How did the bald eagle symbol come to be?

Answer 1

Actually, there was a big discussion over this and the founding fathers decided that a new symbol was needed to be placed on money, coins, and documents. So, a few artists did a few sketches and one was the bald eagle, but Ben Franklin thought that this wasn't a good idea. He said "An eagle for our national bird, never." He thought that there was only one bird fit to be on the great seal and that was the American turkey. He said that compared to turkeys bald eagles were no good bums and shouldn't be allowed in the country, much less be on the nation's great seal. He said " An eagle is a bird of very bad moral character.....and does not even work for a living, but spends its time soaring around stealing fish and anything else edible that isn't nailed down."

Ben argued and argued, but it didn't do any good. The bald eagle lobby won and it has been the national symbol ever since.