Flag of Michigan

The flag of the state of Michigan depicts the state's coat-of-arms on a dark blue field, as set forth by Michigan state law. (The Governor has a variant of the flag with a white instead of blue field.)

Design

The state coat of arms depicts a light blue shield, upon which the sun rises over a lake and peninsula, and a man with a raised hand representing peace and holding a long gun representing the fight for state and nation as a frontier state.

As supporters, the elk and moose are derived from the Hudson's Bay Company coat of arms, and depict great animals of Michigan. The bald eagle represents the United States which formed the State of Michigan from the Northwest Territory.

The design features three Latin mottos. From top-to-bottom they are:

Michigan

Michigan ⁱ/ˈmɪʃᵻɡən/ is a state located in the Great Lakes and midwestern regions of the United States. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake". Michigan is the tenth most populous of the 50 United States, with the 11th most extensive total area (the largest state by total area east of the Mississippi River). Its capital is Lansing, and the largest city is Detroit.

Michigan is the only state to consist of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula, to which the name Michigan was originally applied, is often noted to be shaped like a mitten. The Upper Peninsula (often referred to as "the U.P.") is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile (8 km) channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The two peninsulas are connected by the Mackinac Bridge. The state has the longest freshwater coastline of any political subdivision in the world, being bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair. As a result, it is one of the leading U.S. states for recreational boating. Michigan also has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds. A person in the state is never more than six miles (9.7 km) from a natural water source or more than 85 miles (137 km) from a Great Lakes shoreline.

Flags of the Confederate States of America

There were three successive designs that served as the official national flags of the Confederate States of America (the "Confederate States" or the "Confederacy") during its existence from 1861 to 1865.

Since the end of the American Civil War, private and official use of the Confederacy's flags, and of flags with derivative designs, has continued under philosophical, political, cultural, and racial controversy in the United States. These include flags displayed in states; cities, towns and counties; schools, colleges and universities; private organizations and associations; and by individuals.

The state flag of Mississippi features the Confederate army's battle flag in the canton, or upper left corner, the only current U.S. state flag to do so. The state flag of Georgia is very similar to the first national flag of the Confederacy, the "Stars and Bars"; a prior design incorporating the Confederate battle flag was in use from 1956 until 2001.

First flag: the "Stars and Bars" (1861–1863)

U.S. state

A state of the United States of America is one of the 50 constituent political entities that shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside.State citizenship and residency are flexible and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders (e.g., paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who are sharing custody). States range in population from just under 600,000 (Wyoming) to over 38 million (California). Four—Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.

States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state. State governments are allocated power by the people (of each respective state) through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in republican principles, and each provides for a government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.