the eagle's beak since the Continental Congress approved the design on June 20, 1782, and it has appeared on most U.S. coins since the half eagle gold piece of 1795.

The phrase is most directly a description of federalism: 13 separate colonies, having declared independence in 1776, ratified the Constitution between 1787 and 1790 to form one federal Union, and that Union grew through subsequent admissions to its current 50 states. The structure of the Great Seal itself reinforces the federalism reading: 13 vertical stripes on the eagle's shield (representing the colonies) are unified under a horizontal blue chief (representing the federal government), and the 13 stars in the glory above the eagle's head form a new constellation (representing the union of states as a single political entity).

Beyond federalism, E Pluribus Unum has also been read more broadly to describe the unity of the many peoples that make up the American nation: immigrants from every continent, descendants of enslaved Africans, Native peoples, and people of many religions and languages have come to constitute one citizenry under one Constitution. That broader reading was reinforced after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment's grant of birthright citizenship in 1868, the great waves of immigration between 1880 and 1924, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that ended national-origins quotas.

The phrase has 13 letters, matching the original colonies. Although Congress designated In God We Trust as the official national motto in 1956, E Pluribus Unum remains in active use on most U.S. coins, on the Presidential Seal, on the seals of the State Department and other federal agencies, and in the chambers and ceremonial spaces of Congress. The two mottos function side by side and are sometimes confused; In God We Trust is the official one since 1956, while E Pluribus Unum is the older de facto motto from the founding era and remains a visible part of the country's symbolic vocabulary.