The fun parts of American History are the background stories—the ones you don’t always hear about in school. But when you stop to think about it, there’s no reason to believe our forefathers weren’t as weird and quirky as we are.
When you picture the Great Seal of the United States, you probably imagine the fierce bald eagle clutching arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. It’s America’s bold and fierce multitasking identity. But that wasn’t the obvious choice back in 1776. In fact, the original debate over our national emblem was more like a homeowners’ association discussion over whether to allow the new neighbors to paint their front door violet.
Picture this: It’s July 1776, and the debate over the Declaration of Independence ink is barely complete. Congress asks Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to design a national seal. Actually, two other guys were “drafted” to assist: Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston, who had served with them on the Declaration drafting committee. These men are brilliant, accomplished, and prone to big ideas. They are not, unfortunately, graphic designers, and not a single one of them has a Canva or Photoshop license.
Their assignment is a bit overwhelming: “Hey, could you come up with a symbol that represents this brand-new experiment in freedom, encapsulates the destiny of a nation, and also looks nice on a letterhead?”
No pressure.
Franklin goes first. He proposes… a turkey.
He genuinely meant it. He thought the turkey (native to the country, resourceful, surprisingly brave, and occasionally cranky) was a better symbol of the American spirit than the bald eagle, which he dismissed as a lazy scavenger with questionable morals. Franklin basically argued, “Sure, the eagle looks cool, but have you ever watched a turkey stare down a redcoat? Exactly.”
So, you might say Franklin was more about performance than appearances. Not much like a modern politician, was he?
Jefferson follows up with something no one saw coming: Israelites in the wilderness. His design featured Moses, the pillar of fire, and Pharaoh drowning in the Red Sea. It was dramatic, symbolic, and about one flaming beard short of a heavy-metal album cover. Jefferson meant well. He wanted a story of liberation from tyranny. Still, imagine the government stationery costs—the logo would likely require half the page.
Adams, for his part, leaned toward an allegorical figure of Justice. Sensible, noble, a touch boring. Hey, easy on the catcalls: none of these guys had marketing backgrounds.
Congress, recognizing a Gordian knot when they saw one, sent everyone home and handed the problem to a series of committees. You can already see where that was going… More proposals. More symbols. More arguments. At one point, Hercules was proposed. So was a shield with 13 stripes, a constellation, and plenty of Latin.
It took six years to finally settle on the bald eagle clutching arrows and olive branch, the familiar symbol we know today. The bird won not because everyone loved it, but because Congress eventually ran out of time, patience, and metaphors. Maybe Hercules and Moses still held copyrights on their likenesses.
The real story, though, isn’t which bird made the cut. It’s that from the very beginning, American democracy was gloriously, creatively messy. The process wasn’t as smooth as in the Disney movies. It wasn’t simple. It wasn’t even particularly logical. But it was collaborative, aspirational, and driven by people who cared deeply about getting things right, even if they occasionally wandered into turkey territory.
That’s the thing about democracy: the debates may be strange, the ideas may clash, and the final decisions may reflect compromise rather than purity. But somehow, out of that chaos, something lasting emerges.
The United States chose the eagle. But part of me likes imagining that somewhere in the margins of the Founders’ notebooks, a rather proud turkey is still strutting around, convinced it was robbed. I’m waiting on the lawsuit.
