It’s not that our national symbol—the mighty Bald Eagle himself—was an afterthought. He just sort of popped out during the design-by-committee (well, committees) process of figuring out what our nation’s Great Seal would be. The big names pitched in—Franklin, Jefferson, Adams—but it wasn’t until they wisely let actual heraldry professionals guide the thing that we got some sense put down on paper, and not just a sad mass of “Hey, here’s a bunch of awesome stuff that I like, and I put ‘em all together, and there’s a musket, and some Latin, and explosions!” Seriously, this was the level of creative discourse.