After President Joe Biden signed a law on Tuesday designating the bald eagle as the official national bird, the bird has officially entered the U.S. code.
The bill was unanimously approved by Congress.
Despite being the focal point of the United States’ Great Seal, the raptor was never officially acknowledged as the nation’s national bird. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were among the Founding Fathers who were assigned to design a national seal, but they were unable to agree.
Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress, produced and had authorized a variant of the seal with a bald eagle in 1782. The seal’s eagle with a flag-emblazoned shield, an olive branch in one talon, and arrows in the other, is recognizable to most Americans.
In a letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin, who had previously opposed the decision, claimed that the bald eagle was “a bird of bad moral character.”
In any case, in the nearly 250 years since its formation, the United States has not had an official bird.
Preston Cook, a native of Minnesota, has long wished for the eagle to be included in the U.S. code; he has even drafted a bill and sent it to legislators.
After learning that there was no official U.S. bird, Cook, who characterized himself as having a lifetime passion with the bald eagle, decided to campaign for a change. To modify the code to state that the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is the national bird, he drafted a straightforward piece of legislation.
Then, in July, a bipartisan group led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., brought it to the Senate floor. Last week, it swept through the House with no opposition after passing overwhelmingly.
Earlier this month, Cook told NBC News that this is one forgotten aspect of history that he felt obliged to correct.
It’s merely a correction; nobody needs to alter anything. According to Cook, it is merely a historical correction to put things right and return them to their proper state.
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