The Unlikely Story of How the Bald Eagle Became America's Symbol

On this episode of Our American Stories, how did a bird Benjamin Franklin once called “of bad moral character” become America’s national symbol? Jack E. Davis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird, shares the surprising and inspiring backstory.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from where the West begins in
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, the story of how a
bird Benjamin Franklin once said was a bad moral character
ended up as our national symbol. You to tell the

(00:31):
story of the bald Eagle is Jack E. Davis, a
Politzer Prize winning author of The Bald Eagle, The Improbable
Journey of America's Bird. You'll also be hearing from our
Hillsdale intern Nate Gallagher. Let's get into the story.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
So the bald legal is truly an all American bird
when you think about it, a bird that is charismatic
and its behavior and its appearance, and so it was
always a stunning site when a bald eagle crossed the sky.

(01:09):
So in seventeen seventy six, within a few hours after
Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, Congress organized a committee
to devise or to create design a Great Seal of
the United States. The three members of the committee were
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams Stellar cast right,

(01:33):
really the principal architects of American independence, so you think
be no brainer for them to come up with a
seal that would be acceptable. They failed miserably.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
The design proposed by these three American all Stars featured
ladies Liberty and Justice flanking and all seeing eye of
God surrounding them in a ring where the initials of
each state inside a small shield enclosed by Liberty, Just,
and the eye of God was a shield with insignia
from each of the six nations that, according to the
artist of the seal, Pierre Eugene Desimitier, had peopled the colonies,

(02:10):
including insignia from other countries on your own national seal.
Was a strange choice and likely one of the many
reasons Congress disapproved of the design.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
The Congress immediately rejected their design, and another committee was formed.
It failed. A third committee was formed, it failed, and
finally Charles Thompson, who was the Secretary of Congress, said,
you know, we're about to go sign a peace tree.
We need a great seal to stamp on it. So
he came up with the design. He could look outside his

(02:43):
windows in Philadelphia, where Congress held of sessions in those days,
and see bald eagles. They were quite common around around
Philadelphia along the Delaware River, and they were practically an
everyday sight. And he's the one who we don't know
why exactly. He didn't leave a record why he chose
the bald eagle, but he's the one who came up

(03:05):
the idea to put the bald eagle on the Great
Seal of the United States. And Congress loved it. The
bald egle has this distinctive look. It's easy to capture
its image, and as a bird that as a species
as endemic to North America, and an image that really

(03:27):
has the sense of power and strength behind it, it
made sense that Americans would like it. But also the
bald eagle in its life itself represents freedom and liberty
and independence. Those were qualities that Americans associated not just
with their country, but with themselves. And so you have

(03:49):
this free, independent bird of courage and strength. It was
just ideal. Even though America loved the bald eagle image,
early on, they loathed the species itself, the living bird
behind it. They treated the bald eagle as a predator.

(04:11):
But they were accused there was this meant that they
were a jeopardy to American husbandry, to farmers, and to
livestock farmers, and to people who raised chickens in their backyards,
And so it was regarded as a civic duty to
shoot and kill a bald eagle, and thousands of them
were shot and killed throughout the nineteenth century. So by

(04:36):
the late nineteenth century, bald eagles had all but disappeared
from the eastern seabird stags. And then in nineteen forty
five DDT went on the open market. It was available
to anybody to buy.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
It. Begins with the warborn development of DDT. This diabolical
weapon of modern science saved millions of humans but killed
billions of insects. Man with this newly discovered posse has
at long last in the upper hand in our age
old struggle.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
We ended up blanketing the lower forty eight states to
beat the bugs, if you will. We've beaten the Japanese,
We'd beaten the Germans. Now it was time to beat
the bugs. And so by the nineteen fifties, bird population,
songbird populations, raptor populations were noticeably declining, and the bal
legal population reached its nadea in nineteen sixty three. A

(05:30):
census was conducted that year of the bald legal population
across the lower forty eight states, and there were fewer
than five hundred nesting pairs. Now, let's put that in perspective.
When Converse adopted the Great Seal of the United States
of seventeen eighty two, the estimated bald legal population in
North America was five hundred thousand. We redeemed ourselves later

(05:55):
in the century by calling for its protection, and in
nineteen seventy two to the Environmental Protection Agency banned the
sale of DDT, but also Congress in that same year
passed one of the most important conservation acts in US history,
and that was the Clean Water Act. Through the nineteen eighties,

(06:15):
nineties and on into the twenty first century, we brought
all these bays and vayues and sounds and lakes and
rivers that were on the verge of ecological collapse around
the country back to teeming Love. And today the bald
legal population in North America is estimated to be five

(06:35):
hundred thousand, the same as it was in seventeen eighty two.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Nate Gallagher, and also a special thanks
to Jackie Davis he's a pulling, serprise winning author and
the author of The Bald Eagle, The Improbable Journey of
America's Bird. And my goodness, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin couldn't
get the deal done three times they will reject by
Congress with the seal of the United States, and it

(07:03):
took Charles Thompson, the Secretary of Commerce, to get it done.
But my goodness, we learned something special about this bird
both loved as a symbol but hate it as a predator.
Thanks to the EPA, the Clean Water Act, and our
own laws to protect this bird, we now have as
many as when we had in our nation's founding. The
story of America's symbol, the Bald Eagle here on our

(07:27):
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(07:48):
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