{"id":5945,"date":"2022-04-11T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/?p=5945"},"modified":"2022-11-08T14:02:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T19:02:32","slug":"franklins-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/?p=5945","title":{"rendered":"Franklin’s Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Robbie Perdue <\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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When I was growing up I was told that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird in place of the bald eagle but was outvoted by Thomas Jefferson and others. Well, it turns out that is just not true at all.\u00a0<\/p>

After the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams were tasked with designing a national seal. Franklin proposed a biblical scene from Exodus, featuring Moses, which did go on to become the reverse of the seal, and in 1782 the seal with a bald eagle on the front was approved. There never seemed to be any \u201cturkey business\u201d.<\/p>

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John James Audubon - Wild Turkey Cock, Hen, and Chicks <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The turkey did finally raise it\u2019s colorful head in 1784. Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter, Sarah, in which he complained about the design of a new medal issued by a Continental Army veteran\u2019s society. Here he states \u201cfor my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country,\u201d and that the eagle was \u201ca bird of bad moral character\u201d that \u201cdoes not get his living honestly\u201d because it steals food as it is \u201ctoo lazy to fish for himself.\u201d Franklin even writes that he considered the eagle \u201ca rank coward\u201d as it is often driven off by smaller birds.\u00a0<\/p>

Franklin goes on to describe the turkey as \u201ca much more respectable bird,\u201d \u201ca true original native of America,\u201d and describes the turkey to be \u201ca bird of courage.\u201d While these remarks were never intended to be public, we can agree on how great the turkey really is.\u00a0<\/p>

Turkey hunters understand the virtue of these creatures. They can fly over 50 mph and run up to 20 mph, they have incredible eyesight, a wily sense for survival, and an uncanny ability to be completely unpredictable. They might not be the smartest creature god made, but often enough they are smarter than you.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legend says that Benjamin Franklin wanted the Wild Turkey as the National Symbol instead of the Bald Eagle, but do you know the real story? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[178,111],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-history","tag-wild-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/BenFranklin-001.jpg","acf":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7705,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/7705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}