To enable the Secretary of State to have the Great Seal of the United States recut from the original model, and to purchase a suitable press for its use and a cover to protect the same from dust, the sum of one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, appropriated by the deficiency act approved July first, nineteen hundred and two, “To enable the Secretary of State to have the Great Seal of the United States recut,” is hereby reappropriated for the purposes above mentioned.
The words “original model” in the law precluded any change in the device, and the new seal was accordingly cut as a precise copy of the seal then in use, the work being done by Messrs. Bailey, Banks & Biddle, of Philadelphia.
IX
USES OF THE SEAL
When the Continental Congress made the obverse of the great seal the national arms it intended that the device should pass into common use among the people, as the flag has done, and like the flag the arms at first met with general approval, which soon gave place to an acceptance of it as an emblem of the power and sovereignty of the United States, which placed it above criticism.
Not all of the fathers of the Republic, however, were pleased with the selection of the eagle as the national emblem. When the badge of the Order of the Society of the Cincinnati was made in France in 1784 it was objected to by some because the displayed eagle resembled a turkey.
For my part [wrote Benjamin Franklin January 26, 1784, to his daughter], 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; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk; and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice he is never in good case; but, 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 kingbird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the kingbirds from our country; though exactly fit for that order of knights, which the French call Chevaliers d’Industrie.
I am, on this account, not displeased that the figure is not known as a bald eagle, but looks more like a turkey. For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours; the first of the species seen in Europe, being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the Ninth. He is, besides, (though a little vain and silly, it is true, but not the worse emblem for that,) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards, who should presume to invade his farmyard with a red coat on.[[32]]
The seal itself has, of course, a very limited use, which is strictly guarded by law. The Secretary of State is its custodian, but even he has no authority to affix it to any paper that does not bear the President’s signature.
In 1803 Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering an opinion of the Supreme Court, used the following language relative to the seal. It may be considered applicable to all instruments to which the seal is affixed.
The signature [of the President] is a warrant for affixing the great seal to the commission, and the great seal is only to be affixed to an instrument which is complete. It attests, by an act supposed to be of public notoriety, the verity of the presidential signature.