DID BEN FRANKLIN RECOMMEND THE WILD TURKEY AS THE NATIONAL EMBLEM?
It is commonly believed that Benjamin Franklin recommended the wild turkey as our National Emblem instead of the bald eagle. While there is some basis in fact for this belief, it isn’t really what Franklin had in mind. It arises from Franklin’s remarks to his daughter, Sarah Bache, in 1784, in which he criticizes a veterans’ organization (the American Order of the Cincinnati) for choosing the bald eagle as their emblem. Franklin remarked that: “Others object to the bald eagle [i.e., on the Cincinnati’s emblem] as looking too much like a dindon, or turkey. For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly…like those among men who live by sharping and robbing…he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little king-bird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district…I am, on this account, not disp
