The History of the Seal of the United States

The Great Seal of the United States took ninety years to design. Nine committees. Dozens of proposals. Ben Franklin wanted a Moses-type figure. Thomas Jefferson suggested the pillars of Hercules. Someone proposed a turkey. The bald eagle nearly did not make the cut. This is the story of how America failed, repeatedly, to imagine its own symbol until it accidentally landed on something that stuck. Hunt's 1909 account is a meticulous excavation of those decades of debate, political maneuvering, and artistic indecision that most Americans never think twice about. The seal we see on the dollar bill today is not the product of inspired founding genius but of relentless committee work, forgotten artists, and a nation that could not agree on what it wanted to look like. The real drama is not in the final design. It is in the process. Hunt reveals the human story behind national symbols: the egos, the compromises, the near-misses, and the eventual consensus that somehow still shapes American identity two centuries later.