George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

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In the October session of 1782, Virginia definitively

Chap. XXVIII.} 1782.

repealed its first act of assent, which it had previously suspended; giving this reason for its ultimate decision: ‘The permitting any power other than the general assembly of this commonwealth to levy duties or taxes upon the citizens of this state within the same is injurious to its sovereignty, may prove destructive of the rights and liberty of the people, and, so far as congress might exercise the same, is contravening the spirit of the confederation.’

The words were darkly ominous, leaving congress for the time poverty-stricken, and seeming to throw in the way of a good government hindrances which never could be overcome. Yet union was already rooted in the heart of the American people. The device for its great seal, adopted by congress in midsummer, is the American eagle, as the emblem of that strength which uses victory only for peace. It therefore holds in its right talon the olive branch; with the left it clasps together thirteen arrows, emblems of the thirteen states. On an azure field over the head of the eagle appears a constellation of thirteen stars breaking gloriously through a cloud. In the eagle's beak is the scroll ‘E pluribus unum,’ many and one, out of diversity unity, the two ideas that make America great; individual freedom of states, and unity as the expression of conscious nationality. By further emblems, congress showed its faith that the unfinished commonwealth, standing upon the broadest foundation, would be built up in strength, that Heaven nodded to what had been undertaken, that ‘a new line of ages’ had begun.