Flag and seal of Illinois

The Great Seal of the State of Illinois is the official emblem of the U.S. state of Illinois, and signifies the official nature of a document produced by the state. The present seal was designed and proposed in 1868 and officially adopted in 1869. It depicts in profile a bald eagle perched on a rock with wings uplifted and holding a shield, with a banner in its beak and sunrise over water in the background. It replaced an earlier seal that was almost the same as the Great Seal of the United States, adopted when Illinois became a state in 1818.

The flag of the state of Illinois bearing the central elements of the seal on a white field was adopted in 1915, and the word Illinois was added to the flag in 1970.

The current flag depicts the Great Seal of Illinois, which was originally designed in 1819 and emulated the Great Seal of the United States. In the eagle's beak there is a banner with the state motto, "State Sovereignty, National Union." The dates on the seal, 1818 and 1868, represent the year Illinois became a state and the year in which the Great Seal was redesigned by Sharon Tyndale. Although "State Sovereignty" comes first in the motto, "State" is at the bottom and "Sovereignty" is upside-down.

It is one of nine U.S. state flags to feature an eagle, alongside those of Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.

The first Great Seal of the State of Illinois was adopted in 1819 by the first Illinois General Assembly. The first law authorizing the Great Seal required the secretary of state of Illinois to procure and keep the seal. The first seal engraved was essentially a copy of the Great Seal of the United States. It was used until 1839, when it was recut. The seal designed in 1839 became the Second Great Seal.

Illinois Secretary of State Sharon Tyndale spearheaded the drive to create a third state seal for Illinois. In 1867, he asked State Senator Allen C. Fuller to introduce legislation requiring a new seal, and suggested to Fuller that the words of the state motto be reversed, from "State Sovereignty, National Union", to "National Union, State Sovereignty". However, the bill passed by the legislature on March 7, 1867, kept the original wording. Despite declining his suggestion, the legislature nonetheless entrusted Tyndale with designing the new seal. And Tyndale managed to (literally) twist the legislature's intent; he kept the words in the correct order on the banner, but the banner twists, so the word "Sovereignty" is upside down, arguably making it less readable.

Tyndale's seal features a bald eagle perched on a rock carrying a shield in its talons and a banner with the state motto in its beak. Thirteen stars and thirteen stripes on the shield represent the original thirteen states of the Union. The date August 26, 1818, when Illinois's first constitution was adopted in Kaskaskia, appears along the bottom arc of the circle, and 1818, the year of statehood, displays on the seal below 1868, the year the current seal was adopted. This basic design has survived through several minor modifications since it was first conceived. The Illinois secretary of state is still the keeper of the Great Seal of the State of Illinois.

During her time as state regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1912, Ella Park Lawrence began a campaign to have Illinois adopt a state flag. She was unsuccessful during her time as state regent, but continued to lobby members of the Illinois General Assembly to adopt a state flag as a member of the Rockford chapter of the DAR. On April 1, 1914, Lawrence sent a letter to every Illinois chapter of the DAR announcing a contest to design an Illinois state flag, with the winner receiving a prize of $25, equivalent to $785 in 2024. Thirty-five designs were submitted in response to this contest.